Storing Guns when entering Canada or Mexico
Dave and Helen Damouth www.damouth.com
revised, 10/24/00
Many RVers carry guns. I personally think this is a bad idea, but do have an old shotgun on board, cased and buried in a cabinet. (I'm not required to be consistent). Everyone is, I hope, aware that they cannot take a gun into Mexico. Canada is slightly more liberal - no handguns permitted, but rifles and shotguns meeting barrel-length restrictions (26" minimum?) can be brought in for hunting or competition purposes, but absolutely not for self-defense. (Be careful when the customs inspector asks you the purpose of the gun).
But where does one leave a gun for a few days, weeks or months at the border? I sat in a campfire group in Casa Blanca State Park, on the Mexican border, and heard someone relate that a friend of his had buried a gun in a field in the state park for the duration of his Mexican trip. Someone mentioned, on RV-Talk, storing a gun at a pawn shop near the Canadian border (I just went back and searched for that message and couldn't find it.) These approaches only work, of course, if you will be returning to the same location when returning to the United States.
When we visited Mexico on rather short notice, I had to face that problem. Two pawn shops in Laredo, TX disclaimed any interest in "storing" a gun. However, in the second such place, I then changed my tune and asked about a loan. They were perfectly willing to have me pawn the gun. Their minimum loan seemed to be $5. So I borrowed $5, leaving the gun as security. If I return within a month, I can repay the $5 loan, pay $1 interest, and retrieve my gun. Another month would be another dollar.
This is a very reasonable storage fee and I suspect that any pawn shop in the country would offer a similar rate. This particular shop offered "bank vault storage". They weren't kidding. The building they were in had been built as a bank - the drive-up teller's window was still there, in the wall facing the parking lot.
Be aware, however, that ammunition can not be stored with the gun. Mexican customs people get just as excited about ammunition (or even a holster) as about the gun itself - so when you store a gun, you should discard the ammunition store everything associated with it (holster, case, cleaning equipment, etc.)
Another warning: Federal Law now requires a background check (via a central clearing house maintained by the FBI), before a pawn shop can return your own gun to you. No big deal - except that the system isn't working very well yet. The on-line check is supposed to take 10 minutes. In fact, response may be slow, and if no response comes back, the pawn shop is *required* to wait up to three business days for a response. If there's no response after that time, they can return your gun anyway. I got caught by this, and the "3 business days" spanned a weekend, so that we actually had to wait around five days. Beware!
In May, 2000, we were entering Canada but would not return by the same route. We explored another storage option - a commercial gun shop. Most, perhaps all, such places have a storage service, and probably aren't subject to this background check requirement when you are storing your own gun rather than buying. Gun shops have the knowledge and experience to ship your gun to you if you will not be returning to the location where you stored it. The shop we visited (actually a large gun department in a major sporting goods store) offerred to store the gun in their vault for free, and to ship it to any other licensed gun dealer when I call to request it. The only cost will be the shipping. The only complexity is that they must have a copy of the other dealer's license before shipping - which can be done by fax. They will not store ammunition.