Tenants with guns

[Joe Kato]

What laws should landlords be aware of in terms of tenants owning guns? If they work on guns and build them for a hobby, are there any insurance or liability considerations? Should I tell other tenants in building there are lots of guns and ammo on the premises? Just want to protect myself any way I can..

[Matt Devincenzo]

I would absolutely not tell the other tenants that they had guns. If another tenant disagrees with gun ownership and started being a problem for your gun owner tenant, or there was a break in and they stole some guns that IMHO would open you up to the liability of having been the one that told them.

As far as the tenant that owns guns, as a gun owner I see no problem with them owning guns. While gun owners are not a protected class per se, I found some cases of tenants filing suit against HUD and other PHA that banned firearm ownership. Apparently the tenants won on the grounds that requiring a tenant to waive constitutional rights as a stipulation to renting is illegal.

So I would discuss with the prospective tenant how they secure the weapons, and as long as they have a thought out logical method of a safe, locked cases ect would have no problem with it, and would absolutely keep that information between myself and the tenant.

(No legal advice)