How to Ship a Gun
How to Ship Your Gun
Customers from all over the country ship their guns to us so we thought it would be helpful to write a blog that covers the best practices for packaging your gun for shipment.
In our experience, people often improperly package their guns for shipping, causing damage or resulting in the package being returned to the sender.
This blog focuses on how you should package your gun for shipping. We do not provide legal advice on shipping firearms. Please review ATF rules and carrier rules before shipping your gun.
However, we will recommend shipping your gun through UPS because we continuously have issues with shipping through USPS and FedEx.
How to Pack Your Gun for Shipping
Choose the Right Box
If you have the manufacturer’s original packaging, that’s the preferred box for shipping.
If you do not have the original packaging, find a box that is a suitable size for both the gun and the packing material.
Prep the Box for Shipping
Make sure the box doesn’t have any other mailing labels, and if it does, remove them or cover them.
If the box has firearms related text or images (anything that would identify it as a gun), be sure to cover that up. This is a carrier specific requirement. UPS requires that there be no visible firearms related content on the outside of the box.
Ready the Gun for Shipment
Make sure your gun is unloaded. Ammunition cannot be shipped in the same box as firearms.
Remove all optics from your firearm (red dots, scopes, etc). Those should be shipped separately or not shipped at all.
Cover the face of the barrel with cardboard or hard plastic so that it doesn’t poke through the packaging. Do the same thing for your bolt handle or charging handle.
Pack Your Gun to be Shipped
Pad the end/bottom of the box with several inches of packing materials (paper, bubble wrap, etc.) and place the gun inside the box.
Fill all the dead space with packing materials. You want the gun to end up in the middle of the box, suspended with no movement. You should have at least 2 inches of bubble wrap or other packaging around the entire gun.
Expect the carrier to be hard on the package. Shake the package to test for any movement.
Fill out our Shipping Form
You can find the McCluskey Arms shipping form here. Fill it out and place it in the box with the gun.
