Should I give Dad back his gun?

Unequivocably, hands down, NO.    The fact that he threatened your wife, carries a revolver everywhere, and isn't conforming to safe  (let alone your) standards, suggests to me that it's time to ensure he never gets another revolver, or other weapon, but also might be more suitably cared for where there's much more monitoring available to protect others.

You might want to discuss this with your local police, right now. 

It sounds like not very good decision making all around, and it sounds as though it isn't working out well.
Does your Dad suffer from dementia? Does he have a history of violence?
Is there any missing information in this story that you can give me so that I can understand why you bought your Father's home, assuring him he could live in it for life (which was unrealistic assurance on the face of it)?
Is there some information you can give me that might help me understand your questioning whether to return guns to an elder who has already threatened the head of household with death by same?

Ask your wife how she feels about your dad having the gun back.

Then make a choice between placating your father and having a wife.

I would see a lawyer asap about the stipulations in the sale document. Is this a "life estate"? Most life estates don't come with the condition that the person may remain in the home when they are a danger to themselves and others (which your dad is).

I would encourage you to remove all weapons, ammunition, power tools and sharp objects until you can get dad seen by a neurologist, geriatric psychiatrist or behavioral health team.

If he has an episode of rage and threatens, call 911, have him transported to the ER and tell them that he is no longer able to be safe at home. And that you and wife are in fear for your safety.

Eta, is dad ex-law enforcement, military or organized crime?

Hard NO

NO, do not give them back. I would hand them into the police. I also would not have allowed the tools if he had already had an accident with them. Think it may be a good time for Dad to have a good physical. Labs and cognitive testing. At 92 there is probably some cognitive decline.

Dad needs to realize that its your house and he is being allowed to live there. Really, you should never have said he can live with you as long as he wants. It should always be a trial run. Once we become adults, on our own and making our own decisions, we really cannot live with our parents again. It works very rarely. We are different people than we were as their children and its hard for our older parents to separate the child from the now adult. And who has boundries of their own.

Just curious, does Dad have a permit to carry? If not, he shouldn't have it anyway. If he does have a permit, I would ask the police if threatening your wife with violence voids that permit. Good excuse he can't have it back, he voided the permit by threatening someone.
You are perfectly in your right to ban the gun from your house. Sometimes our roles are reversed, we become the parent, them the child.

Absolutely NOT. I’m lifelong Alaskan, feel strongly about gun rights, but once behavior deteriorates, to the level of what you wrote, those rights are over. I’ve been surrounded by violence against women, my entire life, living in a state that has one of the highest rates of that type violence, so I do not play around. I would NOT take threats lightly, jmho.

Gun and power tools have to go! Or dad goes. Or you and your wife go. Figure something out because he is dangerous to himself and others. Sure, when he wants his gun back he says he won't hurt her, but what about next time there is an argument? He has no self control.

Seriously? Your question is "should I give dad back his gun?"

Is it just me?

So, you have your dad, whom you say you don't trust. living with you, armed, and he threatened your WIFE with a DEADLY WEAPON, which he "always has on him" and your question is "should I give dad back his gun?"

Your question should really be "what is the fastest way I can get out
of this house, because dad is a danger to me and my spouse?"

But since your question is "should I give dad back his gun?" - ah, no. You should not give dad back his gun. I would think this would be kind of obvious. If what you're actually looking for is "permission" to NOT give dad's gun back from a bunch of anonymous strangers, I wholeheartedly give you permission and a blessing to get any and all firearms out of the house. And bear in mind, that a gun is not the ONLY dangerous item in the house.

Dad wasn't the instigator with threats, your wife was. Cutting the cord to dad's power tools is a threat of destruction of personal property.

Dad wasn't actually in possession of the firearm when he told her he would kill her if she destroyed his tools.

Law enforcement isn't going to do anything to either of them. We live in a country that words don't get you in trouble, only the actions you take.

Dad still sees this as his house and home. So everyone needs to stop with the threats.

Find a way for dad to use his power tools. Get him a shed with a dust collection system, they're easy and cheap. Set up the garage or something. It's obviously what he enjoys doing.

Sorry, I personally don't believe almost counts. So what, he almost cut his fingers off, he didn't. I worked in the steel industry for decades and people of ALL AGES got injured using the tools and equipment. It's life, stuff happens, we don't hide in a hole because something almost happened. If we did, NONE of us would ever drive again.

Everyone in the home matters. Find a solution to the problems instead of making one persons issues the most important thing.

Obviously, you don't let dad have access to the firearms if you truly believe he is a threat. However, he wouldn't have had to kill her if she cut through a power cord, she would have electrocuted herself.

This is why I think buying a parents house is a really bad idea. It never stops being theirs in their mind.

How old is your wife? She started the "threatening" bejavior... should we believe she has cognitive decline? What measures are you considering to protect your father from her?

Although I am a firm defender of the rights of elders (and not just assuming because they are old they should be denied their rights and property) I would most likely remove the threat of gun violence by removing the firing pin on the gun. I assume dad does not go to the range anymore or travel independently (which would allow him to detect and get the firing lin fixed).

Good luck. I found similar situations difficult to deal with; both legally and emotionally.

Your mistake was buying dads house with the agreement dad could live there until he died. Now you are stuck with a selfish senior who is also a liar and a potential threat with a gun. Which he threatened to use. What a nightmare.

You know your dad. You know his personality and temperment. All things you should have taken into account before making this living situation and agreement. I would not give him his gun back.

Things can happen in a split second and the heat of the moment and since your dad has already shown his irrationality in threatening to kill your wife it would be foolish to give him back that gun.

Most murders are committed by someone the person knows.

If you have to ask this question, the answer is UNQUESTIONABLY “NO”.

When you purchased your dad's house, did you include an "easement" with the title stating that your dad could live there until he died? Did you put in writing any extenuating circumstances as exclusions from the promise? If not, there is no legal reason for allowing a man to occupy your home who threatens to kill anyone and who is a danger to himself. You have the legal right to the quiet and peaceful enjoyment of your property.

Should you give him a gun? No, and h*ll no!

This is a hard NO mainly because he seems unreasonable and stubborn, which is often a first symptom of cognitive impairment. He losing the ability to make judgements based on reason and logic and empathy. Concentrate on helping him figure out using power tools in an outbuilding. This will provide a good distraction.

FYI I can put links here to news reports of several shootings and murders from my home state perpetrated by very senior people against their live-in family members and roommates. Not worth the risk. I wouldn't care if dad gets pissed off. He threatened to kill you. Not the words of a rational person, no matter who instigated what. FYI my own SFIL threatened to shoot us - he had Parkinsons and Lewy Body Syndrome. I can't remember why he was angry but he did have a shotgun and handgun in the house, which we removed on the advice of social services who would NOT provide services or enter the home unless it was made safe. Anyone who comes into the home of an impaired senior with a firearm is knowingly being put at risk. Please do not give it back to him under any circumstances or contrition by him.

Absolutely, unequivocally no. He has shown either an unwillingness or inability to consider and abide by what was asked of him to live peacefully in your home. Either way something is amiss here. Don't make the mistake of applying trust to an untrustworthy situation.

The MOST important part of the OP's statement is "but I don't trust him".

His wife was wrong to say she was going to cut the power cords. But to then escalate a threat of destruction of property to a threat of physical violence with a weapon - especially in a domestic-type situation - is not something that should be shrugged off and/or ignored. Especially when the OP has stated he doesn't "trust" dad. That to me signifies there might have been earlier issues between dad and OP/wife.

Frankly, I'm licensed to carry concealed, have been for years, because of work, But I don't carry my gun with me 24/7. And my first thought if I were in an argument with someone in my family would NOT be to threaten to shoot them!

In this case, if dad is still mentally competent, threatening to shoot OP's wife is not an appropriate response to what happened. If you're a responsible gun owner, you should consider your firearms to be used to protect your life or the life of someone else, not as a response to vandalism of some tools. which is what the OP's wife threatened. And if dad is starting to show signs of cognitive decline, then it's probably not the smart thing to leave him armed with the hope his decline isn't and won't become bad enough that he can't recognize a real threat from an imagined one.

As Ann said, if you even need to ASK this question, the immediate answer to yourself should be no. And if OP doesn't trust dad to not harm him or his wife, they should NOT be living with dad, whether or not they are providing care. Because removal of the guns is not a guarantee of the removal of the threat of physical violence...lots of other items in a house that can be used as a weapon.

NO.

A question for you. Did you buy the house for Fair Market Value? You need to see an elder law attorney if the answer is NO. This would cause dad problems when trying to qualify for Medicaid.

The obvious answer is to remove the gun from the premises.

If that isn't possible (and I don't know why it wouldn't be possible) you take the gun to a gunsmith - have the firing pin removed and request any other disabling actions that can be taken. Once that is done, remove all ammunition from the house.

I didn't read all the comments, so forgive me if mine is repetitive. Get dad in to the doctor for a dementia test STAT. MoCA or SLUMS test will suffice; see where he falls on the scoring chart and if he has cognitive impairment or full on dementia at this point.

Get rid of the guns and the ammo, that's plain common sense. Anyone, with or w/o cognitive impairment, who threatens to KILL another person must be disarmed, period.

Plus, given his history with power tools and 'almost cutting his fingers off', it doesn't seem wise to allow him to use power tools EITHER.

Again, the cognitive test will give you a good idea of where he's at, mentally, and what power tools he should or should not be playing with. If he's prone to violence or temper fits (which is also common with dementia), knives and scissors should also be removed from the home or kept under lock and key, I'm not kidding. You DO NOT want to find out if dad is 'capable' of using one of those items as a weapon in a fit of fury one day. Also, if he's refusing to play by the rules of not using power tools due to the dust factor (which he originally agreed to), that right there is a reason to have him stop using them, remove them, sell them, etc. It's comparable to allowing a young child access to dangerous things; would you do that? No, of course not. Allowing a mentally compromised elder access to those things is akin to allowing a young child access to them: not a wise idea.

Good luck!

No! And have a talk with his doctor. The doctor can decree no guns in the house. You can blame it on the doctor if you want. Something like this happened to me when caring for a relative and the decision to disarm carried more weight when coming from the doctor. The relative was still plenty mad though.

You have a problem.

The gun is your father's property. On what legal basis have you deprived him of it?

I know absolutely nothing about licensing or any other related laws where you are, but it seems to me that if you want to take the gun away on the grounds that he poses a risk, whether to other members of the household, himself, or the general public, there must be formal steps to be taken. Otherwise you've plain stolen it.

You have a wider set of problems which you and your wife and your father had better thrash out for the sake of future harmony, namely that the restrictions which he agreed to are apparently not ones he finds he can live with. I don't know - is there anywhere else he can do his pottering? A workshop or garage, for example? What on earth is he making that needs a saw and a planer, come to that - is he a joiner by trade, or something?

Pretty feckin' impressive for a 92 year old, I have to say, but could he be encouraged to take on less ambitious projects with less demand for terrifying kit? I treasure the walnut salad bowl my neighbour's uncle turned for me on his lathe at a similar age.

Personally I can't see why anyone feels it's normal for someone his age to carry a gun around but how about this - you replace all the ammo with blanks, and insist it is safely locked up when not in use.

In Kansas, anyone over 21 can carry a gun.
No permits, no licenses.

As most people have said, he should not get his gun back and there should be no guns in the house. Period. You don't say whether he has always had a combative personality but, if he hasn't already, he should have a cognitive exam. Does he have a habit of being threatening and then saying he's sorry? Threatening to kill someone while one possessing a gun is a crime. As for the property question, some states, counties or cities have red flag laws. If family members can make a case that the person with the gun is unstable, the court will order the gun removed. You might also want to see if the gun is registered in his name. If you don't want to go through all that, just keep all guns away from him and leave it up to him to try to get his property back. You and your wife might also think through your contract with him that he is to act in a certain way and if he doesn't he can't live with you anymore. This seems to me to be a fair trade and if he continues to breach the agreement, I think you should have a plan for removing him from the house and having him live in some sort of assisted living situation.

If I tell folks they can't smoke in my house, that doesn't mean they can do it when I'm not home. If the wife is allergic to the products of the power tools, the power tools may not be used in her home.

This sounds like an ill-conceived living arrangement from many points of view, and as I suggested originally, get yourselves to a lawyer and get dad an accurate assessment of his cognitive state.

I can't believe this is even a question.
NO you do not give the gun back.
Is there even a reason for him to carry a gun with him everywhere? (not even going to ask if he has a valid FOID card or if he is legal when he carries it)
If you do not trust him that is reason enough not to return the gun.
I hope you have it in a safe.

Heck NO!

Am I the only one who is thinking "Who the heck uses a saw and planer in the house" ? no ventilation, dust and mess everywhere, and oh yeah.. he agreed not to do this? My Dad and hubs both used/use these things and they would never have thought to bring that mess into the family home! Garage or shed yes... house NO WAY. Its a health hazard for anyone around the dust. I can;t imagine the clean up after that,, and I am SURE dad was not going to do it..
As to the gun,, when my dad threatened my mom,, the gun and ammo were GONE. They stayed gone. And I never felt a moments guilt

Give back the gun and the house.

Reality check: a police call is just as likly to result in a APS investigation of abuse of a venable elder and the gun remaining in the elder's custody. Vocally threatening to shoot someone is not an illegal act regardless of age. Police has no more "right" to remove someone's lawful property than anyone else does. Actually aiming a firearm at another person is aggravated assault unless its in self defense. Since the elder did not start the incident, police could decide he reacted in self defense. In many areas of the nation, self defense presumptions tend to lean toward the older person with less physical reserves.

If the elder has dementia then he could not transfer the house. If he has dementia then he should be diagnosed which opens legal options for getting rid of the gun but may threaten the real estate "purchase".

I find the wife's threatening statement to be totally inappropriate and bullying. What reaction would you expect from the 92 year old home owner (of at least a life estate as described).