How to Win Online Gun Giveaways in 2024

Gun giveaways are free online contests for firearms and shooting equipment. Firearm manufacturers and retailers often organize these gun contests to grow their mailing list or raise awareness. We’ve also seen a few cases where individual gun owners choose to organize online raffles to give away their old guns. If you fancy these giveaways, you’ll be searching for how to win an online giveaway. It’s not as difficult as you probably think. Here are practical tips on how to win an online gun giveaway.

Here’s how to win online gun giveaways:

• Think like a draw planner 
• Set up smart searches for contests you’d like to participate in 
• Be the kind of person that gets picked
• Enter it and forget about it 
• Make it easy for sponsors to contact you
• Respond to legitimate win notifications quickly

Some of these tips probably seem obvious. And some probably seem daunting. But they typically get easier as you begin to practice them. Once you’ve mastered the tips, you’ll find online giveaway contests and will be able to win them. Read on to find detailed explanations of each of the tips listed above.

How to Win Online Gun Giveaways (Tips and Tricks)

Whether you are contesting in a giveaway for the first time or you’ve been in it a few times, an excellent way to set yourself up to win is by setting achievable goals and sticking to them. Here are detailed tips that can help you win:

1. Think Like a Draw Planner

Assume you have something to promote or a few guns to give away. Your goal would be to use the giveaway to get what you’re promoting to the face of many people. That can be a massive task for brands that are still struggling to build a social media following. The number of entrants may be low because only a few followers would hear about the raffle contest.

While this may seem like an opportunity for fans, it’s usually a big problem for the raffle promoters and organizers. So, if you’re entering for a raffle or contesting for a gun giveaway, you should know that there may be hundreds or thousands of people like you. Therefore, it’s important to think like the organizers. Imagine what they could be promoting with the giveaway and position yourself to be their best bet.

2. Set Up Smart Searches for Contests

You can win a contest if you don’t participate in one, right? So, perhaps the first logical step is to search for contests. And yes, we are not talking about just following some prominent accounts. Gun Giveaways don’t come with so much noise, so you can be following these accounts and still miss opportunities. To avoid this, we recommend setting up pings for keywords to help filter your emails and tweets. When searching, I usually include keywords like giveaway, gun giveaways, RT to win, win guns, etc. Keywords like these would likely be included in social media promotion messages. You could also specify a type of gun, whether it’s a handgun or rifle. 

For example, if you’re using Tweetdeck, you could search for “win guns” OR “RT to win” OR “win a shotgun.”

Some gun enthusiasts are taking entry automation to the next level by adding bots that will automatically retweet or enter contests, but it still pays to keep your criteria simple.

3. Be The Kind of Person that Gets Picked

We really can’t overemphasize this point. It’s more difficult to win any giveaway if you are just a random person. You must make yourself the kind of person the giveaway organizers are looking for. We are talking about gun giveaways here, and no organizer would want to pick a randomly selected winner. Many organizers will still choose preselected and heavily vetted winners despite the social media noise.

Apart from getting a winner that’s legally allowed to own a gun, contest organizers want a winner that can promote their brands to a large following. For giveaways that’ll be done on social media especially, organizers often prefer to pick a winner with a decent following. 

This is one of the reasons why we often recommend using your real account since it puts you in a better position to run. At the end of the day, organizers would think of you as an appealing prospect if you meet necessary requirements and you show some excitement about the event. 

4. Enter It and Forget About It 

We understand what it means to enter a contest and dream about winning. All the adrenaline rush can also be fun. But, you should also understand that there may be many more contestants for the giveaway. As such, you shouldn’t set your heart on winning at all costs. That’s a sure path to disappointments and discouragements. Instead, do what’s necessary when entering the giveaway and move right on to the next one. Let winning be a lovely surprise for you if it happens. 

5. Make It Easy For Sponsors to Contact You

Once you’ve entered for a giveaway, you have a chance of winning. However, if organizers can’t get in touch with you to tell you that you’ve won, all the hard work you’ve put in to enter for the giveaway will be nothing. If you must enter, do so with a number that can be reached easily, and answer your calls even if it’s from a number you don’t have on your contact list. 

Check your email daily and go through postal mails if they’ve promised to send correspondence there. Be strategic when filling out your contact information. The best contact information for a gun giveaway is one that can protect your privacy while still being reachable. 

6. Respond To Legitimate Win Notifications Quickly

Nothing pisses off giveaway organizers like sending countless emails to a winner and not getting any response from them. Yes, we understand the need not to be too expectant, but that doesn’t mean that you should not be expectant at all. Check your emails and answer your calls. Once you receive your first win notice, reply to the organizers as quickly as possible. This would give them enough time to process all legal documents binding the firearm transfer. 

If, for any reason, you miss a deadline to respond to a win notice, still contact the organizers. You might be lucky enough to still get your win delivered to you.

How To Do a Gun Raffle

As a gun giveaway organizer, preparing for a raffle can be challenging. There’s always so much to do, from processing paperwork to vetting contestants to ensure they are legally allowed to carry the firearm in their location. If you’re presently stuck between being fair and meeting all legal requirements, here are a few tips that could help. 

• Check With Local Regulatory Agencies To Be Sure You Can Hold a Giveaway

Gun rules vary from place to place. Your state may prohibit holding a raffle for the kind of gun you are giving out. Other states have regulations on who can contest such raffles and how often you can conduct them. Before starting, consult your local gun laws to know what’s applicable and what’s not. If the rules are too ambiguous for you to understand, talk to an attorney. It’s better to be safe than to be sorry. 

• Set Rules For Your Raffle

You may be giving out a gun for free, but that doesn’t make you less prone to getting into legal trouble if a dissatisfied loser challenges the contest. You can easily mitigate possible liabilities by clearly spelling out the rules from the start. 

Cite appropriate provisions of your local law in the raffle rules. Here’s a typical example: “The organization of this raffle is in accordance with the state of (insert state name) in accordance with (insert reference law).” Ensure that the rules are spelled out in plain English. Only include rules whose enforcement you and your team can monitor. Make it clear that there is some discretion in the way you’ll hand out prizes. 

• Print and Sell Tickets 

If it’s a raffle, there certainly would be tickets. These tickets can be physical or virtual, often depending on the audience, you intend to reach. Bear in mind that the raffle tickets would need certain information on them. Include unique ticket numbers, and leave space for participants to fill in their names, phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses. 

If you intend to sell tickets, state the cost of each ticket in your adverts and ensure that there’s no hidden cost anywhere. On the other hand, you can choose to offer free tickets. There are so many avenues that you can choose for ticket issuing. Some of the most famous avenues include door-to-door distribution, online, booths, ad printing, storefronts, fundraising events, etc. Whatever the avenue, do not force anybody to pick a ticket.

• Conduct a Free and Fair Raffle Draw

After issuing out tickets, you are expected to conduct a raffle draw at the end of the charity event. Ensure that the draw is free and fair. Contestants are picking up tickets knowing that they stand equal chances with other participants. If there’s any reason why a contestant won’t participate in the draw (for example, state law prohibits them from owning the gun), communicate to them beforehand and help them understand why they shouldn’t participate. Never forget that a disgruntled participant may take you through weeks of legal battle, and this is not something anybody would want. 

• Contact Winners as Soon as You Can

Unless you are holding a live draw, there’s a huge chance that the lucky draw winner would not be around to instantly claim their prize. If this is the case, you’ll need to contact your winner and deliver the prize to them as soon as you can. Fortunately, they would have filled in their contact information on the raffle ticket. 

Still run a background check to be sure that your winner is legally allowed to hold the firearm they’ve won. While contacting winners, let them know where and when they can claim their prize. For guns, it’s often required that the winners are available themselves to pick their prize.

Conclusion 

That’s it, a detailed look at tips that can help you win online gun giveaways.

As a gun enthusiast or one who’s willing and legally qualified to own a gun, these giveaways offer you an opportunity to own your gun.

However, there are always rules to it, and a clear understanding of these rules would put you ahead of the curve in your quest to win a firearm.

These giveaways are usually held as part of non-profit or charity events. However, these circumstances don’t stop the organizers from carefully vetting. So, if you are not qualified to carry a firearm, don’t enter for the giveaway because they won’t pick you. 

Gun giveaway organizers can also pick a few pointers from this article to organize an excellent gun raffle with worthy winners.

FAQ