View Full Version : Valuable WWII Gun at Police Buy-Back
You never know what you might have in your closet:
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/valuable-wwii-gun-police-buy-back-022155231--abc-news-topstories.html
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Sailor Steve
12-11-12, 01:54 PM
Good thing the cops knew their stuff. I wonder how many other collectibles have been destroyed by people who didn't know.
Penguin
12-11-12, 02:05 PM
Interesting find! I wonder how many weapons US WW2 vets brought home.
However a hell of an article...:-?
I'll let the "Nazi Assault Gun" slide for media sensation, the "expert's" statements however:
The gun is called a Sturmgewehr 44, literally meaning "storm rifle," and is the first "modern assault rifle ever made, eventually replaced by the AK 47 in 1947 by Russia, who copied the German design of the Sturmgewehr 44," Officer Lewis Crabtree, one of the two officers who discovered the gun, told ABC News.
Ahh, the old but wrong legend. Seems like Lewis knows Crab about rifles...
Just like his collegue, an alleged gun range master:
"She did not know it was a machine gun"
well, I didn't know that either... :rotfl2:
Armistead
12-11-12, 02:18 PM
Theat rifle was on one of those pawn shows with the guys that deal only in guns not long ago.
I love this statement..
"If the gun had been in the closet loaded, any second you could hit the wrong level and discharge a fatal round," he said of the Sturmgewehr 44."
How silly, it applies with any loaded gun.....
Stealhead
12-11-12, 04:10 PM
US troops got pretty good at shipping back weapons during WWII so good that by 1944 they started x-raying large packages after they found some MG-42s that had been well concealed but they could not get everything.
Some soldier likely field stripped that STG and shipped it back one part at a time.
The AK47 is not a copy of the STG44 either...sheesh for starters they have entirely different bolts and the operation is quite different. Now the AK47 design was obviously influenced by the STG but this is the case with every single firearm ever designed they all take ideas from other designs just like the Vz.58 not a copy of the AK47.I wonder how well those two "expert" cops even know their own duty weapons I bet they cant even field strip their Glocks.
Not just in WWII; I knew a few guys who brought back or had shipped back weapons from 'Nam in the 60s and 70s. A guy I knew as a friend of the family in about 1970-71 was a LRRP and had some very impressive souvenirs...
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TLAM Strike
12-11-12, 04:25 PM
The AK47 is not a copy of the STG44 either...sheesh for starters they have entirely different bolts and the operation is quite different. Exactly, it borrowed a lot from the Garand and the M1 Carbine in addition to the STG.
Jimbuna
12-11-12, 06:49 PM
As far as I'm aware it was one hell of a weapon in its day and must have been a highly sought after prize.
Stealhead
12-11-12, 07:43 PM
Not just in WWII; I knew a few guys who brought back or had shipped back weapons from 'Nam in the 60s and 70s. A guy I knew as a friend of the family in about 1970-71 was a LRRP and had some very impressive souvenirs...
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Well you can fill out a war trophies form and if it is not a legal weapon if you have it demilitarized you can keep it so an AK or from Vietnam most likely a type 56 if you had the firing pin removed and welded over and a rod in part of the barrel you can keep it.Now an SKS or Type 56(SKS they used the same number for both the AKM and the SKS in China) that is a semi auto 10 round magazine so that gun you could keep as is.If he brought back a working type 56 he did not do it legally. If it is not a type 56 then it most likely is not from Vietnam as 85~90% of the NVAs small arms where from China the advanced gear came from the USSR.
My father was also a LRRP 67-68,68-69 but he was never into the war trophy thing he was more a photography man and has easily 2 or 3 thousand pictures many taken during operations and they did find lots of arms caches.
Well you can fill out a war trophies form and if it is not a legal weapon if you have it demilitarized you can keep it so an AK or from Vietnam most likely a type 56 if you had the firing pin removed and welded over and a rod in part of the barrel you can keep it.Now an SKS or Type 56(SKS) that is a semi auto 10 round magazine so that gun you could keep as is.
The guns I was shown were fully operational though I doubt he really ever fired them much if at all...
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Stealhead
12-11-12, 07:57 PM
The vet showed you these or your friend?
Im just saying you can take any modern AK clone and make it look like a type 56 if you want to but a real NVA type 56 would have a date of manufacture of a certain date early to late 60's and also it would have a two position selector first being fully automatic second being semi auto if you only moved the selector switch once it is a fake and really a civil market firearm.
I have seen fakes before there is this Vietnam Vet group and they go around to schools and talk to kids about Vietnam they showed us what they claimed to be a type 56 that was demilitarized
when I was in high school I looked at it and could tell it was really a Chinese type 56 for the civil US market made in the late 70's and I called them on it.
The vet showed you these or your friend?
The vet showed them to me; he was afamily friend at the time I saw them, about 1970 or 1971...
I don't think he exactly followed protocol or procedure to get the weapons into the US...
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Stealhead
12-11-12, 10:01 PM
Do you still know this person? I wonder what he ever did with those guns if he was smart hed have tossed them into a lake or something or sold them and got rid of them.I know for a fact that you cant keep a working automatic weapon as a trophy even if you have the legal means to own one back in the states.
Hopefully he never got himself into trouble having those weapons.Even today if anyone where to get caught with those they would be looking at a felony and a prison term.
Penguin
12-12-12, 07:05 AM
I know for a fact that you cant keep a working automatic weapon as a trophy even if you have the legal means to own one back in the states.
So even if you'd possess a Class III license and maybe have the gun tested by the ATF that it complies to US standards? Or would this break international law, e.g. weapon export laws?
Stealhead
12-12-12, 10:52 AM
Here is the modern war trophy form if you look at section 8 item number 3 should be of interest that means that you can not keep a functioning firearm period:
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/infomgt/forms/eforms/dd0603-1.pdf
So anyone at least in modern times that has a functioning firearm they either are lying or they violated the law and they are very strict about checking you out when you leave a war zone I can confirm this from personal experience.
Pre 1969 the regulations where much more lax so a pre 1969 vet might have been able to keep an automatic weapon but I doubt it not a functioning one anyway and post 1969 he would not have been able to keep any functioning fire arm.
Penguin
12-12-12, 11:08 AM
As I see it, a knife or a bayonet would also fall into the category of a lethal weapon.
So under modern regulations all the Hitler Youth and SS daggers which were a popular souvenir back then would be considered illegal. :hmmm:
Do you still know this person? I wonder what he ever did with those guns if he was smart hed have tossed them into a lake or something or sold them and got rid of them.I know for a fact that you cant keep a working automatic weapon as a trophy even if you have the legal means to own one back in the states.
Hopefully he never got himself into trouble having those weapons.Even today if anyone where to get caught with those they would be looking at a felony and a prison term.
No, I no longer know the vet. Remember, that was about 40 years ago. I would have no knowledge of what he did with the weapons or where they might be, if they are still around at all.
As far as forms and legality, the capabilities of US servicemen to get around the "niceties" of red tape and regs is near legendary. It is one of the reasons you quite frequently hear about some weapon or another being found in some one's old possessions. There was an old eoisode of the TV series "M*A*S*H" where Radar O'Reilly was mailing home a complete Jeep one piece at a time. I remember at the time it was originally aired, the producers and writers stated the story was based on a actual incident. The ingenuity of a determined soldier is not to be underestimated...
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Stealhead
12-12-12, 02:15 PM
That was in the old days today things are much much stricter and they will truly throw the book at you for violations of this kind.By attempting to smuggle weapons in the modern US military you put the rest of your life at risk not from death but from the effect on your record.Few people would try it today at least not anything of real value or anything that is illegal.Small time stuff you can try and at worst they make you pay for it.
In the old day what you say is true because generally speaking people just looked the other way or gave a slap on the wrist it was just a different world then.Today that would not happen.
The people that smuggle guns or anything illegal in the modern US military either have very poor judgment or they do not care and are of the criminal element anyway and intend to sell the weapons for profit.
Your basing things on TV ans someone that did something in 1970 I am basing what I know on my own experience and those of friends and my relatives in this day and age it is much harder to pull these kinds of things and soldiers have been caught trying to do it.
Hollyweird has its stylized view of what people in the military do and it is usually not accurate.
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