Just like a scene out of "Antiques Roadshow" (http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/valuable-wwii-gun-police-buy-back-022155231--abc-news-topstories.html)
I saw that. An Stg44 is in the top 5 of the list of guns I want most.
One thing that caught my attention in the article. The cops said they couldn't take it because they'd have to destroy it and said it should be in a museum. The article went on to say the lady was going to sell it. Unless the Stg 44 was registered in the last Auto Open Amnesty of 1963 or registered before, it is highly illegal to own. It can't even be sold.
Perhaps since it is nonfunctioning that makes a difference but I'm not sure.
A friend who owns a pawn shop told me that a kid came into his shop and asked if he bought guns. My friend said he did and asked what he had. The kid opened up the case and took out an MP40 "Schmeisser". My friend asked how and where he got it and it was the same old story; got it from a friend who's grandad brought it back from Europe in 1945. He had no registration paperwork on it.
My friend told him with paperwork he'd give him $10,000 for it but since he had none he couldn't legally buy it. A shame.
It is a problem when people who own firearms (purchased or inherited) are that ignorant about them.
i think this lady can be pardoned, sheriff.
Awesome story...
Quote from: nofi on December 11, 2012, 01:55:18 PM
i think this lady can be pardoned, sheriff.
I'd say so too. She was in good faith if I've ever seen it.
But it belongs to us really!
This is not what I think of when coming out of the closet is in the subject line >:(
You're reading too much into the headline... it was in the closet...
I think you have no worries about us perceiving where your closet is any you can safely be considered as being loud and proud and thoroughly out of it... ;)
Quote from: uwe on December 11, 2012, 02:38:48 PM
But it belongs to us really!
You lost.
I won't mention the war again, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0
We might have lost the war, but good valid legal title lasts forever! :mrgreen:
I had a customer years back that was an avid gun collector she, yes she, had several vaults full of all kinds of stuff. Her most prized possesion was a pair of Walter 380s that her uncle took off of a surrending German officer in the war. Nazi marked, German manufactured, sequential serial numbers. According her they appeared to be unfired when she received them and she had never shot them herself.
They found a bunch of Stg 44s in Syria.
http://www.hk94.com/hk/topic/29173-syrian-rebels-find-german-stg-44-sturmgewehr-rifles/
:-\ It's reassuring and heart-warming that almost 70 years after our last selfless attempt to install Pax Germania in the world, our cherished quality products are still finding good use in reinforcing stability in the Mideast. Wonderful, German Sturmgewehre can then be employed to gun down Syrian Christians in an ethnic cleansing after Assad is gone and democracy springs up like the Garden Eden in Syria. It's always an honor to be taken out by a bullet from a true democrat, after all it's the majority gunning down the minority.
Forgive me being caustic, looking at the Mideast is always so uplifting. Even a batch of Sturmgewehre won't lighten my mood. :-\
To apply King Albert's appraisal of the Germans (not to offend our current continental European friends) just prior to WWI, "these people are ill-tempered, envious and unbalanced".
In my opinion, the Middle East is, and always has been, a lost cause. Of course, that assumes there was a cause in the first place.
I think the cause of the middle east was lost when the Byzantines startet falling back. But I have heard many times since I was young that they will get it all back. You listened, then you took your pizza or bakalava home.
My neighbor was a police captain when I was a youngster, and our fair city would engage in gun buy backs. The overwhelming majority of weapons brought in were garbage level pistols and abused and mutilated hunting weapons. They were melted. But regularly an older person would bring in something that would blow minds - presentation colts engraved in the case, Lugers, PPks, Bolo Mausers with the shoulder stock, etc. They would occasionally put the most spectacular one in the paper, along with the story of how they had to be melted down.
Several years later that Mauser looked great.
Quote from: uwe on December 11, 2012, 02:38:48 PM
I'd say so too. She was in good faith if I've ever seen it.
But it belongs to us really!
There's a U Boat in Chicago you may want to go to court for too.
Rick
I never found U-Boat warfare especially chivalrous, Rick, believe me. It's sniping on civilians underwater. And then not having room enough to save the survivors. Keep the darn thing please.
I wish you would have mentioned this earlier. I already had it crated up and shipped to your address. It should be there by Christmas ;D.
Oh yeah, Happy New Year too.
Rick
:mrgreen: :) ;) :mrgreen: :) ;) A U-Boat as a C.A.R.E. package you mean? :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-*
Rick, your utterly idiotic gun views aside, I have no issues with you. I'm sure you are a lovable and decent guy and I'm glad to have you here, unarmed or not. Fröhliche Weihnachten to you too.
Uwe
Did I ever mention that my family came here from Germany many years ago. I have a distant cousin of some sorts who is sort of a national hero back in the fatherland , Georg Hackl, the guy with more gold medals in the luge event than anyone in the history of the sport.
I don't think I ever mentioned I have a cat named Uwe either. Yeah, I figure I'm a pretty decent guy too. Not so sure about the lovable thing.
I certainly have no issues with you either.That is, aside from your idiotic gun views. Well, I gotta go load my guns now , I sure hope you enjoy that U Boat. ;D
Rick
Quote from: rahock on December 15, 2012, 01:54:16 PM
Well, I gotta go load my guns now , I sure hope you enjoy that U Boat. ;D
Rick
I have this image of the crew Uwe would pick....
(http://www.swedishbikiniteam.com/sbt5logoandgals3.jpg)
Wasn't he in Sweden earlier this year...? Talent scouting... ;D
No darn scruffy U-Boat beards too!
Quote from: uwe on December 15, 2012, 05:53:17 PM
No darn scruffy U-Boat beards too!
Nooooooooooooooooooo comment.
I wasn't talking about carriers and landing strips.
I hope he's not commenting on the state of my trawlermans facial growth... I get enough grief from SWMBO... ;D
I had a distant relative who commanded a U-boat. When my family came to America in the 1700s they did what many Germans did; drop letters from their names to make them seem less German.
http://uboat.net/men/commanders/767.html
The spelling of my family name was changed also. My family came here before WWI and through the course of two wars with Germany, even speaking German was forbidden. Although two generations later and being raised with a great deal of pride in my ethnic heritage , speaking German was still not encouraged. My grandfather used to say you're an American, it's best to leave the old ways behind. He was subject to a bit of predjudice, including a "witch hunt" type investigation during the war years.
Rick
I was surprised to read years ago that of all US immigrant groups the Germans were the largest, they just came pretty evenly over the centuries and not in waves like others. And they assimilated as opposed to forming ethnic hubs. Part of it has to do with the fact that Germany only evolved as a state late in the 19th century, there wasn't much of a national identity for the immigrants to fall back upon.
Family name spellings were changed for many reasons. My relatives were Dunkards, and they were known to change the spelling to distance themselves. More often than not, it was a case of an illiterate clerk interpreting from someone who didn't speak English, so whatever got written down became their name. I have one ancestor that showed up in 3 different censuses across a decade, under 3 different variations of the same name.
My family is technically French, from the Alsace-Lorraine area, which I believe was traded off between the French and Germans over the centuries. We've traced our roots back to Langensoulzbach, in France.
my dad traced our family back seventeen generations in the bari italy area before hitting a dead end.
Quote from: nofi on December 23, 2012, 06:44:31 AM
my dad traced our family back seventeen generations in the bari italy area before hitting a dead end.
What my father managed to get went back to 1707. You reach a point where you pretty much have to travel to the region and start looking through local records. We've been told that we are descended from the royal family in Weimar, where there was supposed to be a small castle still left. The problem is, as you already mentioned, no actual proof. I do know that one of my ancestors, Jacob Wimer, is given a great deal of credit for the growth and development of SW Oregon (first post office, first hotel, land development). I have a model of one of his grist mills in HO scale. I really should see if Mark can put it together for me. Jacob was a character, moving out of Keokuk, IA, where he caused a big stir by moving his boundary markers into Indian land across a river and then claiming they were liars. Jacob was the brother of my g-g-g-g-grandfather(?), Valentine Weimer.
My dad's family evidently came into Ellis Island in the late 1800's and that's as far back as we go on that side. My Mom's family came out of Missouri, but there's not a lot of collective info about much beyond 1900.
I cheerfully claim that I came from Sears via mail order.
Quote from: uwe on December 22, 2012, 09:47:26 PM
I was surprised to read years ago that of all US immigrant groups the Germans were the largest, they just came pretty evenly over the centuries and not in waves like others. And they assimilated as opposed to forming ethnic hubs. Part of it has to do with the fact that Germany only evolved as a state late in the 19th century, there wasn't much of a national identity for the immigrants to fall back upon.
Come to the Texas hill country - there was huge wave of German and Czech immigrants after the civil war, if memory serves me correctly. Generations later there are many people speaking the mother tongue or a variation thereof. ;D
Speaking of German immigrants my first ancestor shows up in the 1790 census in the mountains of North Carolina. This was evidently the frontier and the story goes, undocumented of course, that Henri was a Hessian mercenary as this was an area that many of the Hessian settled in after the revolutionary war. Pretty much everyone with my surname seems to have descended from this one man. Supposedly there are two or three family cemeteries full of my ancestors there somewhere.
My mother's family is British and the first family member here was the umpteenth son of some nobleman. Every son after number one was SOL so they shipped the sons off to the colonies where they were given large swaths of land. Seems this guys had property in the city where he had one wife and family and one wife in the "country" where he had another family. They can find no legal marriage license for the country family so the entire branch is considered, laughingly, at family reunions as the bastard branch.
I'm a mercenary bastard ;D Been called worse :rolleyes:
Quote from: Lightyear on December 23, 2012, 11:37:47 AM
Come to the Texas hill country - there was huge wave of German and Czech immigrants after the civil war, if memory serves me correctly. Generations later there are many people speaking the mother tongue or a variation thereof. ;D
...
Not just in the hill country, even more in the small towns east of there but west of Houston.
Where else would you find a musician named Adolph Hofner who was actually 3/4 Czech and grew up in a Czech-speaking home and played Western Swing music.
The there are the Wendish (http://www.draftfcb.com/holiday2011/) of Lee County (east of Austin) and the Alsatians (http://www.castroville.com/heritage.htm) of Castroville and D'Hanis (west of San Antonio).
I travel somewhat regularly to Halletsville, about 25 miles south of Schulenberg, and the customer is a fairly large steel fabricator with several huge open air shops. I work inside but when I visit all you hear playing on the radio is the local Polka channel ;D In Houston it's either Tejano or Country. A big plus to this place is that every Friday morning they cook hotlinks, sausage for non locals, from a local butcher/packer. The smell of garlic will make your hair curl ;D $1 a link with all the white bread, mustard, kraut you want. Last time I was there they had some venison chili as well ;)
Texas definitely has its attractions!
My family is Czech ...came over when WWI broke out. Coal miners, settled in eastern Ohio...
Quote from: Lightyear on December 23, 2012, 03:22:33 PM
I travel somewhat regularly to Halletsville, about 25 miles south of Schulenberg, and the customer is a fairly large steel fabricator with several huge open air shops. I work inside but when I visit all you hear playing on the radio is the local Polka channel ;D In Houston it's either Tejano or Country. A big plus to this place is that every Friday morning they cook hotlinks, sausage for non locals, from a local butcher/packer. The smell of garlic will make your hair curl ;D $1 a link with all the white bread, mustard, kraut you want. Last time I was there they had some venison chili as well ;)
Don't forget kolaches (or kolackys, as they're spelled up here). Plenty of kolaches to be had in Schulenburg and Halletsville.
Yes indeed! But a true kolache, in Texas anyway, is a flat, squarish pastry with a little fruit in a depression in the middle of it. Most places around here call the ones that are bread dough baked around a sausage a kolache but truly it's called a pig in the blanket or, most often, a pig. Some the best I've had are at a place called Prasek's just south of El Campo on US 59 :)
Damn, I'm hungry! And I just finished a plate of cheese enchilada's with my home made verde sauce!
Right, a pig in a blanket isn't a real kolache (but still good).
Now I'm hungry too.