A Sturmgewehr 44 in the closet

Dave W · December 11, 2012, 11:37:25 AM

Just like a scene out of "Antiques Roadshow"

Denis · December 11, 2012, 12:09:28 PM

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.

Pilgrim · December 11, 2012, 01:53:21 PM

It is a problem when people who own firearms (purchased or inherited) are that ignorant about them.

nofi · December 11, 2012, 01:55:18 PM

i think this lady can be pardoned, sheriff.

Highlander · December 11, 2012, 01:58:11 PM

Awesome story...

uwe · December 11, 2012, 02:38:48 PM

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!

TBird1958 · December 11, 2012, 03:45:15 PM

This is not what I think of when coming out of the closet is in the subject line

Highlander · December 11, 2012, 03:50:17 PM

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...

Dave W · December 11, 2012, 04:19:41 PM

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.

uwe · December 11, 2012, 04:37:36 PM

We might have lost the war, but good valid legal title lasts forever!

Lightyear · December 11, 2012, 08:11:12 PM

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.

Denis · December 14, 2012, 03:09:02 PM

They found a bunch of Stg 44s in Syria.

http://www.hk94.com/hk/topic/29173-syrian-rebels-find-german-stg-44-sturmgewehr-rifles/

uwe · December 14, 2012, 06:28:05 PM

$:-\$ 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. $:-\$

Denis · December 14, 2012, 08:09:03 PM

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.

eb2 · December 15, 2012, 12:35:06 AM

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.