What if you found a class III firearm?

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What if you were cleaning out the attic of a recently passed away uncle or grandfather. And you found a war trophy say a German MP-40 or a Thomson 45.
Or an full auto AK-47 for that matter.
I would add it to my collection. And shoot it in the backyard. Just like any of my other rifles.
 
The people who actually use these guns to kill innocensts seem to have access to them no matter what the law says. So why can't we have them to shoot in our backyards again?
 
This happened to me while helping to clean out a family members things following a death. Turns out the item was NFA registered, but no one knew it existed. I figured it was contraband, but it turned out ok in the end. Not sure what we would have done if it was contraband. Thank goodness we didn't have to make that call. We were able to get the item sold to another family member for the $5 C&R fee.
 
From ATF Website:

(M9) What should a person do if he or she comes into possession of an unregistered NFA firearm?

Contact the nearest ATF office immediately.

Just play dumbass. Turn it in. Honestly, say you saw it in the street, thought it was a toy. Whoops, it's a heavy. It's REAL? wow. No one get any bright ideas. Keep your asses out of jail. My $0.02. :scrutiny:

I don't agree with NFA laws, but the HELL I'll go to prison over a felony posession charge. If I want an NFA gun, I'll BUY one.
 
I'm not turning it in. Especially if its a historical weapon, that would just kill me inside. Keep it tucked away, don't brag about it, and NEVER fire it unless you happen to live in wyoming with no neighbors for miles. I know of some guys in the air force who picked up AKs from afghanistan because they thought they were cool. I doubt they know the severity of the law if caught with them stateside. Funny thing is one of the guys knows very little about guns and said he was never going to use it and it was offered for sale to a friend(also in the military) for $300. :uhoh:
 
Good point on the war relics thing. Who wants to bet that there'll be an amnesty if a bunch of Iraq war vets get arrested for possesion? I'd be damned if ANY politician would want to be known as the one who let a vetern of the War on Terror rot in prison for bringing back a war trophy.
 
The problem as I see it is with the system as it is no matter what you do you'll have trouble.

Either way you will most likely get jail time, a huge fine and possibly even a Felony Conviction.

It's a sad thing that things have gotten this bad.
 
Clean it and put it in the safe. Shoot it on the weekends at the back of the farm. No way in hell would I turn it in. Never.
My thoughts exactly.

The problem as I see it is with the system as it is no matter what you do you'll have trouble.
Well, no one ever said freedom was free.
 
I'll take that bet

Who wants to bet that there'll be an amnesty if a bunch of Iraq war vets get arrested for possesion?

A bunch of vets from the current conflict are serving time
for smuggling AK's
 
Unfortunately our government trusts us soldiers a lot less than civilians. No carry on post, weapons registeration, require to store unloaded and locked. Limited free speech, warrantless searches of off post homes, double jeopardy, etc, etc, etc... It's a shame that to defend the Constitution I don't get most of it's benefits.

GBOT, Molon Labe!
 
No carry on post, weapons registeration, require to store unloaded and locked. Limited free speech, warrantless searches of off post homes, double jeopardy,

In Switzerland, all citizens serving in their military, which is all able-bodied men of certain ages, keep an SMG at home.

I guess they trust their people more. What are you supposed to do if a jihad nut decides to bust into a stateside base and go postal?
 
What would we do? We would wait in line outside the arms room with our weapons cards in our hands. :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:
I've got more ammo in my closet than is in my battery's arms room.

But it's ok, you have to have a DL, insurance and reg. to get past the gate guards and their M9s. :banghead: They even glance at military IDs, don't really need to look at the person holding it or anyone else in the car, right? :cuss: And every now and then they look at random vehicles, of course they just look at stuff they don't actually inspect. Nobody would ever hide anything under or behind something :banghead:
 
I dont mean to get too far off topic but I was driving my truck through the airport (parking garage) and I had to stop at a check point. He asked if he could inspect in the back. I said you want me to get out to look behind the seat?!:confused: He said "No, I need permission to look in the back. The bed area." :what: hahaha
 
About 16 yrs ago before i knew what i know now i was purchasing a thompson M1A1 from a army vet who had carryed it with him thru his career in korea grenada and nam.he told me it was registered so i agreed to buy it from him .I filled out the form 4 with the serial # next thing ATF calls me and asks where the gun is that it is not registered.I had posession of it called this guy up got the papers off him he had the papers from the military where he brought it back to the US from tan hut air base he thought that they were resistration papers. ATF says they are sending out agents to pick up the gun .I immediatly turned on my mig welder and went to work on the gun ,welded up the bolt to barrel end of the barrel filled up with weld. Atf gets there i give them the gun he was mad he either wanted to keep it or lock me up but couldnt due to the gun being welded.I didn't remember what i did with the magazine and got calls from him for weeks after asking for the mag .i told him if he needed one so bad i would go buy one and send it to him. I was out 1000.00 on that deal could have been worse .
 
In all honesty if I found the previous home owners jerry rigged full auto Tec-9 under the workbench in the garage into the river it goes.

Sounds like a good place for the semi-auto tec9 as well.

A bunch of vets from the current conflict are serving time
for smuggling AK's

Including (gasp) some officers. Now that's an interesting switch when it
comes to the lack of prosecution of officers at Abu Ghraib. Kind of shows
you what the feds are really more concerned about, doesn't it?!
 
I have zero interest in owning a full-auto, mainly for financial reasons.

I have next to zero chance of being in this situation.

But this thread DOES depress - nay, sicken me! :mad: The fact that law-abiding citizens, acting in good faith, are prosecuted as criminals for trying...no, DOING the right thing...! :fire: :fire: :fire: :cuss:

And thank God for this place, and this topic....because if I were in a similar situation before, I'd probably do the same thing in my ignorance and walk right to the sheriff's office and ask him "what now?"

Then again, my sheriff is a pretty decent guy as far as I know...he might not take the Jack-Booted Thug route on me. And if throwing the book at someone for trying to take a gun off the street isn't "Jack-Booted Thuggery," I don't know what is! :mad: (because before this topic, I was giving serious thought to the crowd that says the "JBT" is a figment of our imagination... )

So anyway...if I moved in somewhere and found a rusty old junker...I'd pay a lawyer to sweat the details for me.

If I DID find a family heirloom somehow...I would quite probably take a different route.
 
The fact that law-abiding citizens, acting in good faith, are prosecuted as criminals for trying...no, DOING the right thing...!

Bureaucracies driven by numbers games loose sight of the necessary humanity governments must possess to properly serve 'the people'. Think about it, what do we hear from even those politicians who support 2A concerns? "Well, I understand you have concerns about the BATFExyz, but according to their reports they took thousands of illegal weapons off the streets last year..."

That robotic nonsense drilled into our leaders and our citizens is a breeding ground for abuse. Who cares if you're just a good citizen turning in an illegal weapon? If their funding comes from arrest numbers and such, they will indeed arrest you. Many years ago our government and corporations forgot that the whole point of this experiment is life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Greed and power creep in, the institutions no longer exist as a champion of those three fundamental and indisputable requirements to live as humans, rather these institutions only champion themselves. It's not a question of good and evil, rather a question of the sad endgame of all large organizations.

Edited to add this little story:

When I was working on my MBA, I worked as a graduate assistant for our local "Small Business Development Center". These are little .gov offices that are there to help small businesses do research, find funding, etc. These folks record every business that comes in their door, even if to just use the library for research. Anything good that happens to these businesses will go in to the SBDC's annual report -- "we helped create thousands of jobs, thousands in sales, blah blah" when basically all they do is operate a library. In my state this place is run by an ex high-school principal who just happens to be married to the right .gov fellow. Their two largest budgetary line items? Executive salaries, and their annual "trade show". What's the "trade show"? Well, that's when they set up booths at the state capital, buy presents for the state legislators, and try and convince them to increase the SBDC's funding. What a waste. But they've got the numbers that show they're doing a "good job". It's disgusting. And they are completely enamoured with their own existence and worth....the smugness of an ATF office must be hideous, since on top of that self-perpetuating "we're doing a great job" is the importance of saving all those children from all those machine guns...
 
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Are there any documented cases of people having found these DEWATS and, wanting to do the "safe" thing, contacted the authorities, only to be prosecuted-- or even charged?

Mens rea plays a huge part in this type of legal scenario, and it is extremely difficult to prove mens rea, especially if you really had no idea of what was in your possession. I don't know, I think you guys are mostly scaring yourselves.

Someone do the following test. Call up a local BATFE office, and ask them, "What if I found an old war trophy in my uncle's house, and I didn't want it. What should I do? I don't want to get in trouble."

What do you think the BATFE is going to actually say? "Well, Mr. So-and-so, since you found it, you are automatically in trouble. Don't hand it in, because we will arrest you. Don't keep it, because you will have commited a felony, and we will really arrest you."

Seriously.

Edited to add: If the BATFE is sooo interested in getting these guns out of the hands of citizens-- or is sooo interested in keeping them for themselves-- why in the world would they make it fearful for finders of such items to hand them in and get them off the street in the first place?

There is no logic to your assumptions.
 
There is another option, called a Private Bill, which is a Federal piece of Legislation that is used for the exact limits of what it is said to be. In other words, It is a Federal Law that is passed to apply to ONE specific person/action/event and is not considered precedent under a Court but is accepted as Law. This is often done with regards to people who get caught in a federal law trap where in they are NOT breaking the law, but the law was written in such a way as to make them criminals. Hard to explain but if you Google Private Bill legislation you can find some of them. These are used to add people to lists of benefactors of Laws that somehow left them off by mistake, to clear people of infractions that they own a house in a land that becomes national park/monument and need to repair a road that is on an easemant that is not part of the enabling Legislation.

But I know of two cases of WW2 war trophies being vetted in as registered weapons based on either lack of knowledge about the Amnesty or what the weapon was. One was a gun brought home by a soldier who became a missionary and was out of the country for years at a time, at his passing, his grandson went to his state's senator and got a private bill passed that papered the gun by saying his granddad being out of the country had no knowledge of the illegality of the weapon. The other was a gun brought back and the owner died in the fifties and his widow just kept the hubby's footlocker locked up in the attic until she passed. Again the owner's Heir was able to convince his State senator that there was no intent and no possible way for the Widow to know what was in the footlocker.


"A private bill provides benefits to specified individuals (including corporate bodies). Individuals sometimes request relief through private legislation when administrative or legal remedies are exhausted. Many private bills deal with immigration–granting citizenship or permanent residency. Private bills may also be introduced for individuals who have claims against the government, veterans benefits claims, claims for military decorations, or taxation problems. The title of a private bill usually begins with the phrase, "For the relief of. . . ." If a private bill is passed in identical form by both houses of Congress and is signed by the President, it becomes a private law." This is from the US senates own webpage.

A side piece. As Private Bills are granted for one or very few peoples benefit and CAN often be of or about contentious issues, very rarely are they debated or challenged. In the Senate, they are regarded as a Gentlemans agreement, the Senator is in fact backing the legislation with their own personal imprateur or reputation and thus they almost always pass without objection. They are not rare nor are they out of the ordinary to have such bills covering such things. I know of another Private Bill that allowed a family that inherited a Plains Indian headdress to actually possess it in the family store as otherwise it was a federal offense due the the headdresss containing Eagle feathers.

If you find what can be considered a good find war trophy, approaching a Law Maker with the desire for a private bill registration might very well be your best bet. Some will not touch it. Some are more than willing. How is usually written is that the law does not mention the firearm at all, but instead declares for the relief of john doe, heir of john henry doe. that due to such issues as we see fit, the constraints of law HR XXXX are singularly waived for the period of X to Y, . signed Pres.

what this does is allow the named party to go to the ATF and say, I want to register this as a amnesty weapon, and the law of the USA says I can.

Here is a link to just a list of PB's passed in 1993 just to show the form
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/?&Db=d103&querybd=@FIELD(FLD001+@4(Private+legislation))


you know when you here that "by a special Act of Congress, John Doe was granted rights to his families Land." or "by a special Act of Congress, John Doe was granted Citizenship to the USA for his service to america" those are private bill legislations.


I do not have a count, but at some time, I was pretty sure there were MANY hundreds in a year that went thru and they were usually bulk packed together to pass without objections.
 
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