Cool "found gun" story

[hillbilly]

Here's a cool "found gun" story I gleaned at the local gun smith.

I took a gun in for some work, and was chit-chatting when I noticed a really, really rusty and pitted Ruger P90 slide in small white plastic bucket.

I picked it up and asked, "Man, what happened to this Ruger slide?"

The smith told me that it had been found by a local police dive trainer.

In the bottom of that same bucket were all the other parts of that Ruger P90.

The frame was perfect, as anodized aluminum does not rust. The other steel parts were equally rusty.

A police dive trainer had a bunch of cops out on a local stream bank, giving a short lecture about how to look for bodies in a small stream with moderate current.

He was about knee-deep in the creek, looking back to shore, and kept noticing a weird dark object near his feet.

He finally paused in his lecture, and kicked at the object, which flipped over and revealed the butt end of a semi-auotmatic pistol

The dark object was a nylon holster that contained a fully-loaded Ruger P90 with an extra loaded mag in another pocket on the holster.

He picked it up, unloaded it, and after the dive class had the cops run the serial number through the stolen firearms database.

It came up "not stolen."

Theory is some canoeist had said Ruger P90 in a canoe and the canoe flipped over, spilling the pistol into the creek.

So, this guy has a new, albeit rusty Ruger P90, and is shopping for a Ruger P90 parts set. I did a little checking and found one such set of parts on Ebay that was going for about $40 with only a few hours left on the auciton.

I think maybe I'm going to go to that creek and start wading around.

hillbilly

 

[Thumper]

You're in Arkansas, right?

Somewhere in the Ouachita river is a stock Ruger 10/22.



Happy hunting.

 

[Darkside]

Another place to go looking is around boat docks. A friend of mine scuba dives and visits the docks around the lakes regularly. He has found very expensive reels, sunglasses, tackle boxs and all kind of siverware but no firearms yet.

I whoud hate to guess how many times someone wanting to dispose of a firearm has "just threw it off a bridge"

Darkside

 

[Carlos Cabeza]

Big honkin' magnet, you don't have to get wet.

I was wading in the local reservior for OKC when it was very low due to an unseasonable drought and found a half full glock magazine. I spent two hours looking for the rest of it. Never did get to fish much that day.

 

[Skofnung]

Every few years, they drain Lake Talquin, which is a man made lake in my county. When they drain it, you can go out there and find all sorts of good stuff. Fishing lures by the bucket, anchors, prosthetic limbs, you name it...

A buddy of mine found an old nickel plated .32 caliber revolver burried in the dried mud on one of these trips. It was locked up solid and the trigger guard was bent up around the trigger. It looked like a South American import or something. Anyway, it was useless. It looked like it had been there for quite some time.

When he showed it to me, I noticed that it still had live rounds in it. We saw a Sheriffs Deputy up on the hill, so we took it up there, informed him it was still loaded, and gave it to him. Neither of us wanted the useless thing, as it was possibly dangerous due to the live ammo.

I still wonder what the story on that old gun was... I imagine a drunken, late night redneck shootout back in the 60's.

 

[sturmruger]

I need to go to Fleet Farm and buy one of those big magnets. I would love to find a gun or two in the river.

 

[keeperofthehills]

I dont remeber where I heard it, but I remeber hearing a story of finding an old musket in the wall of an old farmhouse that was being torn down.

heard a story about the family farm.

many moons ago there was a man who had became a burden on the family so he went down to the barn, leaned back against a support post and shot himself in the head with a .44 walker. down in the old foundation there are the remains of the barn. there is a post about 16 inches in diameter with what looks alot like a .44 caliber hole in it.
never followed up or checked for a slug. ... let a sleeping dog or legend lie.

just some lore from the hills...

 

[JohnKSa]

A friend of mine served on a jury some years back. Turns out that some guns that the police/sheriff (can't remember which) were supposed to have disposed of turned up back in circulation. Apparently the enterprising LEO in charge of the disposal decided to sell a few of the nicer specimens.

The interesting part is that their disposal method is to dump them in a local lake...

I know which one, but it's a BIG lake.

 

[WhiteKnight]

I've never understood why ANY gun is disposed of. Why don't the LEOs just sell them to generate extra revenue for new body armor, squad cars, radios, laptops, etc.?

 

[Jim K]

Because the press and the anti-gun "political" police chiefs will go ballistic about "putting guns back on the street". The real cops know the bad guys will get guns no matter what, but the anti-gun gangsters want to disarm and control the rest of us. "I don't want to take away hunting guns", says John Kerry. Sure, just everything else, including all handguns and rifles.

Jim

 

[UberPhLuBB]

If this happened in California, the pistol's owner would have been contacted and it would have been returned, as the gun's serial number could have been traced to it's owner's address.

See, gun registration is good for something after all!

 

[Archie]

UberPhLuBB....

You know perfectly well if it happened in California, the pistol's owner would have been contacted and it would have been returned, as the gun's serial number could have been traced to it's owner's address.

Then the gun owner would be fined for littering, polluting the lake, failure to safeguard a gun, and endangering the children. And possibly mopery with intent to commit gapery.

 

[UberPhLuBB]

But at least you'd have the gun back!

 

[aguyindallas]

In reference to getting the gun returned....thats what the NCIC is for.

You can call the police, report a "missing" gun (if you were the guy missing it) and they would contact you whenever it was recovered.

Backdoor stolen gun registration is what it amounts to, but it would prevent anything coming back to you if the gun was used in a crime.

 

[bogie]

The drivers at a place where I used to go canoeing down in the ozarks all had nice tents, sleeping bags, coolers, etc... They said that they'd canoe the "tourist trails" on Monday morning, looking in the known "traps" for lost gear.

 

[pparker]

found guns

A number of years ago a friend found a couple of pistols
in an old house he owned. The house had been in his family since before the civil war and was badly dilapidated. A room added on
sometime after the war collapsed, revealing the original
outside wall. Also revealed was a small hole/compartment
on either side of the fireplace chimney. He reached into
them and found a loaded Manhatten revolver in each. This
was guerilla country (Cass County, Missouri) and the family
was southern. A family member killed early in the war in
a battle some 12 miles away was buried in the yard. Presumably,
someone in the family put those guns there so that they
would be easily accessible should they be caught outside
by federal forces or sympathizers. The guns were in very
good condition, fully functional. They had been sheltered by the wall that fell and were found shortly after it did.

 

[MAURICE]

Bogie, that wouldnt have been the Mulberry River, would it?
It claims a lot of cans of beer every day(uhh, or so I have been told ), so other gear wouldnt surprise me.