"Does the rifle come with the house?"

[cordex]

Recently I've been looking for a home in west-central Indiana and went out with a realtor this morning to look at a house on lake Patton, near Martinsville. I don't mind doing some work on a house to fix it up, but this was a little far gone. It would be a good project home if I had a huge amount of time and money to invest in it, but alas I don't. Apparently the couple who owned it as a weekend retreat were no longer able to come down and enjoy it (and work on it) due to illness. The realtor mentioned that everything currently in the home came with it which included some furniture, appliances and decorations.

As we went into the basement, I noticed a rifle with a badly broken stock sprawled on the floor by the wall. It was an old, bolt-action Savage in .30-30. Looking up at the realtor who was still making her way down the treacherous steps, I ask "Does the rifle come with the house?"

She was surprised (and apparently a bit uncomfortable), but allowed that since everything in the home was included, the rifle would be included as well. In addition to the the Savage, we turned up an ancient bolt-action 12 gauge so rusted that no markings could be identified. Additionally, there were 4 or 5 shells for it laying inside a cinder-block nearby.

I can only hope that the home I end up buying comes with a few guns, but I'd prefer that they're in better working order.

 

[Big_R]

Strange as it may be, when both my and my wife'sgrandparents bought their farmplaces in MN, they each came with a double barrel shotgun left by the previous owners. My grandparents found a crescent arms hammerless, and my wife's grandparents found a crescent arms with hammers (one of which was broken). I have them both now.

Ryan

 

[winstonsmith]

I found a rusted up 1911 mag underneath a floorboard in my closet. Along with some adult magazines, the latest one dated 1986

 

[444]

I once sold a travel trailer, and left a Ruger 77 in .30-06 in it.
I got a call about a year later from the buyer who had some plumbing problems, removed the bed and found my rifle under it. He allowed me to come and get it.
I put it there while hunting and evidently it slid from view. I thought someone stole it.

 

[JJohnston015]

I was looking at apartments in Fresno, California a while back. One landlady told me, before we went in, that the previous tenant had left a shotgun in the apartment, and that she was too afraid to even handle it. It turned out to be one of those really cheap Daisy lever action BB guns with the sheet metal tube false barrel/magazine, with the actual barrel/central core removed. She became visibly tense when I crossed the room and picked it up. I explained it to her, and she seemed to relax a little, but she still refused to have anything to do with it, even just putting it in the dumpster. Irrational.

 

[Zach S]

I remember an older co-worker of mine looking at a house for rent (maybe RTO?) some time ago, not by a realtor but the owner. Then he hears the owner say "Do you own any firearms?" to which he lied, and said No. the owner replied with something like "Well, you should, and if you decide to buy any, theres a gunsafe in the basement cemented into the floor. Someone might be able to change the combination for ya should you decide to use."

Dunno whatever came of that house, he got pissed and quit his job shortly after and I havent seen him since.

 

[4v50 Gary]

Every now and then you read about someone who buys an old house or farm and there in the rafters is an old but well presevered flintlock rifle. But that kinda stuff is more borne of legend and it never happens to me.

 

[Zundfolge]

Last December we bought a house built in 1910 ... I've been through every nook and cranny of the house looking for stuff left by previous owners ... no such luck for me (but thats par for the course)

 

[SkySlash]

I found a fake leg in the attic of my parents current house. It was a very old style, all wood, painetd and carved leg with very deteriorated leather straps at the thigh level.

I'd say it was at least 100-150 years old.

We asked the previous owners about it, and they had no idea it was there, or where it could have come from. Odd part was that they built the house in the 60's...

-SS

 

[Balog]

A few years back my sisters rented a house. I was cleaning out the fireplace and found a fancy-dan crack pipe. No guns tho

 

[AJ Dual]

My grandparents moved into a new house last year. (Grandpa couldn't stand the retirment community, and the other female residents were getting downright predatory over him, and yes, Grandma is alive too... )

It was a small 1940's ranch/rambler, and one of my uncles who was helping them move in found an old single barrel hammerless shotgun. Looks like it's from about the 1910's. No name or manufacturer, just a model or serial number stamped under the splinter forend. Probably a worthless no-name Belgian import. Seems to be in working condition and has little rust, just even browinging all over the metal.

Makes a nice wall hanger for the fireplace.

 

[Larry Ashcraft]

One of my customers told me a couple weeks ago that he was re-wiring his grandmother's house in Fowler, Colorado. When he was digging through the insulation in the attic, he found three 1873 Winchester barreled actions.

His grandfather had been a gunsmith and blacksmith. He went out to the shop and found enough parts to put the guns back together and took the parts to a professor at Trinidad State Junior College. The professor built him one nice rifle in exchange for the other two parts guns.

 

[Jonesy9]

working cleaning air ducts while in college, a co worker and i found an old flintlock pistol hidden under floor boards in the attic of a house. the house was circa 1700 in the old part of Cambridge. we scoured the rest of the place for an original copy od the Dec of Independence or other colonial treasure but only came up with some coins from the 1800's.

 

[mattk]

About 20 years ago, on an Army Post one of my neighbors found a Thompson stashed in one of the crawl spaces in his quarters. The Army wouldnt let him keep it though.

 

[Bill Hook]

My mother's father found a pretty nice 1911 in the attic of their house, but that would've been almost 50 years ago from my guess. Probably worth some money now, but her mother made him sell it - "for the children." Instead, his only gun was a .32 short H&R top-break that he took when he went on business to Cleveland.

 

[Airboss]

Parker Invincible

The only known example of the Parker Invincble Shotgun was found in a House in N.J.by a fellow that had just bought the house, it was a 16ga There were only two Invincbles ever made.SN500000 and 500001
I held this gun in my hands At a gun show in Houston Texas in 1971 or 1972 at the time the gun was for sale for $200000 I think.The story I heard was that the guy that found it sold it for $4500.and thought he had put one over on someone.I wonder what that 16ga would sell for now.

 

[Mark Tyson]

A friend of mine found a shiny palm-sized .22 pistol once in an old cabin he bought. I don't remember what make/model.

 

[zahc]

My grandfather had some renters run out on him and leave a TC muzzleloader behind, which he gave to me.

 

[cordex]

FYI, a picture of the Savage that I snapped quickly (sorry for the poor composition - I didn't take much time on it.)

 

[cordex]

And the rusted 12 gauge.

 

[Chipperman]

Yikes! I wonder what happened to the Savage.

 

[Trebor]

My dad found a U.S. Navy Model 1917 Boarding Cutless in the storage shed behind the house a year or so after he moved in. It's the last Cutlass issued by the U.S. Military. He gave it to me and I still wear it to reenactments from time to time. It was also my primary home defense weapon for a brief period of time when I was on my own and before I owned any firearms.

 

[Kamicosmos]

I used to work field surveys. Always discovering old farm houses...some were eerily full of stuff...funiture, clothes, dishes, etc.

Best one was a guy bought couple hundred acres way out in the boonies to hunt on.

There was an old two story farmhouse in a clump of trees up on this ridge. In the living room, the fireplace looked like it was an old log cabin. This place was deserted in the '30s.

Turns out, that fireplace was part of a log cabin built by confederate troops! After the war, one of them returned to build the farm house up around the cabin. The new owner found several civil war muskets and confederate uniforms in a chest, lots of books and newspapers from the late 1800's early 1900's.

Guy made out good, eh? I was so jealous doing the lot split. Whole hill top was marked as a Historic Monument/Civil War area. They found some war graves, old rail road tracks, a literal treasure trove of Missouri Civil War history. A minor skirmish was fought there.

 

[Sunray]

Not really, but one never knows. A guy I used to shoot with found an Inglis HP hidden away when he moved in. Long ago,. He did the right thing and talked to the local constabulary. Long story short, it was his introduction to shooting.
The honourable thing to do is to try and find out if the previous owners want them back. Honour is as honour does.

 

[jimpeel]

This same question came up at TFL at What happens if you FIND a gun?

This is what I posted at that time.

When I was about eight years old (1955), I found a broomhandle Mauser in the crawlspace of an apartment house in Burbank, CA. I didn't know it was one when I found it but the magazine was forward of the trigger guard so it is obvious what it was now. I actually found the canvas belt and holster at first and thought "Cool" until I moved it and found the holster was occupied. The firearm was falling out of the holster so I pushed it back in using my thumb and forefinger. I then picked the whole mess up and, holding it at arms length and pointing at the ground, I walked about 200 feet home. Here's where it gets a bit strange and my sister still talks about this.

I went into my apartment, a duplex we lived in the back, and told my mom "Look what I found." Now my mom always talked about "Aunt Helen" who, preparing to go hunting one morning, placed a shotgun in the back of her station wagon with the muzzle facing her. It went off, shooting her in the stomach, and killing her nearly instantly. My mom was afraid of guns of all types and wanted nothing to do with them. AND HOW!

Her reply to my find was "Get it out of here! Go find who it belongs to but get it out of here!"

Sooooo, off I go, with a firearm of unknown parentage (likely a war souvenier) and unknown condition. After all, I had not handled the thing other than to push it back in the holster for transportation home.

I saw a guy named Russ Sargent who, at the time, was about eighteen-years-old in his garage so I simply walked up and said "Is this yours? I found it under a house."

"Hey, I've been looking for that." was the reply, and he took it from me and to this day I have no knowledge of what happened to it or to Russ Sargent.

For those who want to say how stupid my mom was, it's okay. It was a stupid move on her part. My sister still tells that story with the "Can you imagine -- she sends this eight-year-old out on the street with a loaded gun!". In her mind it was loaded although no one really knows except Russ Sargent.

About ten years ago, I came wide awake one night and had been dreaming about that incident. I don't know why. I have had people tell me "Maybe something happened to Russ or the gun was used for a bad thing." I don't believe in such things but I also don't know why I dreamt of it after ~37 years.