C&R Licenses and Sporterizing M44's
A couple of comments here:
You CAN sell firearms purchased with a C&R license, but only "for the purposes of improving the collection." So if you are a collector with a C&R license and buy a new M44, then sell your old one, that's legitimate because supposedly the new one was an improvement over the old one. Secondly, while you can sell your C&R firearm for what you have in it, plus whatever market appreciation has occurred, you cannot make more of a profit out of it than that. If there hasn't been market appreciation (the M44's have actually DROPPED in price over the past three years), then you can charge something for your time cleaning it up, headspacing it, and so on -- but not too much. Twenty-five dollars is a reasonable amount and to keep the BATF happy be ready to show how you spent that money on your firearm collection.
BUT if you use your C&R license to buy something INTENDED to be sold to someone else, and especially if you sell it for a 20% or better markup ... you may be in deep doo-doo.
Instead of trying to find a C&R license holder to buy something for you, get your own C&R license. It costs you all of $30.00 for three years -- TEN DOLLARS A YEAR -- plus filling out the application which you can print out from the BATF website. Then, there IS a little bit of paperwork, but it's not bad. Just buy a bound record book and fill in a line for each purchase.
For that you gain the ability to order C&R firearms from wholesalers at near wholesale price. One good rifle and the $30.00 is nothing. Of course, it gets addictive: I've had my license for about five years now, and got it so I could get an EG Makarov. I've gone from "having no need for a rifle" to owning seven of them -- and I am a piker. Most collectors won't consider you a collector until you hit 100 or more!
About M44's and Mosins in general: they are exceedingly accurate rifles. The Finn M39's are arguably the most accurate general issue military rifle ever. The bolt and action design is extremely simple and rugged -- the Russians built these to withstand use by totally uneducated peasants. Finally, you may want to do what I did for a fun project: Take an M44 -- not collector grade, but one of the cheapos currently sold by SOG (and I bought mine when "cheapo" meant $59.95!). Get it headspaced, check the bore, and try it out. If if seems like a pretty good gun, make a sporter out of it by:
1) Remove the bayonet by unscrewing the bolt holding it in. Now some people say you can use a punch to remove the pins and with heat remove the bayonet mount, but I couldn't even get the pins to budge. So I took a hacksaw to the ears of the bayonet, then used bands of emery paper to smooth it down into a ring. Finally, I reblued it with cold blue. But once you do it, the rifle will shoot way high using the iron sights. Sand down the groove in the stock for the bayonet and refinish the stock (I used potassium permaganate and oil to make my stock look like a little brother to a Sako M39.)
2) Get one of Darrell's scope mounts mentioned above. Since he handmakes them, you may have to wait a few months.
3) Get one of the scopes mentioned above from CDNN Investments (they have great service and seem to have the lowest prices around).
4) Get a nice leather lace-on recoil pad. Without a recoil pad, these beasts with turn your shoulder black and blue within 50 rounds.
5) Finally, spend $35.00 and get the muzzle brake from Pacific Canvas and Leather.
With all that, my M44 has the same perceived recoil as an SKS. It becomes very comfortable to shoot for extended periods of time. Of course, by the time you're done, you'll have more than $200.00 in the gun and find it just about impossible to sell. But if it shoots like mine, it's a keeper, anyhow.
