sears long guns
As noted above many, many were produced before the requirement to have serial numbers (and I'll bet that most are still in service somewhere...). In the early eighties I ran the property room for my agency for about three years(100 man outfit in south Florida) and had occasion to handle every weapon coming or going... As a matter of routine we ran every weapon's serial to check if it was listed as stolen... Surprise, surprise - I ran the number on an old J.C. Higgins 22, not realizing that it was actually the model number as listed above. On that one number I got at least fifteen hits where one agency or another had entered the model number for a stolen gun thinking it was the serial number. Don't know whether that was ever straightened out, but I sure got an education about weapons and serial numbers while trying to figure out what I had.
I can personally testify that serial numbers on firearms do lead to recoveries of stolen gear - sometimes many years after the initial report.... For any young officer I'd advise a bit of research on any stolen message they find since things may not be what they seem...
