Lady fuckin crushed a moon rock
Literally !forgottenweapons@lemmy.world
Maybe irrelevant but, is $40k a lot for a gun? I’m aware that there are many cheaper, but are there others in this range?
This isn’t a good example of “how much does a gun cost” because it’s a historical relic. It’s also fully automatic which makes it more difficult to legally own.
It’s way too much. The value in this case is so high because it’s an old historic firearm.
With modern production capabilities you can buy brand new rifles for ~1000€ or handguns for a couple or 100€s. They just shoot as straight, if not better. Modern assault rifles cost around 1500-5000€s the last time I checked. Without full auto mode though, because they are illegal for civilians here in Germany (no civilian needs an assault rifle IMO). But technically/price wise I imagine the difference to be negligible between the two variants.
But some weapons from that period were masterpieces. Back then they had more or less only manually operated machines that needed a lot of experience and skill. A Mauser 98 for example can still be bought as a new weapon today. A century old design built today costs 10000€ upwards.
There’s also the fact that it’s a pre-1986 machine gun. Machine guns manufactured after that period are illegal to own as an unlicensed civilian in the US. The fact that it’s a legal machine gun adds a few zeros to the overall value. Beaten up M16s receivers (the serialized bit of an AR-15) can go for over $10000 alone and you still need to build the rest of the gun on that receiver. All of that money just to have a legal machine gun in the US
TY for this context. I guess compared to a high end kitted out rifle, it’s like 5x the cost or more, and mostly because of the age of this piece
Semi-automatic rifles are also illegal for civilians in Germany. You can buy a hunting rifle, if you have a license, but those are bolt action.
That’s not correct. You can just walk into a shop, show some papers, pay ~3,5k€ and buy a H&K MR308 or some other semi auto rifle if you like.
But getting this privilege costs quite a bit of work and money: You have to go to a hunting school, learn a lot of stuff, prove that you’ve really learned everything, show you are able to use weapons in a safe manner, prove your ability to shoot etc. Also you get screened by the police on a regular basis. And if you ever get in serious trouble with the law the chances are high you’ll lose everything.
So it’s not like in other countries, that basically having at least one finger is enough to operate a Gatling gun in your backyard 😉
Yes. You can buy handguns for a couple of hundred dollars. For a few thousand you are able to buy much larger, more capable weapons like modern assault rifles or designated marksman rifles/sniper rifles. You could buy a small arsenal for 40k.
Are the police legally allowed to give it to a museum, or do they have to destroy it?
As per policy it will be “destroyed” by a company owned by a family member of the chief. In unrelated news, that company also found a rare WWII rifle to sell.
Are you implying that laws matter to the police?
They “agreed to allow the woman to sell it”, as per the 2012 Daily Mail article screenshotted above.
Currently they have to destroy it. The museums want this to change, for obvious reasons.
Depends on the gun buyback program. Most have a clause for rare and historic finds to be donated.
People who give up historic firearms for destruction instead of finding a buyer that will allow the public to experience them in a safe manner suck.
You can make a new MP44 with a lot of effort, you can’t make a new MP44 with a history that highlights the efforts and accomplishments of a man who grew up dirt poor and went to Europe to bring some freedom to a family that still has photos of him after he fought for 36 hours to keep a failed painter with a dumb mustache from feeling any sense of contentment and all he got was spicy nostalgia and a gun his wife would later go on to use to spit on his memory all for the low price of a $150 gift card to HEB.
TBH it’s a Nazi German Rifle, fuck em. It’s not like anything new can be learned from this evil relic.
Why do you assume everybody would know the value of a random knick knack they have lying around?
Firstly its an Stg44, secondly her father brought it back not her husband, thirdly it wasnt lovingly maintained in a collection it was just an old gun so poorly kept it was inoperable unsecured sitting in his closet, it looked like a rusty old piece of shit. Fourthly, the police recognised that it wasnt just some bangers .38 hipoint, took the gun for safe keeping and are helping the owner sell it legally as a collectable.
The woman did the right thing, an unsafely kept old gun is just that, historical provenance be damned.
It’s either unsafe or it’s operable.
Also, bangers use 22’s because despite popular beliefs, they’re effective and quieter.
It’s either unsafe or it’s operable
An operable firearm is inherently unsafe, they fling lead at high speeds, that’s kinda the whole point
I was moreso speaking in the context of it wearing down over time like that, but I didn’t really articulate that
In the aviation world we say airworthy, unairworthy, and cannot possibly fly. There’s a difference between “the fuel gauge is broken” and “the left wing is missing.”
All guns are unsafe until you have checked and cleared them. Im guessing the lady who didnt know what the hell she had didnt know how to release the magazine or check the chamber.
It can be both. A bomb that was a dud can still eventually explode. Just not when you wanted it to.
Idk man. The odds don’t work like that. You ever seen a firearm someone has taken care of malfunction? Odds are it won’t fire. Leave it somewhere for almost a century unkept? It’s done.
Shit randomly malfunctions all the time. Never assume that a gun is totally safe just because you maintain it.
But they both fire the same? Idk, I live somewhere where not everyone can get a gun.
But I mean, you cannot see on the weapon if the owner had a mustache or not? It could also just be a weapon that was never used and was only rotting in the basement?
The Stg44 was produced from 1944 by the german army in ww2. So very late in the war, very few of them (comparatively to most ww2 guns) were made and as you can imagine, guns from the “losing side” tend to be destroyed. They were pretty much the first “assault rifle” and the AK47 adapted a lot from it. It was found in Conneticut so it was almost definitely brought home from WW2 by a US soldier, it was almost certainly used in anger.
Undoubtably its worth preserving as a very rare example of something of historical significance, but I dont blame someone for not recognising it as such.
