Yes........Most AA guns are full auto..and as such come under regs of the
NFA and are controlled by the BATF. Remocal of the breech is common as well
as cutting a hole in the barrel of a size equal to that of the bore.
As far as the ATF, It does sound like overkill on their part. They could
have allowed the owner of the gun to demil it....the regs are veryspecific
about this. It would have saved the expense of the gunsmith. I regularly
demil machineguns and send a written notice to them of the demil. I also
keep the demil parts here to allow a ATF agent to view them to confirm the
destruction.
A vintage gun like this would have remained unmolested had a museum
imported it.
Jon
At 09:01 PM 2/17/01 -0600, you wrote:
>Friend of mine imported from Norway a trailer mount 40MM anti-aircraft
>rifle -- Had DOD, State Dept, OK. when it arrived the ATF impounded it as
>an automatic rifle. -- We are talking about a several thousand pound trailer
>mount weapon, in perfect condition with all the accessories that goes with
>it.
>
>They were going to destroy it. He posted bond and was able to save it from
>smelter, had to pay ATF's choice of gunsmith to come and take breech out and
>cut chunk out of the solid block of steel and take to ATF for safe-keeping.
>This involved us as taxpayers paying expenses of 6 ATF people to fly here
>from Washington, DC about 1000 miles, nest day rent car - 4 cars-, plus fee
>of gunsmith that they brought with them-, drive 80 miles from airport to
>where the piece was, take all day to do the work and then next day fly back
>to DC, with hunk of steel. This was one of a very few Anti-aircraft guns to
>survive scrappers at end of war - was a big hassle to keep them from cutting
>gun barrel in three pieces.
>>
>
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Mar 05 2001 - 07:58:32 PST