My first guns, M44

Well! America seems to be the heaven of the weapon collectors. To inherit military rifles from your grand parents, and use them for civilian purposes (hunting or sport shootings) seems to be a dream in Europe, where the fire arms laws tend to be more and more restrictive.
Here, in Romania, to be a legal owner of a military fire weapon means to have an arms collector license released by the police. This is not an easy task (however it’s possible to get it if somebody is persevering). Authorities make anything to stop or slow this action. Unfortunately, because there are very few fire weapons collectors, and the general hostile attitude of the people, who consider all the fire arms owners as possible criminals or terrorists, the weapons dealers are not interested to trade old military weapons, even if these still exist in the army depots.
Maybe our reenacting shows and demonstrations will convince the authorities and general public to have a different approach towards the historical military weapons.

Kepi,

Depends on where in the US you are. Here in NYC unless you are a movie or sports star, you are praying for a miracle.

First, you have to go and apply, submit 3 letters of character reference, pay a $200 application fee which is non-refundable. This doesn't guarantee you event get to the next phase because the NYPD must first approve your application to go on. After they do the local, state and federal backgrounds checks plus contact the three people as well you are required to pay another $600 before gettting the license which restricts you to only 4 guns. These are good for one year. Each year you have to resubmit a form along with a $125 renewal fee.

In some states only your drivers license is required and the mandatory 7 day federal wait for a background check.

That is why black market arrise! Better try to move in Vermont!

I had no idea NY had such harsh rules.

In Illinois you get your picture taken at any Sporting Goods Store, complete an application, and send it in. About 2 weeks later, after the state verifies if your name matches against any felons lists, you get your FOID card through the mail. FOID = Firearms Owners Identification Document.

Then there's only a 48 hr. waiting period (cool-off period, in case your wife cheated on you and you want to do something rash because you're angry) between the time when you buy a gun and you receive it. In other words, you go to the store, pay for the gun, then come back 48 hours later to pick it up.

What's NY's and Europe's policy on assault rifles? Modified from full auto to semi, of course....

Only harsh in NYC. As for Class III (fully auto) I do know NY and NJ do not allow them. Only in semi-auto only in NY I think.

Even here in PA, which is right next to NY and NJ the gun laws are getting a little
strict.
Full-auto weapons are leagal if you go through the proper papper work but the cost
of owning a Full auto weapon is to much for the common working person.
I can not recall what German ww2 weapon I was talking about with another reenactor,but the price of $10,000 u.s. was mention so that gives you a idear.
Two years ago I bought a ww2 nagant 91/30 at a sporting shop and much too my surprise they held the rifle until a check was ran on my name.
I do recall when you could just go in a buy a rifle and walk out 10 minutes later
with it.
10 years ago at a ww2 reenacting event a reenactor had a ww2 german MG-42 with him in the barracks and wanted too sell it.
It was sold to him as a dewat weapon but when someone look over the machine gun it was just missing 2 or 3 parts from being complete and fully operational!
The weapon was never properly dewated and since it was not register it was not
legal.
I think he wanted $650.00 for it but would had gone down in price to get rid of the
problem.

I do know that the Sturmgewehr 44 was going for $15,000 about 5 years ago. Going to guess more likely to be in the $20,000-$25,000 range now.

As you can see there is already a new addition to the collection: a UMC M69 (Uzina Mecanica Cugir), cal:.22lr, it's a military trainer, used by soldiers before passing to AKM's.

Mine is a post '89 production, from 1993, it's in very good condition, the bore is shining, although the bolt needs a bit of cleaning.

Funny thing about it is that it has a trap door in the butt for the cleaning kit (similar to the one on AKM although the screw driver is uses it's head is too wide and can only be used on one screw), the problem is that the trap door is a perfect and very painful finger trap it didn’t happened to me, yet, but a friend managed to do it and the butt plate needed to be unscrewed releasing the pressure of the spring. !!!!Removing the cleaning kit should never be done with the thumb as the risk is the biggest when using the thumb!!!!



The cleaning kit trap (note the scratches on the head of the screws ).

Nice,very nice! Seems that you`re starting a small colection.

Hallo darius1941,

In America the gun-laws differ from State to State.

But with the continuing rise in gun crime, including kids shooting people at school, it seems to be a standard procedure now to carry out a check with the local Police to see if you have any criminal record etc... etc...
which makes very good sense.

Kevin in Deva.

2 new additions:
Mannlicher m93 rifle shortened to 980mm instead of 1230 it's also missing a lot of parts: rear sight, front sight, both barrel bands and cleaning rod.



113 years old !!!! also in 1894 only 1400 m93 rifles were produced by Steyr (the smallest number in a single year) so theoretically it is the rarest year of production.


The rear sight is missing the leaf and spring.


The bolt together with a 6,5x54r cartridge.


Steyr 1912 pistol it's only missing one grip and the grip screw, otherwise its in a good condition, it's going to look very nice after restoration.



This post has been edited by mihnea on May 31, 2007 05:54 pm