I was in a public museum and noticed they had rifles like M16's, AK47's , M14's, BAR's and other types

have all of them been permanently made into non firing displays that can never fire again? they dont appear to have cut receivers.

blood doesnt flow in museum alleys ?

Were they restorable?

My understanding is a lot of museum weapons get the bolts welded closed inside the receiver. Others have crucial componets (firing pins) removed and stored or thrown away.

I toured the pentagon last fall. I had to ask. Only the firing pins have been removed in the display firearms that they have.

I was gonna guess chamber welded/sealed shut inside and probably mods to the bolt/firing pin.  Probably 'restorable' on guns for which parts are available, but pointless since you could construct one from said parts with greater ease(and its just as illegal).  


Shame a lot of older type guns probably are not able to be restored, then again it's not like anyone was ever going to get permission to do so anyway.

It's still a better fate than what the ATF considers "non-functional"

Fuckin A. I could have done without seeing that.



 

yeah, me too.

Things welded shut, things removed...


...at least here in the US.


At a museum I visited in Austria, there was absolutely no indication of any type of "deactivation" whatsoever. That included everything from small arms to artillery. A Flak 88 on its AA mount didn't appear to be missing any components whatsoever, and the breech was open so that visitors could look through the gun. Could it be possible that certain internal components were missing from these pieces? Yes, it's possible. But it still is in stark contrast to much of what I have seen on display in the US, where often there are externally-visible indications of "deactivation", such as obviously missing parts and visible welds over openings or what should be moving parts.


It's really quite ridiculous to deactivate the large pieces like artillery. It accomplishes nothing but destruction and defacement of history. Arguments as to criminal use of stolen weapons cannot be reasonably applied to such ordnance, given that one would still have to source the ammunition even after undertaking the immense task of stealing a rather large piece of equipment from a museum. I don't know if you've checked around, but I don't exactly see many sources of 8.8cm flak shells around these days.

I believe West Point's museum's weapons are are very functional.  Their history depatment also has quite an arsenal which is very functional, and they get most of their guns from the museum I believe.  Considering the uniqueness of many of their weapons on display I can't see them harming them in any way. (Except for the M65 nuclear recoiless rifle maybe)

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1126866021730#!/pages/West-Point-NY/West-Point-Museum/126297960789?v=app_2392950137

Before my brothers Iraq deployment (2007-2008) he actually tried to get an M60 our of the 101st Museum to exchange for his platoon's broken M60 (spare parts were impossible to get due to rarity or idiots im not sure).  This was a no-go but they got all the 240s they could handle once they got to Iraq.



This surprised the fuck out of me though because I was in the infantry at the time and never saw an M-60 even in basic training.  He was in a line infantry unit too (3-187)

Im sure John Spartan could vouch that they are fully functional.

One thing you'll notice if you travel in a lot of vintage weapon circles is that the stuff one finds in museums is often clapped out crap anyway.

When the Rakkasans relieved my unit in place in 2006 they had some extra M-60s that got used for perimeter defense. I was told this was because Humvees for patrol had priority for M240s.