Posted: 9/17/2008 9:56:36 AM EDT
| What the worst someone can do if they get your gun's serial # from one of your pics on ARFCOM? |
| Not much. There's a very slim chance someone can report it stolen. And there's a remote possibility it might affect you some time down the road. Probably not. But it can be cleared up without much ado. The odds are extremely low that people cruise gun websites looking for pictures without obscured serial numbers. I think the "dont go swimming 30 minutes after you eat" has more credibility than warning people to block out their serial numbers. What a joke. |
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Serial number blocking has been around forever in the curio and relic gun market and it came about mainly because someone did not want to lose their very valuable Luger, or whatever, to authorities if someone claimed that serial number is the one from their stolen Luger, etc. On most foreign military weapons from WW2 and earlier, the serials would be in blocks of 4 or 5 digits, then after reaching the end of the block (ie: 9999 0r 99999) numbering would begin again but with a letter or symbol either in front of or behind the number, like 0001a. So if some guy who had a Luger serial number 1234b, and it got stolen and he reported the serial as 1234, or the police did not record the letter, another Luger, such as 1234c could be mistaken by authorities as the stolen weapon even though it was an entirely different weapon. In the AR world this is not as much of a problem since each manufacturer has pretty distinct numbers/letters cominations. But it can happen if someone only records and reports the number only. |