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Posted: 3/10/2008 4:00:59 PM EDT
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Was it possible to bring back full auto weapons in the WW2-Korea time frame if returning from combat? If so are these transferable now? ETA I have a question...When was this amnesty period? WHen were MGs required to be registered? Weren't they registered when they came into the country? |
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Or surrendered to law enforcement or abandoned to ATF. I believe ATF also allows them to be Form 10'd to federally approved museums. |
Yes. However, many people would rather keep a family heirloom than turn it in. I know what I would do. |
Are they supposed to be destroyed Immediately or just when the owner dies since they cannot be transferred? |
Possession of an unregistered NFA device, like a machine gun, is a federal felony punishable by ten years in a federal prison and a $250,000 fine. That "possession" begins the minute you take control of an item, and the statute of limitations is three years. So regardless of whether he is elderly and/or the veteran who brought it back from the war, the owner is subject to federal felony prosecution, and his heirs are until three years after the minute they dispose of the unregistered contraband MG. |
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or lost in a boating accident or stuffed away in a long forgotten trunk |
ten years in jail
No but it does occasionally happen Grandpa dies While cleaning out his attic you come across a "war trophy" I would imagine that as long as you turned it in to ATF, nothing would come out of it |
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Our Sheriffs department has a few bringbacks that were turned in by family members. Unfortunately all unregistered. They have probably the nicest M1 Thompson and MP34 Ive ever seen. Thankfully, we've managed to talk the department into keeping them so they atleast wont be destroyed. |
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I think once the county gets a bigger museum than its current facility allows, they'll be displayed along with alll the other MGs in the county's inventory. What gets me is that our museum even has more than a few transferrables in the basement that just collect dust. |
The 1968 amnesty was around November of that year for a period of 30 days. (Not that I was round..maybe someone with more "life experience" than I can comment 
No. The very definition of "amnesty" implies a pardon or forgiveness for a wrongdoing. They were illegally brought back into the US. |
In World Wars I and II, a service member serving in a foreign theater could ask his commanding officer for permission to bring back firearms, including MGs. If the officer agreed to do so, he would sign a War Trophy form giving the serviceman's name and rank, the serial number of the item and a description, and the officer would sign it. That allowed the service member to legally bring it home; once it was here, he was supposed to register it with the feds. First, about 75% of the COs would not sign the War Trophy paperwork. Many GIs brought them home anyway in their duffel bags, but a good 75% of the MGs brought home by returning vets were done illegally. Second, many of the GIs with War Trophy paperwork did not bother to register them once they got home. Through the late 1940s until about the mid-1950s, vets could register their MGs, as long as it was legal where they lived. During that period, even if they had brought them home illegally, the feds would allow them to register the items. That ended in the mid-1950s, and thereafter the no-paperwork bringbacks were contraband, and (as it turned out) the legally papered war trophies were in a gray zone. The National Firearms Act of 1934 was overturned on a technicality in 1968, so NFA registration was incorporated into the then pending Gun Control Act of 1968. When GCA '68 was passed a 30-day amnesty was announced, and all veterans were supposed to bring in their MGs and register them. Some did so; many did not. There has not been another amnesty since 1968, so we are left with two-and-a-half classes of veteran bringback MGs: --Those which were registered before and during the 1968 amnesty, and thus are transferable. --Those which were brought back without signed war trophy paperwork and were not registered prior to 1968 are contraband. --And the "half" of the 2.5 classes are those MGs with war trophy paprwork which were never registered. A few -- and I stress, "few" -- heirs of veterans who discovered MGs that had valid War Trophy paperwork have taken BATFE to court, saying that the written permission from their commanding officers constituted official acknowledgement of the U.S. government. These few heirs have managed, under court order, to get their MGs acknowledged as legal by BATFE and registered today. In most cases, even if the heirs produce valid War Trophy paperwork, BATFE's first response is that they are contraband, and demand they be surrendered for destruction. Only those heirs willing to hire lawyers and fight BATFE in court have won these battles. Given the value of bringback MGs today, it is worth investigating. But you will not prevail without a very savvy, determined (and usually expensive) lawyer. HTH. |
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