You'll get a nice box like this.
Inside it will be something like thisBUT, you do have to go through some hurdles.
1. Show proof you are a US citizen
2. Show proof you are 18+
The FBI will then use this info run a check on you to make sure you are not a nutcase or criminal.
3. Show proof you won't shoot yourself in the foot (hunter safety course, or being a SEAL)
OR ALTERNATIVELY
3. Be old. Somehow if you have lived to the ripe age of 60 they figure you are smart enough to be careful. They are probably right.
4. Belong to one of a long list of clubs, including some, like the Garand Collectors Association that you can sign up for online, pay $25 and get a monthly magazine.
Sign it in front of a Notary (like Tim) and you are all set.
http://www.odcmp.com/Services/Rifles/m1garand.htm
Prices run from $450 for a beater that still shoots to $2500, I also see they are still selling IBM M-1 carbines as well.
And if you disagree with Dock and think the Mosin-Nagant the Russians were using was a fun one, well, you can get them cheap.
I hear Mills Fleet Farm has them for roughly $120, or for a $25 transfer fee from a local sporting goods shop plus a $20 shipping and handling, you can order them dirt cheap off the net such as http://www.jgsales.com/product_info.php/products_id/1041 but your local shop is still going to make you jump thorugh all the legal hoops, that's why he charges the $25 fee.
UMM....dirt cheap soviet goods, makes me want to drink some vodka and eat some potatoes and starve some peasants...
5 comments:
I did like the feel of the M1 when I went allies. The gun that made me choose Nazis more often than not, however, was the Karabiner 98k. It's probably my favorite weapon in any game. It had awesome power and accuracy, and it just felt good to shoot it.
I appreciate being caught up on the Thursday night dicussions. Was there war-gaming that led to the topic?
I hope dickerdoodles were thoroughly covered as well.
You know us too well, Mike.
yes, Tim was all over the one that had black licourice for pubes.
http://www.aimsurplus.com/acatalog/WWII_German_K98_8mm_Mauser_Rifle.html
Ahh the great mauser. Excellent choice. Custom gun makers are still buying up old mausers just to use a few peices of the action. Once they were quite scares then this huge stockpile of russian captures hit the markets. When they are gone there will be no more.
One of the reasons I enjoy firearms is the direct connection to history. The Garands that are returing are the very ones US servicemen carried in occupied Japan. The Mosin-nagant, who can tell how many battles the given specimine in your hands have seen.
The history of these remaining K98's is quite clear. If you have ever played Call of Duty, or ever saw the movie "Enemy at the Gates" you are familiar with both halves of the story. The Russian army had so few guns it was sending unarmed troops into combat telling them to pick up the rifle from a fallen comrade, although the degree of this was overstated in both the movie and the game, to very dramatic effect.
As shown in both 'Call of Duty' and 'Enemy at the Gates' the russians eventually retook Stalingrad. These 98Ks are the SAME EXACT RIFLES the Russains seized from those germans. The Russians did not destroy them because weaponry was so scarse but instead held them in reserve. (they didn't have any ammo production so they weren't going to hand them out unless they were in dire straits) They disassembled them and parked them in warehouses, and later reassembled them. With the fall of the USSR, and states breaking away, this old stockpile from the battle of Stalingrad is being sold. I just find it terribly interesting to be able to hold and shoot such a peice of history.
In the same manner, my brother's wife's grandfather was a pilot in WW2, and flew his B-24 liberator in the Ploesti Raid, from North Africa all the way to Romania, whose rich oilfields and refineries had previously been unreachable. He left the service with a propellar blade from his aircraft, and later it was devided amongst his children. A local MN artist goes around and collects fragments of shot down WW2 planes and includes a fragment in prints he creates of the battle. My brother and his wife has one of these prints and a fragment of a plane shot down in that same Ploesti Raid due to the family connection...but I'd rather have a rifle than a scrap.
But it isn't just a solid connection to world history, it can be a connection to your own family. My maternal grandfather passed away shortly before my birth. The only knowledge I really have of him is peaking into his immaculate workshop that was still in Gramma Elsie's basement until the day she died, that and the Winchester Model 52 target rifle I still have with me to this day. When I pull it tight to my shoulder and peer though the pinhole sight, I am connected to this man I never knew in a very real way.
On my other side of the family, I knew my grandfather quite well, but only really as an old man. And yet, in my family's closet sits a gun I have shot many times. My grandfather bought it used at the first farmsale at the start of the great depression. He hunted jackrabbits with it when there was no work to be found, both for the food and the bounty paid for what was considered a pest creature. I remember his stories of hiding it in the fenceline and going whatever farmsale was happening that week. Even though the family was so poor they went bankrupt and had to sell out, the family was expected to serve lunch to all who came to the sale, but that didn't include people who had no mind to sell. Still, times were tight enough if Grampa got fed at the sale through a bit of deceit, he'd skip the meal and home and his brothers and sisters would have more to eat.
They were so poor they had to buy a single bullet at a time, not a box of 50, and had to buy 22shorts, which had less gunpowder reducing cost,and even then of the cheapest brand. Some times those super cheap shorts had poor quality control, and a shot with too little gunpowder would fail to push the bullet all the way out. So it had to be poked out with a stiff wire. Needless to say that gun isn't very accurate, just the opposite of the target model 52 of my other grandfather. Still, every time I shoot 'old sideways' there is another very real connection to both our country's history, and my family history.
Thanks for sharing that, Andy. I appreciated that.
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