50's the good old days for buying guns.

J

James E

Moderator
Anyone out there remember those back page ads on the gun magazines offering handguns for under $20.00, this was revolvers or simi-
automatics. There was a certain breed of animal that canvassed Britain and the rest of Eroupe for large buy outs of firearms, rifles and pistols. My question is...wern't these Countrys merely trying to get rid of war guns to keep the people from turning them on their own governments. We sent guns by the tons to Britain in 1939 and 40, guns donated from the private civilian sector of American society. I'm pretty sure the British government sold off a lot of them to those gun scroungers and were sold back to us here in the private sector. I remember buying a British Sten 9mm SMG (don't worry BATF it was welded in the chamber breach totally legal} this collectors war weapon cost all of $12.95 in those days. Note: I don't have it anymore, sold it decades ago, like I did an American Eagle Luger German made 30 cal. pistol with smooth light colored flat wooden grips that allowed a shoulder stock to attach. Iknow...Dumkoff! But what is even dummer is the guy who bought it had it rebarreled and reblued. Double Dumkoff.

Jim
 
England was supposed to return the firearms they begged the US gun owners to lend them during the war. Nothing came back, or at lest very little came back, from all those hunting rifles, and shotguns (pump, semi-auto or double barrel) that were sent over. Most of those arms ended in the North Sea after the war. My father told me of a friend of his that sent a 1886 engraved Winchester to England for the defense of the country. It was his Father's rifle that had been in the family since 1890. He figured that it was for the good of keeping Hitler at bay, so he sent it. He was to get it back but it went to the bottom of the ocean.




------------------
Ne Conjuge Nobiscum
"If there be treachery, let there be jehad!"
 
Jeesus! Forgot to engage brain cells that are not rapidly deteriorating, difficult to focus on subject matter. Simi truck? No... SIMI-AUTO...OK? :o

Thanks for the kicker, I can only offer you a miller light, no Cabernet. :D
 
Wasn't that good!Dealer sent me home to get a note from my parents to buy a handgun.I was 16 and that wasn't a nice way to business.He did keep it on file so I didn't have to get another one.

------------------
beemerb
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world;
and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men
every day who don't know anything and can't read.
-Mark Twain
 
I can remember buying rifles in the '70s with out any hassle. However I did come home from Marine Corps boot camp, in Nov. of 1980 and couldn't buy .22 ammo from K-mart. Seems that the law had changed when I was away learning the basic skills needed to defend the country from enemys foreign and domestic. Man was I hot when that pimply faced little geek behind the sporting goods counter told me that I wasn't old enough to buy ammo.
Arrell
 
HOLY GUNSMOKE! I can't believe the way I spelled Europe...please, someone take my keyboard away from me, and my car keys. I wasn't kidding about those brain cells. :rolleyes:

Jim
 
Jim V, they threw our fathers and Grand dads
guns into the North sea...Jeezus...not an engraved 1886! What kind of B.S. is that from a grateful Great Britain? Well, the next time a Hitler type decides to hit their beaches I would advise them to throw rocks, plenty of those on the sea floor...a few more won't hurt. And like any one on that side of the pond ever send us bee bee gun if we were in trouble. Well, they did send us the Beetles and Pink Floyd. We didn't give them the deep six.
 
I'm afraid it is true, most of the guns sent by NRA members were dumped in the Irish sea after the war, along with huge quantities of surplus ammunition. So much ordnance was dumped into a sea trench that fishing is banned in the area as it is simply too dangerous. Not only that but returning servicemen were threatened with jail rather than allow them to keep trophies of war. The Home Secretary even changed the conditions for FAC's to preclude servicemen keeping their guns legally. Mind you many simply ignored the regulations and kept them anyway; they still turn up to this day.

------------------
"Quemadmoeum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est."
("A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands.") -
Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the Younger" (ca. 4 BC-65 AD).
 
In the 50s it was common for newspapers to advertise surplus gun sales-- big display ads-- at the local department stores, with Enfields and others advertised for $10. I don't know what kind of condition these weapons were in but if memory serves, some of them were advertised as still being in cosmolene. Several of my high school friends were collectors and had some intersting handguns, which we all viewed as historically interesting rather than something to be personally used. My 16 year-old friend with the Luger and P38 and 1911 would never have dreamed of these pieces being anything but reminders of the war so recently concluded.
 
I guess the good old days are today kind of depressing. In 1955 I remember being in uniform walking into the 7 Seas Locker Club in San Diego, there was Remington Rolling- blocks stacked up like cord wood tied in bundles they were going for 6 to 10 bucks apiece. Love to have just one today. Ah...Diego, bought my very first revolver while doing duty a North Island NAS. A Great Western .22 single action sixgun. We use to go out in the desert and burn up a 500 round carton on weekends off. That gun got pretty loose from so much action. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top