Deactivated Mp40 value
- Thread starter Thud
- Start date
Mike Irwin
Staff
I'm going to move this to the NFA forum. They might have a better handle on it there. I've not seen a dewat MP 40 for sale for years.
Willie Lowman
New member
pics would help.
Beretta686
New member
Is it a registered and papered DEWAT or a deactivated gun with the receiver cut up? That will make a huge difference.
If it is a registered DEWAT (registered as "unserviceable") it can be re-activated on application to BATFE and payment of $200. For many of those guns, reactivation is a simple process involving only cutting a couple of welds and removing the barrel block. (The 1986 law banned adding guns to the NFRTR, but a registered DEWAT was already in the NFRTR and its re-activation is allowed.)
That will, needless to say, increase the value by many times.
If it is not a REGISTERED DEWAT, then it is an unregistered machinegun and illegal to own.
Jim
That will, needless to say, increase the value by many times.
If it is not a REGISTERED DEWAT, then it is an unregistered machinegun and illegal to own.
Jim
Just FWIW, the term DEWAT (DEactivated WAr Trophy) is pretty specific and there were ATTD instructions for making a DEWAT. The gun did not have to be cut up and most DEWATs can't be told from a live gun from the outside.
The rule was intended to allow vets to deactivate and keep their otherwise illegal war souvenirs; after deactivation, they became legally "non-guns" and could be owned, bought and sold "like table lamps", to quote an ATTD agent.
But then large importers, like Sam Cummings, realized that there was no limit in converting guns to non-guns, so they brought thousands of STEN's, Thompsons, etc., into the country in bond, welded them, and sold them as "non-guns". Those guns, not vet bringbacks, are the bulk of legally owned machineguns today.
After a sensationalist anti-gun "slaughtered in our beds" article in the Saturday Evening Post by Ashley Halsey (later, incredibly, editor of the American Rifleman) the requirement to register DEWATs was added to the GCA '68.
Jim
The rule was intended to allow vets to deactivate and keep their otherwise illegal war souvenirs; after deactivation, they became legally "non-guns" and could be owned, bought and sold "like table lamps", to quote an ATTD agent.
But then large importers, like Sam Cummings, realized that there was no limit in converting guns to non-guns, so they brought thousands of STEN's, Thompsons, etc., into the country in bond, welded them, and sold them as "non-guns". Those guns, not vet bringbacks, are the bulk of legally owned machineguns today.
After a sensationalist anti-gun "slaughtered in our beds" article in the Saturday Evening Post by Ashley Halsey (later, incredibly, editor of the American Rifleman) the requirement to register DEWATs was added to the GCA '68.
Jim