StG-44 Turned in to LA gun buyback program for a $200 gift card - Polidicks

[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;43452259]Please ATF, step in and actually say some bullshit about how, "Blah blah, unregistered automatic" and save a piece of history.[/QUOTE] I'd actually give the ATF one brownie point if they rescued this gun, even if it just ends up locked in an evidence room. A better fate for the STG 44 than the furnace crushing machine.

[QUOTE=aydin690;43452897]Holy shit, you guys act like it's some sort of super rare mayan artifact. 430,000 of them were produced and every war museum, collector and their mama has like a dozen of them.[/QUOTE] People are buying these for lots of money. This guy could have sold his for $6K to a collector or something, donated the money to a gun violence charity or something, and done 20x more good. So for those of you arguing about pragmatism and usefulness, chew on that shit. Which is more useful, melting it into a can opener or selling it for $6K to feed the homeless?

Wait where are you guys getting this $6000 value from

[QUOTE=Leo Leonardo;43485242]Wait where are you guys getting this $6000 value from[/QUOTE] Various auctions. I looked around and found the most conservative number. Apparently they've gone for >$10K.

[QUOTE=DaCommie1;43476950]It is the oldest commissioned naval ship in the world. You would basically be destroying arguably the most historically significant "vehicle" on the planet.[/QUOTE] Who gives a shit if you're helping out people who are here and alive now? The ship does nothing except look nice and remind us of the past.

[QUOTE=Sungrazer;43504339]Who gives a shit if you're helping out people who are here and alive now? The ship does nothing except look nice and remind us of the past.[/QUOTE] Except serve as a living museum to help educate hundreds of people who visit it on a yearly basis on both the history of the United States Navy and maritime life of the 18th century. An 18th century heavy frigate that actively served in three wars and achieved great recognition for its actions in those aforementioned conflicts and for other various historical feats of travel and exploration afterwards and is literally one of the last examples of its kind is an infinitely more valuable piece of history which deserves to be cherished and preserved than just one generic assault rifle manufactured during the Second World War of which thousands of examples still exist today and are presently preserved by war museums, private collectors, and even still used by combatants the world over. They are not comparable. Do not pretend that they are. Your post and [url=http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?p=43453489#post43453489]Grenadiac's original post[/url] are the stupidest comparison attempts imaginable for this situation. [editline]12 January 2014[/editline] To clarify, I'm not saying that there shouldn't have been some attempt to preserve this particular Sturmgewehr rather than just letting them scrap it. It's still a valuable piece of history. I'm saying it's not that massive of a tragedy as you and some others here are making it out to be, certainly not as massive of a tragedy as it would be if we decided to haul the USS Constitution off one day and scrap it.

[QUOTE=Sungrazer;43504339]Who gives a shit if you're helping out people who are here and alive now? The ship does nothing except look nice and remind us of the past.[/QUOTE] so I take it that you're just the kind of dip shit that thinks its OK to not remember and treasure our past, regardless of how pretty or disgusting you think it is. If you don't like the wars that those weapons and vehicles fought, all the more reason to keep the ~tyrannical and evil pieces of machinery around. Keep them around and remind future generations of the harm they caused. Put them in the spotlight to warn people not to let such effective weapons like them get built again. Or just destroy them cause MUH PACIFISMS

[QUOTE=LunchboxOfDoom;43504703]Except serve as a living museum to help educate hundreds of people who visit it on a yearly basis on both the history of the United States Navy and maritime life of the 18th century. An 18th century heavy frigate that actively served in three wars and achieved great recognition for its actions in those aforementioned conflicts and for other various historical feats of travel and exploration afterwards and is literally one of the last examples of its kind is an infinitely more valuable piece of history which deserves to be cherished and preserved than just one generic assault rifle manufactured during the Second World War of which thousands of examples still exist today and are presently preserved by war museums, private collectors, and even still used by combatants the world over. They are not comparable. Do not pretend that they are. Your post and [url=http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?p=43453489#post43453489]Grenadiac's original post[/url] are the stupidest comparison attempts imaginable for this situation.[/QUOTE] The STG isn't an AK-47 dude. They aren't in use any more, and as many people have said if they were they're not worth it due to the scarcity of the ammo. [I]Every [/I]piece of history deserves to be cherished, studied, and remembered.

[QUOTE=Sungrazer;43504339]Who gives a shit if you're helping out people who are here and alive now? The ship does nothing except look nice and remind us of the past.[/QUOTE] She's served in three wars and serves as a marker to help educate people of our past, so that we may remember both its glories and its shames. Or we can just pretend none of that ever happened and break her down for wood so that we can ~~live in the here and now~~

[QUOTE=bdd458;43504808]The STG isn't an AK-47 dude. They aren't in use any more, and as many people have said if they were they're not worth it due to the scarcity of the ammo. [I]Every [/I]piece of history deserves to be cherished, studied, and remembered.[/QUOTE] Uh-- Sturmgewehrs are still in use actually. At least 5,000 were captured by Syrian rebels in Aleppo back in August of last year. They use them. I can't remember where they buy the ammo from, but they still do get what they need. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3-tW24u8gc[/media] Also, you've got the wrong attitude here, as in you're not thinking this out practically. You cannot preserve [i]every[/i] piece of history, no matter how hard you try, even if it deserves it. It's impossible to hold on to everything, there's no sense in it. Should this particular Sturmgewehr have been preserved? I would have preferred it, to see it go into a museum or some such place where it could be exhibited and used to educate. But it wasn't. And just because it wasn't doesn't mean it's the end of the world. There's still many existing ones just like it out there in the world-- in museums, in the hands of private collectors, and even in the hands of combatants. [QUOTE=ilikecorn;43504824]There are thousands of pieces of art, they do nothing but sit around, and serve no purpose. We should get rid of them for that right? And even then, we still have prints, so we can make more, so that makes them even less valuable.. right?[/QUOTE] Again, wrong attitude. Also missing the point. Art museums and galleries are educational institutions. They give people a historical perspective on culture by preserving important pieces of art (unique monuments of culture) from the past; so they do serve a valuable purpose. Also, again, you're making a terrible comparison. Yeah, we do have prints. We can make more prints of things like the Mona Lisa in the form of a cheap poster or a plastic rendition of the Apollo Belvedere. That makes the [b]prints[/b] less valuable because we can make more of them; but meanwhile, we have only one original Mona Lisa and one original Apollo Belvedere. [i]That[/i] is what makes them, the originals, so valuable and so worthy of preservation. The loss of one Sturmgewehr, of which there are still thousands of examples in existence, is not comparable to what the loss of one of these infinitely valuable and unique works of art would be.

[QUOTE=Apache249;43457312]Perhaps it 'worked' because that was a 9mm training launcher, a functional firearm.[/QUOTE] One way someone could do it is build Luty Submachine Guns with scrap metal, and then sell them off at these buybacks because they are not legal to own. They would only cost $50 or $60 to build, you'd get $200 giftcards or cash for each one, and therefore would make a decent profit off them.

[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;43505045]One way someone could do it is build Luty Submachine Guns with scrap metal, and then sell them off at these buybacks because they are not legal to own. They would only cost $50 or $60 to build, you'd get $200 giftcards or cash for each one, and therefore would make a decent profit off them.[/QUOTE] thats basically my plan if a gun buy-back ever hits my area. Not building submachine guns, but just super basic single shot handguns and shotguns.

[QUOTE=Sungrazer;43504339]Who gives a shit if you're helping out people who are here and alive now? The ship does nothing except look nice and remind us of the past.[/QUOTE] What if we break you into livestock feed? You'd certainly be more useful than you are right now. Destroying things because they only hold historical value is the same as abolishing education altogether. Learning about and protecting our past is just as important as learning about and protecting any other concept a school has to offer. Doesn't matter if it's a rifle or a toothpick from the 1800s, it teaches us important facts about our past that we can't just throw away and forget.

[QUOTE=DaCommie1;43453059]Yes. That's how gun buybacks work. Even up here, the police melt down $10,000 competition shotguns turned in to them because it's required by law. I even heard they seized a rare $60,000[B] Walther WA2000[/B] from a meth dealer in BC (I'd love to know how the hell he got it), and if it's not going to a police museum I've heard of in Saskatchewan it'd have to have been destroyed. I really doubt that California, one of the strictest states for gun control, doesn't have a law requiring all buyback turn-ins to be destroyed.[/QUOTE] N-no... [I]I can't even...[/I] :suicide:

[QUOTE=Leo Leonardo;43485242]Wait where are you guys getting this $6000 value from[/QUOTE] [URL]http://www.ima-usa.com/original-german-wwii-mp44-display-assault-rifle-with-demilled-receiver-dated-44.html[/URL] Got it from this. But as I look at the page, that is the price for an original display gun. It is the real deal, but it can't fire. So a working one would cost a fuck ton more I bet.

You can also purchase the new GSG .22LR STG-44's which may I personally say, are awesome for hunting certain rodent species.

My heart isn't exactly breaking, there are plenty of them in museums. If anything, the sad part is that some poor desperate person turned it in for a $200 gift card to Kroger, instead of selling it and getting their head above water again. That could have been the lion's share of some disadvantaged kid's college fund if his mom had taken a few seconds to google it. LAPD should have said something. I would laugh at all you guys crying about losing "pieces of history" if documentation came up showing that some GI took it off a dead SS officer who had just finished using it to shoot Jewish prisoners before the Allies could rescue them. Somehow I doubt there would still be this much sympathy for that poor lil' rifle. :rolleyes:

Actually if anything that would make it far more historical, because it would have a backstory to its usage. Sorta like how K31 rifles have the name of the person who used it, and some people like to call them and talk to them about their service. Also in the regards to someone getting their head out of water... Why not research it? I mean a weapon like that has about four markings indicating it was a weapon of the Third Reich, even someone who isn't exactly the most competent in history can easily say, "Oh look it's the Swastika. Must be a Nazi weapon" and could probably put together its actually worth something.