So, several times in the last few days I’ve seen references to “very tragic boating accidents”, which took me a minute to realize it’s folks squirreling away weapons and reporting them lost in an effort to keep, presumably, Obama’s muslim gestapo from seizing them.
I throw in the Obama jab because in both references, it’s been mentioned in association with some reference to Obama, or retrieving them after the election in 2012.
So, how common is this practice?
And do any of those folks have any bit of embarassment about doing such things when it’s pretty clear that gun measures aren’t a real priority for this administration?
(personal note: I am a gun owner, and pro gun in general, but I find gun “fetishizing” distastful"
They aren’t actually squirreling them away and reporting them lost. Most (if not all) of those “boating accidents” are more than a bit tongue in cheek.
The practice of saying that you lost all of your guns in a tragic boating accident is extremely common on internet message boards. The practice of actually squirreling your guns away is probably very rare, as I have never personally met anyone who does it.
Just for the record, and although guns don’t hold anywhere near the interest for me that they did two years or so ago, I have heard the best way to hide away guns is to cover them with Cosmoline, put them in a large diameter PVC tube (along with rags, in a Ziploc bag, for wiping the Cosmoline off), seal the ends of the tube with some kind of watertight gasket, and bury it somewhere where you can remember.
No direct evidence but on a WAG, I’d say nearly nonexistent. There’s too many other ways to legally acquire unregistered firearms to make this tactic necessary.
For example, in my old Kansas hometown, there’s an auction house that handles a lot of estate sales. Almost every week they have a small selection of firearms. You bid, you pay cash, no one asks for your I.D. and there is no paperwork. Why go to the trouble of faking an accident to claim the loss of a weapon when you’re better off having a weapon that nobody ever knew about?
I’ve known a couple people who hid caches of valuables, including firearms. They were rather odd people. As far as boating accidents, they didn’t have to claim the guns were lost because they were bought off-paper in the first place i.e. no records of the sales. At least one of those guys is dead now. I wonder if he ever reclaimed his stuff or at least told his survivors where it might be found.
Cosmoline is an SOB to remove when you have plenty of time, workspace, tools, and cleaners at your disposal. Wiping a cosmolined gun down with some rags isn’t goint to get it clean enough to be safe and reliable, since the cosmoline should have covered the bore and internals if it was really supposed to preserve the gun.
The more up-to-date methods for caching guns include sealing them in PVC tubing with dessicant cannisters and/or using vapor corrosion inhibitors. Then, should you ever decide you need to dig that gun up and use it, it’s ready to go right out of the tube. It is generally considered desirable to bury the tube upright, as well. Then one need only dig a small hole to uncover the end of the tube, unseal it, and fish the gun and other stuff out.
On survivalist boards and the like, there are numerous people who claim to have cached SKS carbines and Mosin Nagant M-44’s in substantial numbers when those were plentiful and dirt cheap. It was only a few years ago that $50 would buy you an M-44 and a couple hundred rounds of mil-surp corrosive ammo. It isn’t like they’d have had to skip a car payment to do it.
That said, I have known only the two guys mentioned upthread who I am sure actually did it in real life. No, they didn’t tell me where they buried their stuff, in case you were wondering; they only told me that they had done it.
From a gun owner’s perspective, what’s the objection to having a registered gun? Why keep it off the record? Is it just the paranoia that someday the Government is going to overturn the 2nd Amendment and come looking to take your gun away, without you having enough advance warning to have a boating accident in the meantime?
Do you know the saying, “It isn’t paranoia if they’re really out to get you?”
Note that the U.S. does not have nationwide owner licensing or firearm registration; some states have none, one, the other, or both.
Obama campaigned on a platform of increased “common sense” gun control laws, which, as of yet, hasn’t been seen beyong A.G. Holder’s “floating the concept” early in Obama’s administration, and then quietly dropping it in the face of loud criticism.
Historically, registration has been used in multiple jurisdictions (U.S. and other nations) as a springboard to further restrictions, then eventual bans, with the registration lists being used to identify the gun owners for authorities to send “Turn them in or else!” letters (California is but one example).
Coupled with the legislative legerdemain gun control advocates have stooped to in the past (look up the Hughes Amendment), and it adds up to a not unreasonable suspicion (IMO) that someone, somewhere, doesn’t want other people to have guns, and thinks that those guns should be taken away from them.
And it always starts with the “bad” guns; the black, synthetic/plastic, military-scary looking guns. Holder’s “float” early in Obama’s administration was the new-and-improved (lemon scented! 20% MORE restrictions!) Assault Weapons Ban.
I live in Missouri now, but most of my firearms were aquired in Texas, and ALL were aquired legally, and I don’t worry about firearms confiscations.
A rabidly conservative friend of mine went out and bought a number of assault-style semi-auto rifles to resell on the black market after the Obama administration bans guns, so I am not surprised that there are people who would do something like in the OP.
I had such a hard time trying not to burst out laughing in his face when I heard this, he was so earnest about defending his freedom to have these guns from the godless liberals.
