I personally find this pretty irresponsible. If the police department later had to investigate a killing which involved a shotgun, the fact that they found a discarded and fingerprint-free shotgun in somebody’s front yard might hurt or even destroy their case - i.e. they decide that the shotgun must be the murder weapon, but the person who really did it could not have been anywhere near your friend’s yard. Also, what if they traced it back to it’s original owner by it’s serial number and an innocent person drew the attention of the police for a weapon they no longer owned?
Johnny L.A. is correct… make the gun disappear. Do not call the cops. They (or the BATF) will likely initiate an investigation, and you and your buddy could be in deep doo-doo.
And forget about the $50. Do you not understand the seriousness of your situation? You’re in possession of a felonious device and you’re worried about 50 measly bucks?
Wipe it down with oil and throw it in a pond.
No. Bad advice. Do not do this.
Wipe it down with oil. Find a lake. Dump it.
This thread was posted 6 hours ago. That is more than enough time for a BATF agent to get your name and address.
Take a short drive over a bridge… just be sure no prints are on it.
I actually had to dispose of a weapon like this, once.
Got a friend with a welding torch? Weld that chamber shut, cut it into little pieces, then scrap it. Hell, take a sledgehammer to it. Hacksaw. Anything.
Render that thing as inoperable as you can. Then get rid of it. No sense in passing it to some poor dumbass fisherman who snags it and pulls it out of the lake you dumped it in.
Tripler
Thermite grenade? I don’t have any. Sorry.
Not sure about issue here. Not American. Help me to uderstand that. So how would saw-off gun be more dangerous than not-saw-off gun? Not making sense…Why is that illegal in US of A.
“Hell, take a sledgehammer to it…Render that thing as inoperable as you can.”
Good advice. And trash it, not in a body of water.
And I would hate to be the guy caught transporting it to a bus station locker (as someone else suggested), in this day and age.
Full-length shotguns are not that easy to conceal. A sawed-off can be stowed in a roomy coat pocket and then hauled out to rob your local retail store, make new and unwilling friends at some public establishment etc.
A nasty weapon at close range.
Not necessarily. I once read something about sounding more experienced than you are without lying. One of the tips (no joke) was whenever you were discussing something you had only ever done once, always describe it as “the last time” you did it.
Another hint: if several people around you are discussing a book you have not read (say at a dinner party), and one turns to you and asks if you have read it, reply, “Well, not in English.”
And you know what, it worked really well for me the last time I tried it. Of course, that wasn’t in English.
Simple things like grinding the firing pins off won’t render the gun legal. ATF is very strict that when destroying or demilitarizing a weapon it’s done so it can’t be easily repaired. Cutting the reciever with a torch or chop saw is best.
Hell, I’d say don’t forget the $50–that’s what means that you purchased an illegal firearm.
Apologies; have no advice regarding disposal of the weapon. Best of luck to you.
IIRC, there are more (or same) deadly weapons, that are concealed easly than bigger cut-off guns, and are legal in US of A… Still, no sense to me… That kind of weapon only works at close range… So does my fist…
Actually, if the barrel isn’t shortened that much below the legal length, and the stock hasn’t been modified, it has a defensible utility as a rabbit / quail gun. Range isn’t an issue here, as you usually flush quail, rabbits or some other types of small game at very short range. The difficulty lies in being able to sight on and pot your fast moving quarry before it disappears again. A short barrel is less unwieldy, and helps with that. Also, at short range, the wider dispersal pattern makes it less likely that you will wind up with a bloody mess if you hit it instead of a nice quail for cooking with a couple pellets to be dug out of it.
Nevertheless, a barrel length under 18 inches is illegal, and a federal offense.
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- Don’t ditch it anywhere, and don’t destroy it yet. If you have a local sporting goods/gun shop, you could phone them up and ask their advice on it, as to if it would be worth aquiring a new barrel and stock for. There’s a slim chance the receiver might be worth more than $50, and if you explain how you got it and it’s obvious you’re asking how to make it legal again, they’re not likely to turn you over. Of course, a new barrel and stock might cost a lot more than $50, but there might be somebody else who would want the rest of it. --Call a small local store though, not the area Sports Authority or Wal-Mart. They won’t know, or may call it in.
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- And you cannot simply “drill a couple of holes in it” and make it legal. Being “non-functional” and being “legal” are two different things. There’s federal laws about this stuff, so common sense doesn’t count for much here. That’s why you need a local gunshop or gunsmith, they will know.
- I agree with “don’t call the police”-- because if they hear about it, they have to move to obtain it and probably (though not necessarily) arrest somebody (it is a federal crime), and then you’ll never know.
- If you want to destroy it (melt the serial # and render it forever non-functional) a welding torch is the way, but you have to know a friend that will do it. You can’t just go to any local muffler shop and ask them to burn up a gun for you. -I personally would not toss it anywhere: the reason is that if anybody saw you toss it and they reported it into the police, you could be on the hook for anything that may have already been done with that gun, or anything that was done with a gun that looked like that.
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Why are they illegal?
Why would someone saw off the barrel of their shotgun?
All right. We definitely need more information.
I’m going to assume that we are not dealing with a “pump” or autoloader here, because there is no way to cut either one down to the stated dimensions (18" overall, 12" bbl) and still have it actually function.
Therefore, we have a fixed-breech, top-break shotgun that is a)single-barrel; or b)side-by-side or c)over-under.
Even then, to cut the barrel(s) down to 12" you also have to cut the forestock. All the singles and doubles I’ve seen manufactured in the last 20 years or so have a take-down latch, which is recessed into the forestock. Cutting the barrel and stock down to 12" would take you through the latch.
Is the fore-end screwed on? If that’s the case, you have an old gun, and it may have been cut before the 1968 Firearms Act. It might be grandfathered, but I don’t know what the laws are like in Colorado. If there’s a liscencing requirement, and the gun doesn’t have a paper trail, you’re screwed.
Basically, you have a “firearm” that was changed to a “handgun.” Prior to '68 it was legal to cut down a long arm into a handgun, and it would still be legal if subsequent owners followed transfer laws.
So the questions are:
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Was it legal to cut it when it was cut?
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After it was cut, did previous owners treat it as a “handgun” and obey applicable law?
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Can you prove any of this?
The best thing for you to do, IMHO, is cut the thing up into little, tiny pieces, and introduce it to the landfill.
Taking it to the police is only going to result in questions like, “Where did you get it, from whom did you get it, when did you get it…”
Dispose of it, but dispose of it responsibly.
Aw, crap.
I was going on memory, there.
I think it was the '68 act that defined what was a handgun and what wasn’t, in addition to restricting mail-orders and interstate transfers, but I could be wrong*.
Can I get a little legal help here?
*[sub]This doesn’t even begin to address state laws and local ordinances, you realize.[/sub]
I hate to give any more information. I kind of feel that I am causing you guys to become accessories or something (Mods, if you feel this is the case you might close this down). But OK, it is a single barrel, with a top break and the breech lock is immediately above the trigger housing. FWIW, it was, and I guess is, for that matter, a Harrington-Richardson Shotgun.
Exgineer, I don’t know the answers to questions #1 nor #2. As for #3. No.
Maud’Dib, it is illegal because it has no other purpose other than shooting people (sort of like assault weapons in that sense). It is useless for hunting and shooting skeet. The reason people would cut one down is that it makes it easier to hide and take into places where one shouldn’t have weapons.
DougC, the nearest sporting goods store that carries guns is 85 miles away and I would prefer not to transport the thing. Rube E., The nearest bus station is also the same distance away. Anyway as has been mentioned, carrying a sawed-off shotgun into a bus station is not a great idea, at least not in my mind.
Bury it somewhere remote, deep enough that a metal detector will not find it, and forget you ever saw it. A sawed off shotgun has no value as a defensive or hunting weapon, there are much better guns for both uses that are legal, and the risk of keeping it is just to great. If I were you I would consider that 50 bucks the price of an education.
Long story here, it may help…
My grandparents were selling their house about 2 years ago, and the city they lived in required asbestos inspections for all houses over a certain age. The inspector came in and while he was checking the attic he found my great-great grandfather’s shot gun up there. I don’t remeber what make/model it was but it was a shotgun that was under the legal requirements for length, but that was because that was the way it was manufactured. It was a VERY OLD antique. The inspector mentioned it to my grandfather and didnt really say much about it. The next day, several ATF reps knocked on the door asking about it. They looked at the gun and gave him some type of “ticket” and said he had 78 hrs to turn in the gun or have a gunsmith alter it to either render it unusable, or be able to only fire a different type of shell.
My grandfather paid almost $200 to have it altered and when it came back it was so screwed up it couldn’t close. Anyway he mailed something from the gunsmith and that was the end of the ATF problem.