Luger horror story
 

Coming home from shooting Thursday my friend and I stopped to get a burger. While we were eating we started talked to a man at the next table. He is a retired Naval Warrant officer , now working as a deputy sheriff. This of course led to talking about guns. The talk of course got around to guns we either wanted or guns we wish we had never sold. I had to mention a beautiful Simson Luger I regret selling. Then he told us the horror story. When he was a boy his best friend's father was a WWII Vet who fought in Europe and had brought back a Luger. The boy wanted to play with the pistol so the father, to make it safe poured molten lead into the Luger so no one could ever put a cartridge in it. Lucky I was almost finished my burger.

Lead could be removed without too much grief. I think...
dju

As long as it was just in the barrel... :)

Awful to do that to a Luger, worse still if by any chances it was a Simson or a Krieghoff.

High Standard pistol shooters that still use the factory comp, use a techinque to remove lead in the comp, maintenance thing. HS offered a mechanical tool to remove said lead from the space shuttle comp, but one had to do it regularly, ie not too much lead in the comp or you were there all day and then some.

An old gunsmith showed me a pistol from a gunshow buy, the HS comp was completely plugged with lead stuff. He took the comp off the barrel, heated it up almost to lead flow, then dropped the hot comp onto the floor, which was wood. He said a 2x12 would be fine to land it on. The debris came out slicker than a whistle.

Just an odd rememberance. I still use the technique for the HS comps fwiw.........mileage will vary I am sure, but it is what it is, just "a" method.

While it is sad to hear of a lead laden Luger, the worst horror stories I've heard are from the UK. Those pore blokes must have their Lugers welded to deactivate them.

I saw a Luger in the Downy, Ca. police Department with the toggle welded in the closed position. When the man told us the story about the Luger he said the boy's father poured lead in the mechanism, whatever that means. Did I mention that I once bought a Simson Luger for $42 and later sold it for about the present cost of four Happy Meals? The pistol would fail to eject at least once with every magazine. A short time after giving the Simson away I read that American ammo is too weak to operate the toggle on the Luger. How can I ever receive absolution?

The cure to any regret or unhappiness is, always, to buy another Luger.:)