The Parabellum serial number is on the frame. Except for the little detail of the chamber date on a military being part of the serial number. Where's the serial number on a Ruger 22?
The modern gun control movement (There have been others in the past.) started in the 1950's when moonshining went into decline. Any bureaucracy will attempt to preserve its empire and justify its budget so the BATF turned to firearms enforcement. (The liberals got on the bandwagon a little later.) This meant they had a bunch of agents familiar with moonshining but not very knowledgable about firearms. It does not seem to have occured to the BATF to change this.
You will note that today the BATF is great at enforcing the rules when some otherwise innocent person commits a technical infraction, but they don't bother prosecuting actual criminals. (Ala the "100,000" criminals the Brady bill stopped from buying a firearm, every one of whom violated the law in the process.)
There have been only a handful of such prosecutions. As for the "100,000" criminals stopped, 98% of them were cases of some screw up in the records and they had no convictions at all.
Guess I'm ranting and raving. I have spells like this from time to time.
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