Just found you!

Dear All - just found your fantastic site and have spent the last hour or so having a peek around the general area. I am the owner of two P.08s - one a 1918 DWM, the other a byf 42. I have had both of them for a long time, in fact, I bought the 1918 model in 1973, and the byf in 1984. You really don't want to know how I have still got them in my possession in spite of the legislation banning post-1917 handguns except for criminal usage here in UK. You do? Well, [deep breath] they are both deactivated. I have just retired from 34 years in the Army, and am a frequent visitor to our Ministry of Defence pattern room where we have a formidable collection of P.08's of all types. Until the ban, both of my pistols were shot about every weekend. If you still want to talk to me after finding out about the way I held on to my precious pistols, I'm sure that I would have a lot offer the forum. Now, if you still want me to come on board, thank you. If not, thank you and goodbye.


Regards


Terry A de C Foley [Major Ret'd]

[Thor]

Terry, I think it would be of value to some to tell them what the UK does to Deactivate them. I think it would provide an extra incentative for us in the USA to keep our gun rights strong. Thanks! ~Thor~

[Bart]

I for one welcome you and any insight you share. Gun rights are one of several rights and freedoms many people take for granted here in the US.

Bart

I can't imagine anyone wishing you away! I believe (I know) that shooters, collectors, those interested, all are welcome here!


Having to deactivate your guns must have been very difficult, as I imagine the barrels are blocked and/or the toggles are welded shut.


Welcome, one and all,


Ed

Dear All -

Thanks for the heart-warming messages. Now I guess you want to know what happens when you 'partly' lose your guns. What I didn't tell you was that I had one of each S&W Model 29 from 1960 onwards, a Ruger Super Redhawk, my father's Walther PPK, a Walther .22 Olympic shot in the 1936 Olympic Games, Jurek free pistol #2, A Wilson S&W model 586, a target S&W model 17 and a Walther GSP in each calibre. I got to keep my Ruger Old Army and my Colt Walker, because, as everybody knows, the criminal is not interested in front-stuffers when he can get his paws on the odd couple of hundred Skorpions and Mac 10's. What deactivation involves, in the case of self-loading pistols, is the boring out of the barrel, and the insertion of a length of tool steel to within .5" of the muzzle. A section is then machined out of the breech, removing the loading ramp in its entirety, but nothing else is done, except machining a slot for one third of the length of the barrel underneath. In the case of a revolver, all of the above, and then the interior third of the cylinder is removed , and replaced with an annular ring, preventing anything whatsoever from being in it. Externally, nothing has changed, except that we are now looking at a paperweight. Oh yes , and the little matter of a Home Office certificate of deactivation and the fee of about $120 each. I'll admit to you all that I cried when I opened the box containing my beloved weapons, and I felt betrayed. It was that, or see them thrown in a skip for destruction. Unless, of course the weapon was a Glock of some kind. In that case, it went, in front of your very eyes, into a box marked 'Glocks for Police use only'. I was a soldier for my country for 34 years, and with one stroke of a pen I, and 58000 others like me, had been converted into a possible child-murdering pervert. Remember - " Those hard-won liberties, which we formerly enjoyed and which we stand in danger of being denied, once lost will be twice harder to regain". No American said that, although he may well have. Instead said it, at the last meeting of our pistol club of over three hundred members. Now we are six. Between us we lost over 1200 pistols and revolvers. The criminal, I reminded the 24 club members who were also members of the police force, does not usually apply for a Firearms certificate.


Regards to all


Terry F

[Thor]

Thank you Terry, I know that was a really tough tale to tell! What a nice collection you had and what a horrible shame to see it go! I think Americans need to remember, it can happen to us too! Again , my regrets on your misfortune, it is horrible! Thor

Terry, If any of your pistol club members would rather just turn-in their stripped luger or whatever frame, rather than paying $120 to have the pistol deactivated, have them send me the parts. If they arrive here and aren't confiscated by your customs or mine, I'll pay them a fair price. I recall reading an article some years ago, before your laws became even more draconian, about one of your WW2 vets who actually located his issue Enfield rifle, but was required to turn it in when he attempted to register it, since he was too old, feable or incapacitated. I certainly hope we never treat our veterans like that. Tom Heller

Did the crime rate fall as a result of firearm deactivation?

Dear Tom - three years too late, I'm afraid, to even rescue the wreckage. Sorry about that. Not all is gloom however, and the British shooter has a very wide choice of weapons that aren't available anywhere else on earth, as far as I know. Hand-cocked versions of many previously selfloading weapons of all kinds, starting at about $1500 or so, to replace the self-loaders we lost back in 1988. Where once we shot pistol we now shoot lever action carbines or the ubiqitous 10/22, and boy, do we have some great fun doing that. Just about every discipline we had before as a pistol competition we now have as 'action carbine' or .22. We are determined that we will go on in spite of the ever-increasing pressure to give it all up and take up crochetting or basket-weaving. We are, of course, villified in the press and made to feel guilty about it all, and in an incredible admission, the Home Office published figures that proved that armed criminality had actually increased by 140% since we handed all our guns in. Hey, we can put up with the rest of the world laughing at us for a bit longer, with our funny guns that nobody else has [or could possibly want],the 24" barrel revolvers with shoulder stocks, the wacky single shot M-16 HB with a couple of thousand dollars-worth of sights, and the 'just for UK' Garands. But one day, if and when people who know their way around guns are needed, who will be there? We won't......


TF

[schwob]

Terry, as an ex-police officer I fully agree with the saying, When they outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. I'm sure it breaks the heart of everyman & woman that reads and contributes to this Forum when it is read how a Luger is butchered. May this give us the strength to never permit it to happen in this country.......never->!

[Big Norm]

Terry,


you are more than welcome on this forum as far as I am concerned. I truely feel heartfelt sadness for you and other honest British citizens like you. I have copied your notes so that I can show them to some Canadian citizens who are friends of mine. Somehow they always brush me off when I discuss what our National Rifle Association (NRA) publishes about Australia and its gun laws. They always seem to think that I am just a typical crazy American telling Canada what to do. Its like they don't believe me even though they are also gun owners.


I will be looking foreward to more messages from you and welcome to this forum.

Big Norm

Welcome Terry,

As a US Veteran of WW-2, I for One cannot understand the mentality of the politicians who disarm their own Country.

Especially in view of the defenseless position that your country was discovered to be in at the beginning of "The Battle Of Britain".

Where your own politicians found your country was virtually without firearms and daily expecting the invasion of Hitlerâ??s German Army.

My memory recalls the Arming of the Home Guard with Homemade Practice Rifles made of Broomsticks and Softwood used to practice carrying while your Prime Minister begged of us over here to donate any Pistol or rifle of .30 bore to arm the new conscripts and the home guard.

How could a Nation having once been so vulnerable have allowed the misguided disarmament of the citizenry again?

There seems to me that we are ever doomed to follow the pattern of the lost and always circle back on our own errant past.

I certainly hope that all of our â??politicalsâ?� will wake up and know that criminals prevail in a disarmed society.

My two cents worth.

ViggoG

Dear Viggo - thanks for that note. It's strange how many folk seem to forget the debt we owe to our friends in the US when, as you put it, we were defenceless in the face of the finest Army the world had ever seen at that time. The best airforce, too,if the quality and experience gained in the spanish Civil War is taken into account. In the end we prevailed, but it took ALL of us to do it, and no one nation can truthfully claim that "we won the war". enoguh of politics, and I'll take this opportunity to let other readers know that, sadly, the Pattern Romm, being part of the MoD, is not open to the general public. It IS open, however, to the serious student of firearms to allow the study of specific weapons to be undertaken in production of a book or article, f'rinstance. Give 'em a call, they are a very helpful bunch, as anyone with with 1/4 million weapons must be.....


Best wishes


Terry F

Terry,

Many thanks for your note.

Yes we certainly have a strange mixture of gender free names.

I am a male, and my name was attached because of a Danish Great uncle "Viggo".

It is also a coincidence that I have a neice named Terry.

Mine was not an attempt to recall old debts,

(Those aids were in my opinion simply acting as good samaritans and helping a friend in need and no debt remains), But only to point out that it seems that mankind advances through a series of circles of learning.

Wherein we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes until we learn to break the circular path of repetition.

and once having broken the circle we are free to advance to the next level.

Heaven forbid that we forget and repeat the error, for we then are back again to the old circle with nothing having been learned by the pain of the past.

Just an observation on human nature.

ViggoG

[Big Norm]

Terry,


in your discussion of the MoD you said that they have the finest collection in the world. I was just wondering if it has a 1906 .45 caliber DWM Luger. I know of only two in the world and one of those is in private hands in America and the other is in an American museum. An unknown number was given to the American army for testing by Georg Luger. Could your MoD have a third? Just an idle thought.

Big Norm

[John Sabato]

A sad tale to say the least. Please visit and contribute often... I am sure your years of firearms expertise will be a blessing to all of us here on the Lugerforum...


regards from a comrade in arms,


John M. Sabato

Sergeant First Class

US Army Retired

Thanks for that John - I've made my mark already with a boo-boo about the pattern room, when you get my age all kind of things are going wrong - you begin to repeat yourself, and all kinds of things are going wrong and you begin to .....


Terry F

[John D.]

are at the ripe old age that we can read it twice - and it still looks like "new" information each time we read it..

Bless your heart John! Like I said, there's always something new.


TF

[Dok]

that's not REAL gray hair he's sportin'... he dyes it to cover up the fact that he's blonde... and with blondes, their attention span is so short... EVERYTHING seems new and exciting!


Dok