FOIA on a Luger?

[battering ram]

ive done FOIA's on class 3 guns and gotten some great results...im curious if a FOIA on a Luger would/could reveal anything?

anyone do this on theirs?

[Ron Wood]

Freedom Of Information Act?

[DonVoigt]

Originally Posted by battering ram

ive done FOIA's on class 3 guns and gotten some great results...im curious if a FOIA on a Luger would/could reveal anything?

anyone do this on theirs?

Like what?
Sounds like you may have the answer yourself.

[Norme]

I do a FOIA every once in a while but not if anyone's looking.
Norm

[battering ram]

sounds like there is no info on a semi auto that the govt keeps...

i was curious if id find something about when it was brought into the country by a GI in the 1940's....but odds are it was just tossed in a duffel bag and no one ever knew...

[Glashaus]

BR, there would really be nothing to get from a FOIA on a bring back, no records were really made , other then to the unit and nothing was kept or sent anywhere. There may be some records from Vietnam bring backs but I highly doubt it. Just like people thinking that they can trace down to a unit level the history of their M1 Garand or M1 Carbine or 1911A1, these records do not exist.

[battering ram]

i did one on my 1940 thompson and i found out which city it was sold to (not sure yet it if police or sheriff) but i was able to prove it was a police gun. Also the name and even finger prints of the 2nd owner who bought the gun in 1964....i was then able to contact that owners son and talk about it....i also worked its background backwards collecting form 4's...i have a complete history on the gun now and it has a unique history which i was able to get stories on both backwards and forwards of an odd event with the gun...

other guns come back with a couple of pages and you get nothing out of it......but the thompson was 25 pages+

[DonVoigt]

I'm surprised and disappointed that you received complete form 4s from your FOIA.
These are "tax" documents and not supposed to be released unless redacted; someone in govt. screwed up.

Surprise, surprise!

[mrerick]

i'm not sure of what records you'd be after.

Bring back papers were authorizations for soldiers to return with their captured firearms. Signed by an officer, they were given to the soldier. I doubt records were kept, especially since this would smack of "registration" to US citizens that just fought a war for Europe's freedom from government domination.

They are German made guns, with concealment codes to try and hide manufacturer data from the US and other enemies of Germany. Individual guns were documented when issued in a soldier's personal book, but those are acattered records, not in a central store in Europe.

There is some documentation gathered after the war by the US CIOS teams. Some of that has been published, specifically the interviews with Ott Helmut von Lossnitzer, Mauser's last wartime technical director.

I have an interesting history of Oberndorf written about the transition from war to peace in 1945 by the then mayor of Oberndorf. They actually convinced the French to stop destroying Mauser's factory after the destruction of building "C" where the K98 rifles were made, preserving building "D" where Lugers and P.38s were made and most of the other buildings.

I don't think that DWM records from Berlin have ever been located. They may have been destroyed or lost in the course of losing two wars.

Recent revelations have some from caches of documents, so I don't doubt that there is still material out there to find!

[DavidJayUden]

It would be interesting to know if a WW2 commanding officer, whose responsibility was to sign "bring back papers", was also required to keep a (typed) copy of each signed order, or maintain a list of such authorizations, etc. Then the next question would be where did the list go?
dju

[DonVoigt]

David,

There still must be some signing officers alive from WWII, who could answer that question; though I don't know one personally.

[battering ram]

Originally Posted by DonVoigt

I'm surprised and disappointed that you received complete form 4s from your FOIA.
These are "tax" documents and not supposed to be released unless redacted; someone in govt. screwed up.

Surprise, surprise!

most are redacted...but when doing 25+ pages they screw up multiple times...all i need is a name somewhere...then find them...i did not get completed form 4's from the ATF...i called each owner in reverse and asked for them....what does a 75 year old care if i have his form 4? what do gun dealers care?...they were happy to help.

the govt. did give me fingerprints on the owner after the police dept which i found amazing...yet they blanked out several pages completely....the original form 2 doesnt exist back to 1940..i guess they were on little index cards...lost or tossed......

[MikeP]

The guys who signed the authorisation papers were usually some Lt who was OD or something similar.
It was not really a job or specialties.
Kind of typical military busy work.
Of all the guns I saw or acquired in the 50s and 60s locally, very very few papers were seen.
I actually did have one for a HSc my father brought home from his 506th PIR days.

[Diver6106]

I used to answer FOIAs and they were always a pain. They also often were routed to offices that had no connection with that type of information, so they don't always get properly researched.

[DonVoigt]

"what does a 75 year old care if i have his form 4? "

Simply that it is none of your "business", whether or not he(or anyone else) owned the item or it passed through his hands at some point in time.

People can be strange about privacy sometimes.

[John Sabato]

You could always read the Privacy Act of 1974, and the amending legislation of 2002 if you really want to know why privacy is important to Government agencies... they can get in a lot of hot water on unauthorized release of information... just ask OMB about their data breach...