Excitement at the Gun Show

Nice job Jim, you saved a nice guy from a bad fate!

As for resources, the Illinois State Rifle Association has a very good resource page. Most is Illinois law, but they also track federal laws.

The reason the local LEO didn't do anything is that he doesn't want to get involved in Fed jurisdiction.

Charlie,
I was so dumbfounded by what I held in my hands, that I failed to appreciate the niceties of detail other than the "M2" on the receiver. Sorry about that, Sir... I am easily befuddled these days.
And Jimb16, I have wondered about the LEO as well. I will continue to wonder in private.... !! The more I think about that, the more befuddled I gets!!

jim nasium

Speaking as retired LEO, I have a feeling that the LEO felt a Grandfather with an M2 marked receiver would not be worth the paperwork. Hardly a threat to society.

In about 1978, I ran across an old WW2/Korean vet who had an M2 marked carbine, sans M2 parts, in his garage. He said he brought it back from Korea (he figured he fought two wars for the country, so they owed him something) but did not want to get in trouble so threw out the full auto parts, and made it semi auto. In my mind he was trying to comply with the law, so I ignored it.

Let's see: in Calif it is a felony to possess a single tracer round, of course very, very few people know this and there are probably tens of thousands of tracer rounds out there mixed up in hardball, or in grandad's drawer from the war. I sometimes think that these laws are just done for something to use at a later date on some guy that they really want to throw the book at. In both of these cases, the law would be poorly applied if this guy got nailed for not knowing. It boils down to stupid laws poorly written by uninformed politicians (who should be jailed).

DaveHH,
Really?
To possess a tracer rd in CA is a Felony?
All I see on the news and the Documentaries is about the gang violence.
4th of July would be pretty boring without blasting off the tracers, unless of course it's to dry out.

Are cap guns still legal out there?

What a shame.....
Charlie

'Marked M-2 doesn't mean it can only be a machine gun'

That is distinctly opposite to what we have been told for decades. A stripped M2 receiver is a MG. No matter how you assemble a gun using it, it's still a MG. The group of significant M2 fire-control parts is a MG whether you even possess a carbine receiver of any kind or not.

I have seen the Feds destroy collectors who have possessed an illegal automatic firearm. And yet I have also seen the Feds refused to prosecute criminals who have used illegal firearms in Armed Robbery, just because the county is prosecuting.

The end result is the county drops all sorts of charges and the criminal gets a few years, gets out early, only to commit more crimes. And the Feds add nothing to the charges.

And yet the collector ends up spending a minimum of 18 months to 5 years in Federal Prison, fined big money, and loses his house because of lack of income.

Recently a gang member broke into a gun store in Allentown, Pa., stole 34 hand guns and was caught. The Feds are doing NOTHING about prosecution. They could make this bum spend 20-30 years in prison, but the county is charging one break and entry and one theft. He will probably get 3-5 years and will be out in a year and a half committing crimes again.

I have a friend that was a California LEO that went to BATFE. He is pro-gun, and retired at his first opportunity, not the least of the reasons was the sometimes "bent" outlook they have towrads legal gun owners and the second amendment.

Prisons are bursting at the seams, and there is insufficient room for hard-core violent criminals because the space is already taken by nonviolent criminals serving mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimums are the best thing that ever happened to violent criminals, because mandatory minimums prevent today's judges from doing what they want--putting violent thugs away for a long time. Mandatory minimums force the prison system to waste precious space on nonviolent offenders, like the teenager who sold a bag of pot to his friend. The violent criminals out on parole are given their opportunity to commit more crimes by a criminal justice system fixated on drugs.

It should also be remembered that few violent criminal careers, even those of repeat offenders, persist far into middle age, and virtually none persist into old age. Thus, the continued incarceration of a 55-year-old who may have perpetrated armed robberies in his teens and twenties may do little to benefit public safety. So prison cells that are used to hold geriatric prisoners who are very unlikely to commit violent crime are unavailable to hold younger, active violent criminals. Whatever value there is in incarcerating the 55-year-old until he dies in prison 20 years later is derived from the social interest in retribution, rather than from a public safety interest in incapacitating an active criminal, as well as the difficult to quantify deterrent effect that a three-strikes law might have on criminals with one or two convictions today. Balanced against the possible deterrent effect is the fact that, in the absence of any realistic potential for imposition of the death penalty, a logical criminal with two strikes against him would have no incentive not to kill witnesses and victims; the punishment for the third felony (life in prison) would be no less than punishment for a homicide (life in prison).

Bottom line.......The drug busts with the cash and property seizures get the funds to the Feds and make for bigger headlines.

Charlie-painter777