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Korea sells rifles back
Posted by David Hardy · 28 September 2009 08:56 PM
South Korea is preparing to sell 108,000 M-1 Garands and carbines to Americans. I know there is a statute that forbids re-importation of guns transferred as part of Lend-Lease, but South Korea obviously wasn't part of that.
Hat tip to reader JustinGA...
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MAP rifles = parts.
U.S. gun nuts will buy almost anything that came off a Garand if the heat lot numbers are right!
Bugger the Garand, I want an M-1 Carbine produced by IBM--the Original PC.
The Koreans are bad at math.
They're estimating that these rifles will bring more than $1k each.
Some have said that the ban on return of US Military arms and the surplus arms ban in GCA 68 was put in by Sen Tom Dodd to protect Connecticut gun makers, mainly Winchester. The Firearms Owners Protection Act '86 was supposed to clear this up. Thousands of Garands and M-1 Carbines were held up in Customs (Import Marked Blue Sky) because the Feds insisted that the GCA was still valid, It took another passed law to get those rifles out.
The following comes from Maury Krupp on the nationalmatch.com board...
The M1s in Korea fall into two categories:
-Military Assistance Program *loaned* to the ROK. These are still US Property (as were the Danes and Greeks). They are ours for the S&H to get them back
-Foreign Military Sales bought by the ROK. These are ROK Property to dispose of as they wish.
When Mr Michaels from CMP [Civiliam Marksmanship Program - odcmp.com) went to Korea a few years ago the ROK officials showed him the good ones ("These are FMS") and the bad ones ("These are MAP"). His estimate of the value of the MAP rifles was they weren't even equal to the S&H much less what it would cost to make them fit to sell.Whether importer(s) will be able to buy the FMS rifles from the ROK government then turn around and sell them for a profit is the $64 question.
I think it'll be harder than whoever is writing these news reports makes it out to be.