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Gary L. Griffiths · May 23, 2012, 10:53 AM

My hometown Legion had a couple of Span-Am War vintage .30 Army Colt "Potato Digger" MGs on tripods, and a WWI Lewis Gun, all demilled, in the Legion hall where we had our Boy Scout meetings. Then, all of a sudden, sometime in the late '70s, the BATF out of Des Moines came swooping down and conducted a raid like they thought it was a bunker full of neo-Nazis with M-16s. Everybody thought it was ridiculous -- raiding a locked but empty building.

It took several years and intervention by our local Congressman to get them returned -- they were perfectly legal. Might actually have been a good thing, though, because the Legion hall burned down a couple of years later, while they were in ATF custody. They're now housed in the local Historical Society Museum.

May 23, 2012, 10:53 AM	#11
Gary L. Griffiths Senior Member Join Date: April 7, 2000 Location: AZ, WA Posts: 1,466	My hometown Legion had a couple of Span-Am War vintage .30 Army Colt "Potato Digger" MGs on tripods, and a WWI Lewis Gun, all demilled, in the Legion hall where we had our Boy Scout meetings. Then, all of a sudden, sometime in the late '70s, the BATF out of Des Moines came swooping down and conducted a raid like they thought it was a bunker full of neo-Nazis with M-16s. Everybody thought it was ridiculous -- raiding a locked but empty building. It took several years and intervention by our local Congressman to get them returned -- they were perfectly legal. Might actually have been a good thing, though, because the Legion hall burned down a couple of years later, while they were in ATF custody. They're now housed in the local Historical Society Museum. __________________ Violence is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and valorous feeling which believes that nothing is worth violence is much worse. Those who have nothing for which they are willing to fight; nothing they care about more than their own craven apathy; are miserable creatures who have no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the valor of those better than themselves. Gary L. Griffiths (Paraphrasing John Stuart Mill)