How come you can buy THIS in France but not here?

[Manedwolf]

I know they have all that licensing stuff, and it's a Class 2, which takes a background check and examination and membership in a shooting sport association...but you can still get them and stuff like it!

http://www.army-discount.com/Images/Armes_feu/Long/STG57.htm

1050 euros for a fully intact STG-57. (They're apparently only $400 US equivalent in Swiss Francs in Switzerland as surplus)



That just isn't fair. Why does the BATFE do what they do in the receiver-slicing and barrel-destroying? What threat is a rifle that can only use 7.5x55 Swiss ammo? What gang is going to use that?

You can have that in France. But not in America. Just like in Canada, you can have an imported Tavor, but not in America. That just...arg.

That's just not right.

[Harold Tuttle]

The Brady Org had a press conference back in 2002 to kick off their campaign against the sunset of the AWB

One of the speakers was a Balmore detective that talked about carrying an Uzi as an Advisor in Nam

After he talked, we had a gunny chat about the Uzi as a non issued weapon and how much fun it was to shoot

I commented that honest civilians also like to enjoy shooting quaint, Antique designs like the AR15
and a Brady staff handler almost had a coronary.
 

[Tallpine]

Well, you can have one here, but you just don't want to talk about it much 

[Manedwolf]

Well, you can have one here, but you just don't want to talk about it much 

Or talk about how much. Last time I saw one of the few imported before ATF got torch-happy, it was going for $8000 and was not anywhere close to pristine.

Seriously, what was the purpose of the whole "no foreign-made receivers on military weapons" idiocy, anyway? In Switzerland, you can buy an STG-57 as surplus, but have to buy the parts to convert it to semiauto. Yet said rifles can't be imported to the US, even though they're now forever semiautos. They were, briefly and expensively a long time ago as PE-57's, semiauto, but ATF stopped that long ago.

Then there's the "no new barrels" bit they added in 2005, resulting in a cutoff (no pun intended) of decent chromed barrels coming in.

[MicroBalrog]

Pardon my ignorance:

Is the STG-57 a select-fire rifle, and can the French get it like that?

[The Viking]

Pardon my ignorance:

Is the STG-57 a select-fire rifle, and can the French get it like that?

AFAIK, full auto is illegal in France since 1995, IOW, it has to be rendered into a semi automatic before they can have it.

[Paddy]

Because we're the land of liberty and Constitutionally guaranteed individual rights.  And France is the land of cheese eating surrender monkeys.

[Gewehr98]

I dunno.  It doesn't look very fun, almost like a Chauchat.  Manedwolf can have all the STG-57s that were meant for me.   

[Manedwolf]

I dunno.  It doesn't look very fun, almost like a Chauchat.  Manedwolf can have all the STG-57s that were meant for me.   

Doesn't look like fun? It's basically a K-31 refined into a semiauto. It even kept the bolt handle in the form of the charging handle! (It's the exact same metal beer-keg-looking piece as the K-31's bolt handle)

VERY smooth action, I got to handle one. Take a sheet of glass, put down oil, and slide another piece of glass over that. That's what the action felt like. Everyone who has fired one that I've talked to said that it's a pleasure to shoot, doesn't punish with recoil, and frighteningly accurate. The reason why it was eventually phased out as a general design was that it was extremely expensive to produce.

The action lives on in the form of the SIG AMT, which is, I believe, still in production. It's a .308 version, tuned for even more accuracy, and given wood furniture. But you can't import those, either.

[Gewehr98]

A K-31, eh?

Doesn't mean much to this 1911 S-R owner, truthfully.  Aluminum bolt handle?  Pish.

[Manedwolf]

A K-31, eh?

Doesn't mean much to this 1911 S-R owner, truthfully.  Aluminum bolt handle?  Pish.

Here's the AMT. You can see the bolt handle legacy.



And yes, I know the 1911 had that reddish bakelite handle instead. They went to aluminum on the karabiner 31.