At the end of last year, when Los Angeles authorities carried out another purchase of firearms from the public, one of the visitors to the police station handed over a German StG-44 assault rifle. For the weapon designed by Hugo Schmeisser, the American received a gift certificate worth $200. Such cases happen regularly in the United States, and gun collectors often come to official gun buying places to get their hands on rare and valuable examples of rifles, machine guns or pistols. The collector's value of such weapons can be tens of thousands of dollars.

Gun buyback programs are available in several major US cities, including Los Angeles, Boston, Camden, Detroit and San Francisco. They are designed to reduce the volume of illegal trafficking in small arms, as well as the number of “barrels” legally (or again illegally) owned by citizens. As a rule, the authorities pay a reward for surrendered weapons, the amount of which is determined by the type of “barrel”: for a pistol you can get 50-100 dollars, for an automatic weapon ─ 200.

The purchase of small arms is carried out anonymously; in most cases, the person taking the test does not need to have any documents with him at all. The exception is San Francisco - only residents of the city can hand over a gun for a fee; when entering the police station, they must present a paid bill for housing or a driver's license (however, the checking police officer does not have the right to copy data from documents). The authorities are not interested in how this or that “trunk” got to the owner.

Typically, police buybacks of weapons are carried out over a period of one or two days and ends when the authorities' budget for this runs out. At one such event, held on December 15, 2012 in San Francisco, the police also ran out of money, and then they offered people to hand over their weapons for free or receive IOUs for them. When issuing receipts, anonymity was violated: the document must indicate the name of the owner, the number of the document presented and the type of weapon surrendered. The promissory notes were repaid a week later, on December 22, 2012.

In most states, standard procedure requires police officers to turn over purchased weapons to be melted down. As for rare or valuable samples, the police either transfer them to the museum or recommend that the owners resell the weapons to collectors at a much higher price.

Arizona is different from the rest of the country: in 2013, the state passed a law that prohibited police officers from disposing of weapons purchased from the public or captured during various operations. Now the “barrels” were ordered to be given to gun stores with a federal license for their subsequent resale (we are, of course, only talking about weapons permitted for private ownership - pistols, rifles, shotguns, automatic rifles without continuous fire mode).

In Los Angeles, gun buybacks have been held twice a year since 2009. In total, over the past five years, the city authorities have purchased more than 12 thousand units of various types of small arms. There is a reward of one hundred dollars for pistols, rifles and shotguns, and $200 for assault weapons. At the same time, this amount is not issued in cash ─ the owner of the “trunk” can receive for it a gift card in the amount of 100-200 dollars (with it you can go to Ralphs grocery stores) or a Visa bank card with the same amount in the account. Both gift and bank cards are issued to the bearer.

This is exactly what happened on December 14, 2013. The population handed over 817 small arms to the police for a total amount of 81.9 thousand dollars. The routine and ordinariness of the entire procedure was disrupted by one incident: among the handed over “barrels” there was a StG-44 assault rifle from the Second World War. The American who turned it in received a $200 grocery gift card.

A policeman demonstrates a purchased StG-44

It should be noted that this is not the first time that American police have bought StG-44 from private owners. The last time such a machine gun fell into the hands of law enforcement officers was during a gun buyback in Hartford, Connecticut in December 2012. According to police, the owner had no idea about the collectible value of the machine. She received a bank check for an undisclosed amount. The weapon was in excellent condition and was handed over to the museum.

The StG-44 assault rifle was developed by German designer Hugo Schmeisser in the first half of the 1940s and entered German service in 1944. The weapon was called an “assault rifle” (Strumgewehr) and in fact became the world’s first modern type assault rifle, created for an intermediate cartridge and mass-produced. The StG-44 is equipped with a hammer-type firing mechanism and can fire both single shots and bursts. The operation of the automation is based on the principle of removing powder gases from the barrel bore.

The barrel is locked by tilting the bolt. The fire mode translator flags are located on both sides of the trigger box. The weapon is equipped with a box magazine with a capacity of 30 rounds. The mass of the StG-44 with a caliber of 7.92 millimeters is 5.2 kilograms with a length of 940 millimeters. The machine's rate of fire is up to 600 rounds per minute, the sighting range is up to 600 meters. Many copies of the StG-44 were brought back as trophies by soldiers returning from the war. The police still find such “trunks” in the homes of deceased veterans.

Today, the collectible value of StG-44 on the American market starts from 30 thousand dollars, depending on its condition. Recently, such weapons are increasingly ending up on the “black” market. It is all the more surprising that the StG-44 in Los Angeles and Hartford were handed over to the police ─ usually, weapons collectors are on duty near small arms buy-back points, who “intercept” rare samples, paying significantly more than $200 for them, and in cash.

Such purchases of weapons by private owners are legal in many US states. Moreover, due to imperfect legislation, private owners have the right to resell their weapons without checking the buyers’ licenses or mental health certificates (only stores are required to do this). Such “duties” near official weapons purchase points displease the police, but they cannot counteract this. Sometimes collectors manage to buy original Mosin rifles or even pistols with flintlocks.

However, as we have already seen, sometimes the police are lucky too. In 1993, an American handed over to the authorities the personal revolver of the 25th US President Theodore Roosevelt, with whom he participated in hostilities in Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Roosevelt then commanded the Rough Riders, a volunteer cavalry regiment of the United States. A Colt Peacemaker .38 caliber revolver was stolen from a museum in 1990. The American who handed over the weapon to the police received a bank check in the amount of $20 as a reward.

In the last few years, American collectors have begun to organize their own large-scale buybacks of “trunks” from the public. The calendar of such events ─ official and unofficial ─ is maintained by the social news portal Reddit.

Weapons “intercepted” by private traders during an official buyback

Meanwhile, American regional authorities, concerned about regular incidents of shootings in schools, shopping centers and public institutions, are popularizing the idea of handing over “firearms” for a reward, even among citizens who, due to their young age, do not yet have the right to carry them. Thus, in December 2013, authorities in the Californian city of Hayward arranged a buyout of toy guns at an elementary school. In exchange for pneumatic and water pistols, schoolchildren were given books, and activists who handed in the largest number of guns received bicycles as a reward.

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