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Mocking Furriners, The Gun Thing

…which means that the Krauts don’t have a Second Amendment, as witnessed by this sad tale:

Granted, there’s a law in Germanland called the “War Weapons Control Act” which says you can’t own, for example, a Pzkw Mark V (Panther) — I assume it means a working tank;   otherwise, it’s nothing more than a museum piece…

…which old Klaus-Dieter’s clearly is.

And in any event, the old buzzard is eighty-four years old;  he’s hardly likely to launch a blitzkrieg on the local municipal offices, is he?

On the other hand:  70 assault rifles?  That’s impressive, even by Texas standards, although the alleged ammo stash (2,000 rounds) is woefully inadequate — assuming they’re the Stg-44’s 7.62x33mm Kurz cartridges, that’s less than one 30-round magazine per gun.

Also not enough to launch a decent assault on the local Ampt.

Now, the anti-tank “cannon” (seriously?) — even if it’s the teeny Pak 36 with its 37mm gun — would be kinda fun to take up to Boomershoot or to use in times of, shall we say, civic fun and games.  Had it been the fearsome 88mm KwK 36…well, now we’d be talking turkey.  But unlike the Pak 36, you can’t tow it behind your Ram — it’s way too heavy, even for the 5.7-liter engine.

But whatever the actual gun, there’s no mention of any ammo for the thing, which makes it all the more ridiculous that Klaus-Dieter’s been fined a quarter-million euros for owning it and the other decommissioned items.

Final note:  he kept it all in his basement.  Some basement.

And I’d love to get my hands on one of those Stg-44s, assuming they haven’t been wrecked.

14 comments

  1. The article says that they’re all up for sale…. I rather suspect the fine is going to be trivial compared to what he’ll receive from the sale. And you know you want that Panzer in your back garden! Hell, you still drive for Uber, don’t you? How much money would you make offering rides in it?

  2. What’s the point of having World War II memorabilia that isn’t functional? But 2,000 rounds per piece of “memorabilia” seems more appropriate. Except for the Panther and the 88.

  3. …the old buzzard is eighty-four years old; he’s hardly likely to launch a blitzkrieg on the local municipal offices, is he?
    .
    umm…. try me.

  4. I think you mean the PaK 43 rather than the KwK 36. The later was the main gun of the Tiger 1 tank whereas the PaK was a towed anti-tank weapon. Although the article repeatedly says it was an anti-aircraft gun, not anti-tank, so it probably wasn’t either of those; maybe a Flak 18/36/37/41.

      1. Nope. It’s a parallel design using common ammunition, not a copy. It’s like the difference between different Mossberg 500 series guns (copies) vs a 1911 compared to a modern Kimber (parallel).

        https://infogalactic.com/info/8.8_cm_KwK_36

        And frankly, any version of a FLAK 88 with the ammo to feed it should be the centerpiece of every neighborhood defense plan. It’s probably the only thing I would take over a QF-1 on a field carriage (justifying the difficulty in moving it.)

  5. The saddest part of the tale, “The police showed up because they received reports of him having Nazi sculptures in his back yard” . Which means he was probably snitched on by a neighbor. And the Panther could not have been much of a secret. So I’m betting as the neighborhood oldies died off, and got replaced by the more important new wokies, it was just too much for the good “Neues Deutchlanders” to bear. FFS MYOFB people. I live in a neighborhood where I would gladly like to have a neighbor with a well maintained backyard no matter what sculptures were stored therein, rather than derelict car bodies.

    The most saddest part is the STG44’s probably wont be making their way across the Atlantic, given .gov prez “Slobberin’ Joe” and “Jiz breath Kamala”

    1. Pak 43 and Kwk 43 were entirely different beasts, altogether. It was 88mm bore, but L71 barrel firing a much more powerful 88x822mm R cartridge rather than the 88x571mm R of the earlier L56 cannons. AFAIM, that was an antitank or tank cannon (Tiger II)

    2. I would hope there was an FG-42 or two in the collection. But they’d never make it to this country, and I could dream of being able to contend for it.

    3. Dammit, my first comment went to the wrong place. I don’t how I botched it, but I must’ve.

  7. Back in the eighties, a group used to hold wargames (World in Flames board game) at my apartment. This particular game had a large map with thousands of counters and could last over a year, playing once a week for four or five hours. We held it at my apartment because I had an extra room where it could remain set up and no roaming pets to disturb the map board.

    One of the participants was also a Civil War reenactor. He was in the movie Glory. He showed up at my apartment one game night with something big, wrapped in a blanket, on his shoulder. He was getting into WWI reenactments and it was a water-cooled Maxim trench gun. He was in the process of going through the grueling paperwork process that would allow it’s use with blanks. What a piece of history.

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