US civilian firearm industry penetrates the European markets.
- Thread starter JosephWorld
- Start date
Oddly enough that is not entirely true. The Nazis disarmed political opponents (and in some region jews) in 33 based on provisions in the 28 gun laws. Their own 38 law removed any control on the purchase of long arms. Some restrictions taken over from the old laws still gave options to prevent e.g. communists from buying a handgun, but it almost seems like the Nazis did want a population armed with rifles and shotguns. The only group officially banned from buying a handgun were non-sedentaries ("gipsies and people living like gipsies"), while jews "only" were banned from gun manufacturing. Of course by then they were marginalized enough for gun purchases to be a non-issue. Still a nationwide disarmament of Jews only happened after the november progroms 38, previous moves in that direction were initiated by regional functionaries.
The only advantage Nazi functionaries (but not common members) had, was not to need a carrying permit. Then again the same was true for people working for road maintenance on the Autobahn.
A point to be made here is that any POD that causes a significant shift in European is going to happen at a time when American gun culture was itself practically unrecognizable compared to today.
American gun culture has (d)evolved a rediculous amount in the last 35 years, shifting from a focus on sporting use and collecting to an overwhelming emphasis on self-defense and 2A fundamentalism.
As for American gun makers penetrating a European civilian market, there was always a strong tendency for people to purchase consumer goods locally in the days before globalism. If you lived in Nebraska, you bought an American bicycle (Schwinn), an American sewing machine (Kenmore), an American shotgun (Mossberg), and an American toaster (GE). In Sweden, you bought a Swedish bicycle (Husqvarna), a Swedish sewing machine (Husqvarna), a Swedish shotgun (Husqvarna), and a Swedish toaster (I dunno, probably Husqvarna). Unless your foreign competition can offer something unique or less expensive, your local manufacturers will fill the market need, and if the market grows they will grow with it.
American gun culture has (d)evolved a rediculous amount in the last 35 years, shifting from a focus on sporting use and collecting to an overwhelming emphasis on self-defense and 2A fundamentalism.
As for American gun makers penetrating a European civilian market, there was always a strong tendency for people to purchase consumer goods locally in the days before globalism. If you lived in Nebraska, you bought an American bicycle (Schwinn), an American sewing machine (Kenmore), an American shotgun (Mossberg), and an American toaster (GE). In Sweden, you bought a Swedish bicycle (Husqvarna), a Swedish sewing machine (Husqvarna), a Swedish shotgun (Husqvarna), and a Swedish toaster (I dunno, probably Husqvarna). Unless your foreign competition can offer something unique or less expensive, your local manufacturers will fill the market need, and if the market grows they will grow with it.
Yep I've heard the Abortion/ lead theories and I can see each playing a part but they dont seem to explain it all. Honestly I think its one of the biggest American mysteries in the past century.
marathag
Banned
Thanks in no small part from the '70s Gun Control, Inc, real name then, Brady Center now, to Sen. Feinstein 'Mr and Mrs America, turn them all in' in the mid '90s, yeah, things got really polarized, and the pendulum swing, that hasn't stopped yet.
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Actually, Colt shut down operations altogether in Britain due to poor sales.
The British Adams Revolver was considered vastly superior, being the world's first successful Double-Action.
Going by YouTube the sort of people who want to own guns are also the sort of people I don't want to have guns.
Even if there was a change in European gun laws*, the US gun industry would still have to compete against European gun manufacturers. I don't see many/any unique selling points of the US manufacturer's they could leverage here. Especially when licensing is also a thing.
*and that difference is as much to do with different attitudes towards the role of guns in society than just the presence of guns in abstract. i.e the markets are different in other areas than just scale.
*and that difference is as much to do with different attitudes towards the role of guns in society than just the presence of guns in abstract. i.e the markets are different in other areas than just scale.
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Sweden adapted its first restrictions on gun ownership in 1927 and even then they were pretty lax.
If you could motivate to the police that you were under any kind of threat, you got a license for handguns - licenses were automatically awarded to to rural female school teachers, as they usually lived alone in the school and were unfortunately targeted in rapes.
Owning any kind of land or being part of a hunting group also meant automatic approval for long guns - rifles and shotguns.
Gun ownership was not that popular, due to the limited usage for guns and the high cost. Most had better things to spend their money on.
If you could motivate to the police that you were under any kind of threat, you got a license for handguns - licenses were automatically awarded to to rural female school teachers, as they usually lived alone in the school and were unfortunately targeted in rapes.
Owning any kind of land or being part of a hunting group also meant automatic approval for long guns - rifles and shotguns.
Gun ownership was not that popular, due to the limited usage for guns and the high cost. Most had better things to spend their money on.
It's amazing just how open/easy it used to be to purchase firearms in parts of Europe in the early 20th century/late 19th century. Like my earlier example of British police (which have for the most part been mostly unarmed outside of NI since the formation of th London Met police) in a big public chase involving them chasing armed Lithuanian anarchists who had robbed a factory payroll and then hijacked a trolley to escape. In multiple examples the unarmed cops chasing the Anarchists were just kind of randomly lended handguns by random Londoners who were just kind of walking around carrying revolvers. I think it might have been legally possible to just kind of walk into a gun shop and purchase a revolver and ammo and then just walk out with them. Amazing to think it was just that fucking easy and open to obtain but that British police were mostly unarmed.
Or the other incident I mentioned of a Bicycling guide from the late 1800s/early 1900s that was reprinted a few years back and got in trouble because they hadn't bothered to check or update the list of "essential gear for a long distance bicyclist" which included as one of the most essential things to be a revolver (I think in the list it's explicitly said that they're needed to shoot dogs. Which admittedly might have actually been neccessary at the time. Considering the lack of animal control and for whatever other reasons there were a lot of instances of bicyclists in the time being attacked by either individual feral dogs or entire packs and being badly injured. So needing a gun to shoot random dogs was probably kind of needed. But today for your average European bicyclist being told they absolutely need to purchase and carry a handgun to carry while bicycling so they can shoot dogs is probably not going to sound right to most 21st century Europeans.)
Mail order, from ads in the back pages of weekly magazines. At least in Sweden.
For a modern cyclist, Scythed wheels, for Pedestrians who don't seem to think that cycle lanes are a real thing, and an M20 Recoilless Rifle, as with the Vespa 150 TAP, for car and van drivers who think the same; would seem to be appropriate?
What about for car drivers or pedestrians for when dealing with drunken cyclcists who weaves through multiple incoming lanes of traffic, refuse to stop at any kind of intersection of any sorts, or basically do their best to say drive pedestrians into the road?
In the US in the 1920s you used to be able to mail order brand new Thompson SMGs or BAR automatic without any restrictions and have them deliver complete with magazines in the mail. They were expensive as hell for the era so that and for cultural reasons they didn't sell very well.
You could also mail order WW1 surplus fully automatic Vickers, Maxims, Hotchkiss, German, Lewis and Browning fully auto air or watercooled machine guns cheap as hell.
Those still didn't sell very well even if they were cheap. I mean Americans were poorer at the time but even still sales were low. Mostly cultural reasons I imagine. Today even if the prices were comparatively as high today as they were in the 1920s and they were selling just newly made 1920's vintage Thompson SMGs and BAR automatic rifles variants with all their flaws in the mail with the same complete lack of restrictions you'd probably sell at least a million on the first day cash up front even if it meant a waiting list of years. I mean ironically enough the Reagan Era firearms act that banned personal civilian sale of fully auto weapons but grandfathered in existing legal automatic weapons (and I believe any that were brought in during a grace period were also legalized). Even with the (for the US) extremely strict regulations in place that make obtain a class 3 Firearms license a process that can easily just by itself take years of paperworks and bureaucratic hurdles and cost like over 10K (that's just for the license process not even going into buying the gun) the relative rarity/lack of new legal automatic weapons, and cultural changes mean that say a crappy Mac 10 that's worn to hell and probably cost the equivalent of about maybe a 100 modern bucks to make when it was new and is in condition where without the act it might sell for like fifty bucks now sells for I think like over 30K (not including the mandatory 300 dollar tax stamp needed for each and every transfer of a Class 3 weapon between Class 3 license holders). Things like say M2 .50BMG Browning HMG's go for well over 100K. I think the handful of modern electric or gas powered Gatling/Mini guns in legal circulation easily fetch more then a million a piece (Not including the fact that about a minute of full auto fire from such can eat up ammo that cost about 10K to purchase).
The combination of difficulty to acquire a Class 3 License (and the fact that if you break the relevent laws you lose the license that took you years and thousands of dollars to get and I believe can never get one back), the difficulty and percieved scarcity of said legally transferrable full auto weapons (Despite in a country of 300 million odd people there being something like over 300K legally transferable full auto weapons), and the fact that even purchasing a low grade one basically means that your average owner is a 67 year old Orthodontist with a successful practice has meant that since the law has been passed their has been exactly one murder with a legal full auto weapon by a holder of a class 3 License. So 1 murder in fifty years despite hundreds of thousands being in circulation. And even that case the killer was a Policeman (who quite probaby would have been able to legally use his stastus to get around a complete and total legal ban) who murdered a drug dealer who had sold his daughter some narcotics that were laced with something (that I think the dealer knew about beforehand) that caused a lethal OD. The cop in his grief took revenge by murdering the dealer. And that's been the one and only case of a legal full auto firearm being used in a murder by a Class 3 License holder since the law was passed in like 1986. Arguably the single most effective gun control measure (successful in terms of legal firearms not transferring to illegal circles and not being used by legal owners to commit illegal crimes and not be involved in gun homicides) in American history and to a startling degree. Not saying a similar act for more widely held and common firearms would be possible. Just astounded by how successful the law has been. I mean just thinking in terms of probabilities you'd think that their would be more cases of them being used in say drunken arguments that lead to say the murder of a romantic partner or something in that period of time.
marathag
Banned
Never had the spare cash to pick up the Lahti 20mm AT Rifles, or the French 25mm AT guns that were available as surplus until 1968, the 20mm (with the bonus ski/sled kit
) for $99, and the Hotchkiss was I think $129, freight FOBWhen I was a kid, you could still go to the local hardware store and get quarter sticks of Dynamite for stump clearing.
Never had the spare cash to pick up the Lahti 20mm AT Rifles, or the French 25mm AT guns that were available as surplus until 1968, the 20mm (with the bonus ski/sled kit
When I was a kid, you could still go to the local hardware store and get quarter sticks of Dynamite for stump clearing.
Samuel Cumming eventual founder of Interarms (one of the largest international sellers of used military firearms either sold to various 3rd world force or to civilians) got his start in firearms when he was six at some point in the 1920s when digging through the trash outside of an American legion post he found some manner of fully functioning water cooled maxim gun in working condition (Don't know if it was say captured German, a original style Maxim, a Vickers gun or a M1917 Browning). He then proceeded to openly stick the water cooled HMG (without even bothering to cover it) into his little red wagon and then dragged it a couple miles home. Because the 1920s were the type of time when dozens of random people could see a six year old child openly dragging a fucking fully auto watercooled HMG in a little red wagon and not care enough to do or say anything about it.
Cummings also bought a large supply of aforementioned Lahti AT rifles. He didn't find any real success at selling even tiny numbers of them and ended up resorting to just handing them out as gifts to big civilian or military clients officers and such. They ended up getting banned because of a weird case of someone using one to blast open a bank vault.