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Stolen US Government ordnance sold on eBay

Interesting, however, what exactly is " stolen"? Most everyone's ordnance collection here is technically " stolen" .....range pick ups, items stuffed in duffel bags,vet items shipped home, WW2 era items without a letter from the CO, to modern ordnance with out a scrap tag or release form is "stolen" from US .gov. I see you are from England, the laughable " laws" they have come up with are utter nonsense and mind boggling to us living in a free country, the US. That said, here in the States, even buying from a retail outlet would mean little without a release form of some kind. Seems there is more to this story.
 
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Interesting, however, what exactly is " stolen"? Most everyone's ordnance collection here is technically " stolen" .....range pick ups, items stuffed in duffel bags,vet items shipped home, WW2 era items without a letter from the CO, to modern ordnance with out a scrap tag or release form is "stolen" from US .gov. I see you are from England, the laughable " laws" they have come up with are utter nonsense and mind boggling to us living in a free country, the US. That said, here in the States, even buying from a retail outlet would mean little without a release form of some kind. Seems there is more to this story.

While I understand your point, to a certain degree I would respectfully disagree. The US for scores of years has turned thousands of tons of inert ordnance material over to the public in property disposal sales. This property was sold, it does not require a release form. In addition, until relatively recently (1990s in part) items turned over as scrap for destruction were simply written off. It was not until the Fontana fatality incident that many of the rules were changed and more contracts started stipulating how the scrap was to be destroyed by the scrapyard. For decades I and many others have enjoyed visits to these scrapyards to dig through the materials discarded by the government and freely (by the ton) available for purchase.

There is or course a significant amount of theft however, and any tech that steals from his unit should be prosecuted. The unit comes before all else, it needs its training materials. Taking something trashed from unit scrap is still theft, but at least it is not from the unit. Another detail is that today there is no such thing as permission from the CO. The CO does not have ownership and cannot give permission. You mention WWII, but just before this thread began I had the same discussion with the last "owner" of the Excalibur in question. Other items were mentioned where he told me that the back story was that "the Commander wanted to get rid of......." Not the Commander's to get rid of, his to turn over to property disposal.

There is a lot of gray area in collecting, and I can live with much of it. Stealing from your unit and selling it for profit however is not acceptable.
 
Not true, flak18.

I was once interviewed by the Police because the manufacturer of an item that resembled one I was selling on eBay, had implied that Police were stealing and selling items that should have been returned to that manufacturer after use.

My link to the IAA forum thread was intended as a heads up for anyone that may have purchased, or was considering purchasing, any of the items whose ownership was in question.
 
I know, I understood what was the purpose of your post and I appreciate the heads up....my reply was really directed elsewhere.
 
The items primary that led to this investigation were a factory cutaway Excalibur round and a PGK fuse. There is a bigger trail of stuff to be found on Ebay sales. BIG HUGE difference from some picked up rounds from the range.
 
Not trying to confuse the issue, but as often happens the thread has grown to encompass more than the original subject. I was not referring to items picked up on the range, though the Fontana reference may have misled. Even at Fontana though, in the 5000 tons of ordnance scrap there were museum pieces, EOD collection pieces and many other unusual items, all dumped and sold off by the govt. The US routinely has sold off as scrap tons of unused items for many years. When I was young you could find the 30mm projos everywhere, sold off as surplus. Live HE ordnance (typically foreign imports) could be purchased. Then it was Navy drill rounds that were everywhere. In recent years at every gun show you could see the BLU-3 (BDU) red-orange subs, or the blue baseball subs. Thousands of empty M1 chemical mines were sold off as "water cans". Not of these were stolen, all were released by government sales. In an instance related to the Excalibur I just recently looked at some documents releasing AIM-9 drill components from the depot in a scrap sale. As you mention, the Excalibur is a cat of a different color and I believe it should be prosecuted, as well as the related items. But statements like "Most everyone's ordnance collection here is technically " stolen", and "even buying from a retail outlet would mean little without a release form of some kind" are misleading and detrimental to collecting. Just because someone adds a requirement today does not change what was allowed yesterday. Track down stolen items and deal with them, but don't assume all items are stolen based on your own (collective) limited experience.
 
I did not mean to ruffle any feathers. I am in your camp and should have reworded my initial response, it was based on the " general public's perception". I take a lot of time and haul my ordnance collection to air shows, vet events and other shows. The most common response from many ( left wing, gun hating, ill informed, scared snowflakes) is how did you get this? Is it illegal? Etc.....even had the local PD called out at one big event to look at my display...turned out the two officers, one was a Gulf War Bradley gunner, looked around and stated it was " cool" and did I know where he could get a 25mm round...I gave him one....he at least knew what blue and gold colored rounds were, and what " inert" meant. Almost unbelievable what the perception is. That said, I have picked up a few nice pieces from the scrap yards, and from some who saw my display and asked if I wanted to buy one of their pieces. That said, I plan to continue collecting all these " evil looking, illegal, old door stops, dangerous pieces of scrap metal and mass destruction".
 
I did not mean to ruffle any feathers. I am in your camp and should have reworded my initial response, it was based on the " general public's perception". I take a lot of time and haul my ordnance collection to air shows, vet events and other shows. The most common response from many ( left wing, gun hating, ill informed, scared snowflakes) is how did you get this? Is it illegal? Etc.....even had the local PD called out at one big event to look at my display...turned out the two officers, one was a Gulf War Bradley gunner, looked around and stated it was " cool" and did I know where he could get a 25mm round...I gave him one....he at least knew what blue and gold colored rounds were, and what " inert" meant. Almost unbelievable what the perception is. That said, I have picked up a few nice pieces from the scrap yards, and from some who saw my display and asked if I wanted to buy one of their pieces. That said, I plan to continue collecting all these " evil looking, illegal, old door stops, dangerous pieces of scrap metal and mass destruction".

Not really ruffled and certainly no hard feelings -
Using the Bombatorium I do a lot of training with different law enforcement groups at different levels - local, State, Federal. The most frequent training I give begins with some of the ways that ordnance gets to the street. The first two methods I discuss are theft, either as theft of "cool" or illicit items (live grenades, claymores, etc.) with whatever intent, or theft as mistaken materials that make it out with/as stolen scrap metal from ranges and impact areas. I go on to point out however that there are a great many ways that ordnance has historically made it to the street that are perfectly legal. I try to imprint on many of these officers that the collector is not automatically your foe, in many ways they can be an asset. Sometimes this can be a struggle, as most law enforcement exposure with ordnance and collectors is when a problem comes up. Accidents, live items, the types of incidents that all collectors fear can result in restrictions and impressions that will hurt the field. As such, I may be a little over-sensitive to comments made on forums such as ours that can be misinterpreted to give a different impression.
 
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