Читать книгу Standard Catalog of Military Firearms. The Collector's Price and Reference Guide онлайн

32 страница из 162

End of the Line?

The end of the first era of firearm importation came with the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968. This law banned the importation of military surplus firearms and established the “sporting use” criteria for new guns that is still applied to firearm imports today. The import ban was actually supported by much of the U.S. sporting arms industry. The publicly stated reason was concern about the quality and safety of the old military guns made in other nations under questionable conditions. In fact, they did not like the competition from lower priced firearms that were, in some cases, of better quality than the stuff they were making here.

Of course, there were already millions of foreign military firearm here. Over the next 16 years the supply dwindled but never quite ran out. A few small lots of police-issued surplus firearms were permitted in if it could be proved that they were not used by any military force. During this time, the number of collector publications and clubs expanded. More shooters got interested in the military firearms as historical items rather than as inexpensive guns to be used for hunting.