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Mystery of the KOTCS M1/M2 Carbine!

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 1:56 pm
by WetDigger
Indy's hero prop M1 carbine from the warehouse scene in KOTCS was up for auction at the Prop Store recently.
https://propstore.com/mobile/product/in ... e-display/

I noticed a little tidbit of information in the item description that had me scratching my head.
This real M1 Carbine rifle, which was modified from an M2 Carbine, features a dark wood stock, metal barrel, bolt and trigger, as well as the screen used green shoulder strap.
The M2 carbine was an automatic firing (a BATF Class III Machine gun) variant of the M1, and featured a selector switch that is visible on the left hand side of the reciever. There was definitely a selector on the rifle when it was on set, but it is not on the rifle that was up for auction:
Image

The prop store mentions that no deactivation of the firearm was performed, and that an overseas buyer would have to have this procedure done to the rifle to ship it overseas. The auction made no mention or Buyer Beware notification that they would have to go through the BATF tax stamp process to legally own this item. A huge list of questions suddenly come to mind. What was done to make this no longer a live firing machine gun? To my knowledge the M2 receiver is the part that makes it a Class III firearm and removing parts such as the selector switch and sear from the rifle do not qualify as "deactivation" or nullification of its "machine gun" status. Could it be that the "modification" Prop Store mentions is that the screen identified and matched wooden stock was mounted on a legal to own semi-automatic M1 carbine instead, therefore not making this the real hero prop it was advertised to be? :-k

Re: Mystery of the KOTCS M1/M2 Carbine!

Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 9:12 pm
by Kokopelli
I know this is an old post, but I'm surprised there were no replies...

As far as the ATF is concerned " once a machine-gun, always a machine-gun". A machine gun cannot be 'modified' in any way to make it own able if it isn't 'own able' already, be it is a registered pre-86 on the NFA or a post dealer sample.

The only thing they could do is strip it and rebuild it on an M1 receiver.

I wonder what the outcome if this was...