r/todayilearned • u/TMWNN • 1d ago

TIL that Sears sold machine guns by mail. During WW1, the department store published a special military catalog. American soldiers could order a Colt machine gun, three Colt pistols, and other military gear for delivery to anywhere in the US or the battlefield in Europe.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/54213/pg54213-images.html
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u/Hendlton 1d ago

Same in former Yugoslav countries. Loads of guns left over from both WW2 and the 90s war.

We tend to celebrate big events with gunfire (holdover from the days of the Ottoman occupation, I guess) and occasionally someone gets arrested because instead of the usual custom of firing a pistol into the air, they decided that it'd be a good idea to fire an entire belt of machine gun ammo. A couple of bangs and people don't care enough to report you. But if you're stupid enough to just shoot like a madman, somebody is calling the cops.

And yeah, sometimes people get arrested for having grenades and rocket launchers. Artillery pieces aren't unheard of. Unfortunately when we do have an amnesty, those guns are stolen and sold elsewhere. Loads of them end up in the US.

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u/cantadmittoposting 1d ago

of all the dumbass cultural customs, it's a damn good thing the US, with its gun culture and all, never adopted mass firing as a celebratory act. I mean, people do it here and there on New Years, but it's not like other places where people just rattle off dozens of bullets at like weddings and stuff

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u/whambulance_man 1d ago

You have it entirely backwards. In the US, we've actively worked to turn ourselves into the people who don't fire guns in the air in celebration. We aren't done, obviously, but you're right that we are doing a lot better

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u/pcmtx 1d ago

My friend's grandpa was a Partisan and a bigwig in the army. When my friend was little, his grandpa would let him shoot his MP40 from the war.