There are many more situations where deactivated firearms are appropriate and necessary, this is not a "Walter Mitty" issue.HH1 wrote:I guess that there are two types of civilians for whom deacts have an appeal:
1. Those who once served in the forces and used fully functional versions of these firearms.
2. Those who never had the chance to own the real thing, either by virtue of not being old enough to enjoy them, back when they were actually legal, (hand guns / semi-auto centerfire) or would never have passed a medical in order to join the armed forces/police etc.
I have worked in schools delivering talks and activities on military history. It is not appropriate to bring in live section 1 (or 5) firearms in to most schools for children to handle. For many children putting on a loaded set of webbing and picking up a Lee Enfield offers the chance to experience history now only found in books.
Similarly a colleague of mine does a great presentation on the history of the Machine gun corps where he teaches school groups how to operate deactivated Vickers and Lewis guns in teams according to the period manuals.
When we do film work the risk assessments say we have to use deactivated firearms if at all possible as the close supervision required for sometimes hundreds of armed extras (who are not too bright at times) would be impossible with live firearms. Even Section 5 armourers carry large stocks of deactivated firearms for this reason.
Sad as it is i would rather see a firearm deactivated and kept for display use than completely destroyed.