Doing research for a short story I'm writing for class that takes place in the late 80s as a bunch of inexperienced treasure hunters go looking for a atlantis type society within florida. What I'm curious about is when yugoslavian surplus small arms, my particular example being the m48 mauser hit the US market? I've seen use of them in footage from the 90s war so my best guess is post collapse, but I could be wrong. are there any good books on the subject of surplus entry into the united states? If the M48 wasn't there I know there are a thousand different mauser variations I could put in instead that had been shipped in to the united states.
i would also say post collapse is when they entered the market
yes, i would pick a different mauser
thanks anon. I'm gonna pour through some old gun magazines to see what the availability was at the time
just look up old gun ads
assuming the guns are for the treasure hunters, a mauser would be kind of an odd choice in the 80s, it’s like the high water mark for gun availability without restrictions
>just look up old gun ads
This. Hit up a library or see what you can find online, look at back issues of old gun magazines (and especially Shotgun News) and see what's being advertised there.
Or you could always just play it super safe and make it a German mauser as there were tons of those imported over the years or it could have been a GI bringback.
been perusing the Guns magazine archive but it only goes up to 1972. I'll check out shotgun news, do you know any good resources for finding old gun ads? like website archives etc
Mauser was a choice for a character who was pretty much just borrowing his fathers bolt gun.
Your local library might have microfilms of old newspapers they will go back quite a ways. Mine have issues since 1900 or so.
thanks. also having trouble finding shotgun news old mags on the web, any things specifically I should search? tried firearm news archive as well, no luck.
if it’s his pappys gun you want something even older
practically any ww2 surp or a remington 721/700 or something similar
Agreed. A Winchester model 70 would be another excellent option for a classic bolty boy for someone of that era.
Sorry, I don't know of any websites for that.
I do happen to remember that American Handgunner has its backissues online, if you google the title plus a year and month you will find them. Alas that's probably not the best magazine to search.
That's what I was going to suggest.
There probably are websites for this sort of thing too but I don't know of any to suggest. A few years ago I found one that was able to search a huge number of British newspapers and some of them could be viewed online at no cost but that wouldn't be of much use here.
thanks nonetheless anon.
Trickles of surplus were coming in since the end of WWII, but large quantity shipments didn't really become a thing until the 1990s. Despite the AWB, the 90s were kind of a golden age, especially for milsurp and slavshit lovers.
There was a huge influx in the 1960s.
Like really huge. That was also before they were being import marked.
So you can't really tell by looking at the gun, but the majority of the k98k mix masters came over during this time.
>large quantity shipments didn't really become a thing until the 1990s.
Because importing military firearms was banned by the Gun Control Act of 1968, and not de-banned until 1984. Prior to 1968 basically everyone in Western Europe was selling off their WW2 and earlier stuff as they re-armed for the Cold War.
>there're people that inherited bunch of guns like that and turned them all in to gun buybacks
Yeah, and? Morons donated a lot more valuable shit than that to gun buybacks.
More importantly, where can I buy a yugo mauser and not get raped
Only place I can think of is RTI, only problem is you might or might not get a very shit fixer upper gun