IIRC in Florida, many agencies were very bad about returning firearms to those who had used them and were found to be well within the law in doing so. I believe that Miami was the worst offender. This has led to multiple lawsuits being filed against the municipality. I cannot recall if the state passed legislation this last, or the one before it stating that the cities must return said weapons after it is determined that they were acting in a lawful manner.
Why are sawed off shotguns illegal anyway? The only argument I heard has to do with concealability, but there are already laws that deal with concealing weapons without a permit, and anyone who wants to commit a crime by hiding a shotgun is just going to go ahead and do it anyway.
My father-in-law had a rifle taken away by game wardens who charged him with killing a female elk illegally when he only had a "male" tag. He explained why he killed the female elk - his buddy wounded the female but then went into a nervous panic mode (buck fever it's called). So, my FIL had to finish it off. They his rifle back to him at the trial, only after using his rifle to fire rounds into a different, male juvenile too-young elk (that had already been killed by another game violator that got away) and digging out the rounds to be used as evidence. Bottom line: no doubt there was a match between my FIL's rifle and the male elk, but a GAME WARDEN fired those rounds into the male elk to pin it on my FIL. The fine for killing the young male was much greater than for killing the mature female, and Arizona would make more money off the fine. Also wardens had been staking out the elk herd that contained the young male elk, and the wardens wanted to prove that they were successful in catching the suspects responsible and didn't waste time on a stake-out - politics as usual. My FIL confessed to killing the female but the court just denied that it ever happened! They said he killed a male elk (in a location miles from where he was actually hunting) and had the bullets to prove it. For some reason, my FIL has nothing but resentment for the Arizona Game & Fish...go figure.
Shoes has the best explanation for this. Basically it comes from Miller Vs. The United States back in the 30s.
if you wana play by the ATF's retarded rules, just have them register it as a short barreled shotgun and pay for the $5 tax stamp
I can see the butthurt against "military style weapons" as referring to the Chicago Typewriter, not that this decision kept ant mobsters from using the things, but I can't see it against sawed off shotguns. I've actually seen trench guns from WWI, and while they were shorter than hunting versions and had an air cooler around their barrels, they weren't as short as sawed-offs, and frankly I can't see the argument that would define sawed off shotguns as being a military only weapon.
Why don't we just have The Judiciary, Legislative, and Executive branches just go into the National Archives, smash the plexiglass protecting the Constitution with Pelosi's hard plastic face, and tear it up into confetti. It's not as though anyone in the government pays attention to it anyway. And then they'll be free to do whatever the hell they want. Pass Obamacare, take our guns, legally shoot the Wall Street protestors. Hell, I'm still looking for the part in the Constitution that allows the federal government to collect income taxes, invade the bedrooms like Santorum would have us do, or legally allow federal prohibitions on drugs. They aren't in there. And the Constitution specifically states that if it's not in the Constitution, it's the purview of the individual States.
IIRC (don't feel like looking it up), the government's arguement in that case was that a sawed-off shotgun didn't have a legitimate military use.
