Expert: Seized firearm not a machine gun

Len Savage, a firearms expert for Historic Arms LLC, said it is often difficult to know what you are looking at in terms of a weapon and its capabilities, unless you know what to look for.

That is the case, Savage said, with the photo taken of a MG-42 type firearm, one of two machine gun-like weapons seized by Customs and Border Protection officers on July 10 at the U.S. Port of Entry at Andrade, Calif.

Savage, after reading the article, contacted the Yuma Sun wanting to clarify comments that readers had posted to the story on Yumasun.com. He said he couldn't tell from the first photograph whether the MG-42 was authentic or a replica.

But after reviewing a different photo of the machine gun, which was also taken by CBP officers and provided to him by the Yuma Sun, Savage said there is no doubt, based on the trigger housing, that it is a semiautomatic version of the MG-42 machine gun, and not an original.

“They fire in the same manner, use a different ammunition and just look like historic machine guns,” said Savage, who has been certified in several U.S. federal court districts as an expert in firearms and has testified in multiple trials.

Since the firearm is a semiautomatic version, not a fully automatic machine, it is legal to own in the United States. The attempt to illegally export them, he added, is very much illegal in both the U.S. and Mexico.

Victor Brabble, a CBP spokesman, confirmed Friday that the MG-42s they had seized were in fact semiautomatic versions of the weapon. Brabble also confirmed the driver was arrested for trying to smuggle the weapons into Mexico, not that the guns were illegal to own.

Savage is very familiar with the MG-42 version since Historic Arms helped the manufacturer with some design issues on the weapon a few years ago. He even has two of them in his shop. Historic Arms has also repaired an actual World War II MG-42 machine gun.

Savage also knows something about the SA-43 semiautomatic firearm, the semiautomatic version of the SG-43 Russian medium machine gun created by Peter Maximovitch, since Historic Arms LLC designed it.

While the MG-42 semiautomatic and fully automatic machine gun appear nearly identical externally, the trigger housing on the semiautomatic is different.

“Many times you can't tell unless you take the weapon apart, but that is not the case with this firearm,” Savage said. “It is not made to be a machine gun.”

The semiautomatic version MG-42, Savage said, cannot be easily converted into a machine gun due to internal changes in the design.

“It would take a gunsmith who had extensive machining skills to make it into something it is not.”

In the semiautomatic version of the MG-42, Savage said, the grip panels have been cut off to make more room in the trigger housing for the extra parts needed to make the firearm a semiautomatic.

In total, CBP officers found an MG-42 7.92 universal machine gun, a SA43 7.62 X54R MM machine gun, 680 rounds of ammunition, including 280 7.62 caliber rounds, 100 8mm caliber rounds, 100 22LR caliber rounds and 200.233 caliber rounds, and two boxes of machine gun ammunition links, used to fashion an automated belt for the machine gun ammunition.

At about 10:30 a.m. July 10, CBP officers inspecting vehicles leaving the United States heading into Mexico stopped a 20-year-old male U.S. citizen who is a resident of El Mirage, Ariz., driving a white Ford F-150 pickup.

A CBP officer referred the car and driver for a more intensive inspection, after noticing the driver displaying signs of nervousness. When CBP officers popped the pickup's hood, they discovered the two machine guns and two green ammunition containers strapped to the vehicle's engine with plastic zip ties. Upon further investigation, officers also found the ammunition.

James Gilbert can be reached at jgilbert@yumasun.com or 539-6854.