What's up with guns hidden/stashed in walls?

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I very briefly owned an early Damascus double barrel that was found in an abandoned building on a coworkers farm. I bought his reloading bench...a whole pickup truck load...and that was in the stash. The gun was a wreck. The barrels and frame were there, rabbit ear hammers were broken, buttstock broken, forend cracked badly, firing pins stuck. I gave it to another buddy who made a stock for it and "aged" that buttstock. It's now hanging in his manroom. At the top of the vaulted cieling.

I also have a great uncle who nearly left his ruger 9 shot 22 (pre mk 1) to oblivion. He is in bad shape, and had used the gun to shoot at the boys trying to steal his cattle a couple years back..my 2nd cousins who were moving the herd to a fresh pasture. Luckily between shaking hands and failing eyesight none of those shots connected. That Sunday while he was at church his grandsons got into his house and rounded up all the guns and ammo. They couldn't find that 22. After a few days my grandma got a phone call. She knew more about my great uncle than anyone, and she told them what door facing to open up and how it opened up. Inside were a few gold coins, the ruger, the family bible, and a single photo of him and his wife on their honeymoon. He was already wearing his uniform. He was married on Sunday following church, and departed for the European front the following thursday.
 
When I moved into my home I found several gun ...parts. :mad: No guns. The best was a stock for a .303 jungle carbine. I kept for a long time. a couple of years ago I sent it to a fellow high road member that was working on his rifle. So I guess it finally found a good home.

Mark
 
Two true stories:

The coolest thing I ever found inside a wall was when my dad decided to remodel the bathroom in our house. The old medicine cabinet above the sink had a little slot in the back where the man of the house could dispose of his used razor blades. When dad removed the medicine cabinet from the wall, we found a stack of old razor blades that had accumulated for maybe 80 years on a horizontal 2X4 brace between two studs. It was a perfect "bell" curve several inches high, tapering symmetrically on both sides. No gun, unfortunately.

Story #2:

Several years ago, the Stone Chapel on the campus of Drury University in Springfield, Missouri was remodeled for the first time in about 100 years. Inside one of the walls was found the mummy of a cat. The cat had evidently been sealed inside the wall during the original construction. The mummified cat is on display in the Science building, identified as a "victim of compulsory chapel attendance."

No gun there either.

http://newsroom.drury.edu/dunews/tag/mummified-cat/
 
I never found anything in a wall, but there is a house in Chicago that contains my grandfather’s police service revolver in its foundation.
 
Found a dozen 40's through 50's nudie mags stashed in the last houses attic crawl space. Women never go out of style!.
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the time they remodeled a house and found Jimmy Hoffa in the foundation.:)

(Seriously, though, some pretty cool stories in this thread.)
 
You are correct HexHead,,,

No different than the "survivalists" burying guns in their backyard now.
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After reading a few posts about the NFA of 1934,,,
I guess the fear of confiscation was as real back then as now.

I was not aware of that before these posts.

Aarond

.
 
Prior to 68 I didn't have people calling the cops because I was openly carrying a firearm...and didn't have to educate the cops concerning the legality of doing so. Prior to 68 this state didn't have this silly notion that open carry of a firearm automagically turned into concealed carry just because you got into your vehicle. ;)
 
Back in the late '60's my uncle and his friend were going through the original homestead house on the family farm in south central Iowa before it was used by the volunteer fire department for practice.
The master bedroom walk-in closet was really just a wide shallow closet and above the door inside the closet hung on nails, they found an old percussion muzzle loader with brass furniture, full-length curly maple stock and 40" octagonal barrel with a small caliber bore. The lock was missing and most of the finish was gone off the stock and the brass was tarnished greenish. The barrel was browned but there was lots of rust in the bore. The folks had lived there for 40 years and never knew that gun was there.
 
I've thought about stashing a couple cheap handguns and ammo in a wall before, behind drywall, for emergency use. Never did it though. But my plan was to oil them real good and vac seal them, and put a razor knife with them to cut the bag open with.

Funny, I removed the rusty old medicine cabinet in my grandparents house long ago and also found a heap of old razor blades! Found some old guns in the closet nobody knew Grandpa had, but nothing "hidden".

The guns weren't special, an old Iver Johnson .410 single that had been painted black, a bolt action .410 which I still have, and a Winchester .22 Automatic in .22 Win Auto. I sold the Iver Johnson, wish I hadn't.

Gave the Winchester to my oldest brother, he still has it and ain't giving it back. There was some ammo for it, I recall it shot very well and was quite accurate, but that ammo was very weak and powerless. Nothing like .22lr. Nearly impossible to find that ammo now, but I'd still like to have that rifle back. At least he gave me some photos of it.

grandpaswin22auto01.jpg
 
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Up this way in the Arctic, we have old 1/2 earth homes of lumber and sod, that were small but easy to heat and build. The rivers here cut into the old ones, just "pits" now as we call em, but odds and ends fall out now and then.The ocean high points and shores, and river banks can have mounds from the secsessive generations that built and rebuilt along them. Thousands of years of occupation is some locals.
I once found a brass Henry Rifle reciver frame with a rusted stub of a barrel left, that had fallen to the sand bar below, from an old sod house that the river had cut into. Found many things there, stone lamp, a bundle of nails, flint knife, slate knife, Musket flints, lead balls parts of an old extending telescope, lead bars and some small bone and Ivory 'things' as well as a crushed/folded sheet of copper that might have been a kettle. It was all covered in black ash soot, which sorta indicates it was burned out, possibly in a raid or such. Most likely from the mid to later 1800's. Trade goods from whaling ships were common by then, and yet local goods were still in heavy use.

I wish I knew what happened to that Henry receiver.
 
Story #2:

Several years ago, the Stone Chapel on the campus of Drury University in Springfield, Missouri was remodeled for the first time in about 100 years. Inside one of the walls was found the mummy of a cat. The cat had evidently been sealed inside the wall during the original construction. The mummified cat is on display in the Science building, identified as a "victim of compulsory chapel attendance."
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Here is a reference to your chapel cat. http://www.courier-journal.com/article/DO/20131028/NEWS04/310280017

There are a lot of ways animals can get inside of walls of homes or buildings and eventually die there. However, there was a historic practice of "walling up cats" that is an old European tradition brought over here by settlers and that was apparently done in the US by such groups.

The practice was one of pest control, such as like the use of a scarecrow. A cat (sometimes believed live [immurement], sometimes dead) was placed in a wall during construction or repair for the purpose of deterring rodents. Sometimes they were posed and sometimes they would be posed with a dead mouse or rat under the front paws or in the mouth.

I actually came across an article about this practice that immediately post-dated WWII where there were some 30 or 40 instances of this found in Great Britain during rebuilding after the bombings of WWII. The article documented numerous other singular instances form Europe and a few from the US. Apparently, the practice goes back into medieval times.

Here is an online ref I found...
http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/08/12/dried-cats/
 
I know of a local guy who "walled up" a few guns. He didn't have a safe and was afraid of someone steeling them. He knew they were valuable and wanted to hang on to them for a while but had no desire to shoot them. So he put them in a wall.
 
I recall reading a post several years ago (probably here at THR) about an, apparently, little-used Thompson SMG found sealed in the wall of an old house along with a few boxes of ammo ... and, possibly, the late'20s-early'30s purchase receipt(?).

There was a link to the newspaper article which included a photo, IIRC.

Perhaps someone concerned about the NFA?
 
I too recall reading of a Chicago contractor some years back who upon tearing out a wall ran upon---you guessed it. A Thompson subgun hidden in a wall. He called the police. Hmmm. Read it on the internet so it must have been true. Don't know what I'd have done. I'm so confused! Don.
 
lord teapot said:
confiscation, within most of our lifetimes, is coming.
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Nope, at least not in the United States.

Law makers are well aware that IF the second amendment was ever repealed AND such a thing actually passed, the next election would make the Democratic losses of 1994 (election immediately after the passing of the "Assault Weapon Ban") appear as an insignificant blip. The exact same reason that nothing has been done since Sandy Hook.

1994: The Republicans successfully defended all of its seats and captured eight seats from the Democrats, including the seats of sitting Senators Harris Wofford (PA) and Jim Sasser (TN), as well as six open seats in Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Notably, since Sasser's defeat coincided with a Republican victory in the special election to replace Al Gore, Tennessee's Senate delegation switched from entirely Democratic to entirely Republican in a single election.

This election marked the first time Republicans controlled the Senate since 1986, and coincided with the first change of control in the House of Representatives since 1954 and a Republican net gain of twelve governorships. Collectively, these Republican gains are known as the Republican Revolution.
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I once read a book by a member of the Polish Home Army, which led the guerilla movement against the Nazi occupation of that country during WWII. He describes how a friend told his (the friend's) grandfather that he wanted a gun so he could kill Germans. The grandfather took an ax and chopped into the kitchen wall. Inside was a well-oiled and fully functional MG.08/15 machinegun with a couple of dozen cans of ammo. "It has been waiting for you", the old man said. "Use it well." He did.

Jim
 
Where Highway 167 crosses Salido Creek in Independence County, Arkansas, there was a swimming hole that all the kids used. About 40 years ago, they replaced the bridge there, and in the process built a little picnic area with access to the swimming. When they took down some trees, they found one was hollow and had an old cap lock rifle stashed inside.
 
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