Posted on 12/12/2022 4:04:25 PM PST by rellimpank
The list of reasons why someone might toss a gun in a river is pretty short. But the list of reasons why Bryce Nachtwey throws magnets tied to rope into America’s waters is even shorter: finding unclaimed property is really cool. If you don’t believe me, take a dive into magnet fishing YouTube and feel the hours disappear. Enthusiastic treasure hunters pace back and forth on bridges and cast shiny hockey puck-sized magnets into murky depths, pulling in bike parts, railroad spikes, jewelry, coins, and, yes, firearms. Nachtwey’s YouTube channel, Outdoors Weekly, features long, energetic videos of his exploits for his 626,000 subscribers.
It's a rare video when Nachtwey doesn’t pull a gun or two out of the water. He recently hauled six handguns out of a river in Louisiana, three of which were zipped in a bank deposit bag. But that doesn’t make Nachtwey uniquely good at this hobby. For magnet fishers across America—a fast-growing group—guns are among the most common type of catch. But even though they’re seemingly ubiquitous, they aren’t treated as such. In fact, the pistols, rifles, and shotguns are usually the headlining finds of magnet fishing content.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Finders keepers.
Oh, I SERIOUSLY need to try this. I have this REALLY strong magnet to use
Do you really want to be caught with a weapon used in crime?
Greed does serious damage to people’s brain
Why wouldn't they be able to?
I bought little bitty life jackets for all of mine.
Like some Southern sheriff might say, “We don’t have a murder problem down here...we have a missing persons problem.”
These videos on YT are very interesting. The things they find are wild.
There’s one from the UK - they like to do this from bridges. They have found several Safe’s, a result of burglars tossing the Safe into the water from a bridge after stealing the contents! Some have been found to be intact, where the criminals couldn’t crack it easily....contents still inside!
Beazit gets a gun boat.
Smart man.
uuummmmm sure you can keep them. but if the ballistics are detected in a crime and those guns serial numbers pop up, u b fooked!!
I literally thought this was a Babylon Bee article until I looked at it more closely—making fun of all the reported ‘boating accidents!’
I used to work on my County’s bridge maintenance crew. We found multiple safes, a shotgun in fairly decent condition, and a couple minivans. All were found while drying to remove vegetation debris/drift in flooding events.
We had a deputy pick up the shotgun since that particular bridge was near a known gang area.
Saw one once where they actually found a Harley that had been driven off a bridge. They had to call the cops and get a crane out there to haul it out.
Cops said they thought they knew who it belonged to, a guy who was in prison and it was likely the ex-wife who drove it off the bridge......LOL!
Sounds like an episode of NCIS!
Having watched many of those videos, 99.99% of those firearms have been soaking in those rivers for years to the point where the serial numbers are virtually unrecognizable due to the rust and corrosion......
My father and I used to do this near fishing piers in the 1970s. We only found pocket knives and fishing gear.
A local lake was drained a few years ago for dam repair and I was surprised to find a lot of old car and motorcycle batteries in the mud.
That’s interesting. Batteries used to be worth 5 bucks or so on trade-in.
File off the Serial Number and BE SURE it’s not somewhere else on the hardware, before losing your firearm in a ‘boating accident’.
We have a bridge in the town next door that crosses a river that runs parallel to MJKjr drive. The street on which the bridge is located is one of the main thoroughfares to enter the town on the north side.
There are several guys that go magnet fishing off that bridge about once a month. When they first started a couple years ago, they pulled dozens of rusty firearms from the river. Now, they get one or two newer firearms each month. They just turn them into the police since they realize they are probably guns used in recent crimes. It’s strange that the police do not employ a couple of people to “fish” the river once a week, but I guess this way it costs them no money and they have to expend no energy in retrieving those guns.
There was actually a proposal by the liberal city council to stop the “fishing” but I think after some push back they abandon that scheme.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.