http://news.yahoo.com/photos/police...ected-during-gun-buyback-photo-195234402.html
California has offered $200 gift cards for any automatic weapons that get turned in, and $100 for any other firearm. Sure enough, someone somewhere decided that this little British masterpiece was worth a $200 Wal Mart card and decided to turn it in. In good condition, a Sten can bring upwards of $8,000. (http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=323884243).
But even more interesting is the possibility of a story behind the gun. Unfortunately, this one will probably be scrapped.
So what kind of history might be behind this particular gun? The Sten has a history that stretches from use by commandos in World War 2 to Korea, and it even saw action in the Philippines as Filipino guerrilla fighters used it to resist Japanese occupation. Canada used it in Special Operations in the mid-to-late 1940's, and British Commandos used the gun until at least the the late 1960's.
From Wiki:
California has offered $200 gift cards for any automatic weapons that get turned in, and $100 for any other firearm. Sure enough, someone somewhere decided that this little British masterpiece was worth a $200 Wal Mart card and decided to turn it in. In good condition, a Sten can bring upwards of $8,000. (http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=323884243).
But even more interesting is the possibility of a story behind the gun. Unfortunately, this one will probably be scrapped.
So what kind of history might be behind this particular gun? The Sten has a history that stretches from use by commandos in World War 2 to Korea, and it even saw action in the Philippines as Filipino guerrilla fighters used it to resist Japanese occupation. Canada used it in Special Operations in the mid-to-late 1940's, and British Commandos used the gun until at least the the late 1960's.
From Wiki:
Stens were air-dropped in quantity to resistance fighters and partisans throughout occupied Europe. Due to their slim profile and ease of disassembly/reassembly, they were good for concealment and guerrilla warfare. Wrapping the barrel in wet rags would also cause the Sten to sound like a heavier weapon, with opposing troops believing they were faced with machine guns.[23] Guerrilla fighters in Europe became adept at repairing, modifying and eventually scratch-building clones of the Sten (over 2,000 Stens and about 500 of the similar Błyskawica SMGs were manufactured in occupied Poland).
Staged photograph: A partisan armed with Sten Mk II smg, France, 1944.
The Sten was used by Filipino guerrilla resistance fighters during the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines from 1942 to 1945.
Canadian infantry battalions in northwest Europe retained spare Sten guns for special missions and the Canadian Army reported a surplus of the weapons in 1944. The Sten was not used in Italy due to constraints on the shipping of ammunition; .45 ACP was already being used in that theatre by the US Army and a requirement for the 9 mm pistol round used by the Sten would have been in competition for limited shipping space.
The Sten saw use even after the economic crunch of World War II, replacing the Royal Navy's Lanchester submachine guns into the 1960s, and was used in the Korean War, including specialist versions for British Commandos. It was slowly withdrawn from British Army service in the 1960s and replaced by the Sterling SMG; Canada also phased out Sten, replacing it with the C1 SMG.
The Sten was one of the few weapons that the State of Israel could produce domestically during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Even before the declaration of the State of Israel, the Yishuv had been producing Stens for the Haganah; after the declaration, Israel continued making Stens for IDF use. The opposing side also used (mostly British-made) Stens, particularly the irregular and semi-regular Arab Liberation Army.[24]
In the 1950s "L numbering" came into use in the British Army for weapons - Stens were then known as L50 (Mk II), L51 (Mk III) and L52 (Mk V).
One of the last times the Sten was used in combat during British service was with the RUC during the IRA border campaign of 1956 - 1962. In foreign service, the Sten was used in combat at least as recently as the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.
In 1971 various marks of Stens were used by guerilla fighters during the Bangladesh Liberation War.
A number of suppressed Stens were in limited use by the US Special Forces during the Vietnam war, including c. 1971, by the United States Army Rangers.[25]
In 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards, one of whom emptied the entire magazine of his Sten into the Prime Minister at point-blank range.
In the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, both Nationalists and Communists used the Sten. Some Stens were converted by the Communists to 7.62x25mm by using the magazine housing from a PPS to accept curved PPS magazines. An example of such a conversion is on display at the Imperial War Museum, London
The Finnish Army acquired moderate amounts of Stens in the late 1950s, mainly Mk. III versions. Refurbishment at the Kuopio Arsenal included bluing of the arms. Stens in Finnish service saw limited usage by conscripts (notably combat swimmers) and were mostly stockpiled for use in a future mobilization.
During the Zapatista movement in 1994 some Zapatista soldiers were armed with Sten guns.
