Curious if anyone here has one of surplus M17 pistols that were released into the wild a few years ago and pursued a FOIA request to find out where it might have been issued or used prior to the sale to the public?

If so, did you send your request to the Department of War or another agency?

I have a shooting buddy that recently obtained one of these pistols and am trying to help them figure out where to best send the request via the FOIA.gov website.

Thanks in advance.

Go to the CMP website (https://thecmp.org) and look in the 1911 forum. This has been a "hot topic" since CMP started selling surplus 1911s, and there are several threads (and a sticky or two) about it.

The FOIA process is located at Redstone Arsenal, AL for Army-owned weapons.

Be fore-warned though, the FOIA process has been slow lately due to workload (requests).

Good luck.

May also want to reach out to sig directly. I seem to recall most of the M17 releases came with documentation to indicate who they were issued to when sold on civilian market

I guess the big question to me that remains unanswered is- why?

Why would you go through all the trouble? So when you’re standing around a BBQ you can say- my pistol sat at depot for six months and then got sold back to SIG? Or do people honestly think they are going to uncover that it was the gun that killed Bin Laden or something?

What I have seen is documents identifying the gun as issued to a specific unit, which may also in a lot of cases, indicate deployment to a combat zone. Even so if like most pistols ( the one I carried through two tours included) they were never fired in combat, does it even matter?

Send a FOIA request to the Dept of the Army. Offer to pay reasonable research fees or for copy expense.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
I guess the big question to me that remains unanswered is- why?

This.

Not sure how the military does it, but for PDs, that gun will probably stay in evidence for a long long long time and then if it's ever released, it's probably going to the officer.

Like, do I really care where my surplus Beretta 92 has been? It was cheap, that's what mattered to me.