Magnet fishing, a gun came up from the creek

Put an old ruined bridge of the early twentieth century, a country stream framed by dense vegetation and a researcher like Marcello Bonatti of Metal Discovery "armed" with magnet for Magnet Fishing. These are the ingredients of an unforgettable day staged last June 6 on the Pezzino Bridge (in the municipality of Villanova sull'Arda), a now unusable structure built in 1912 in the heart of the lower Piacenza area.

Magnetic fishing, as we know, is an exciting and cheap hobby that combines treasure hunting and environmentalism.

It is, to all intents and purposes, a variant of the metal detector because the goal, in the end, is to find metal objects in:

lakes
rivers
rifts
wells

using powerful neodymium magnets. Simply tie a rope with a high breaking load to a powerful magnet and throw it into the water.

Magnet fishing is a discipline that requires a lot of patience but, when you mill the rope, tied to that carabiner you can expect everything.

And, in fact - among old hinges, tin cans, coins and rusty nails - an old gun also popped out of the mud.

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It is a Beretta 34, manufactured in 1940, with the Roman numeral XVIII which, in the ballistic language of the time, meant 18th year since the birth of fascism. It is a weapon dating back to the Second World War supplied to the Italian Army, although - until the '80s - that gun was the service weapon of the Carabinieri Corps.

Although Marcello's was an ordinary research outing with magnet fishing, out of respect for the Law, the Beretta was delivered regularly, on the day of the discovery, to the Command of the Carabinieri Station of Villanova sull'Arda (Pc) and, cleaned of rust, it was possible to trace the serial number. According to the first checks from the terminals, the weapon would be "clean", that is, not linked to any criminal event. In any case, as required by the protocols of justice, the Berretta will be sent for all ballistic investigations to the Ris of Parma, where the "rifling" of the barrel will be examined to verify that it is not linked to specific crimes.

According to the first assumptions, the gun - without a magazine - could have been inherited by some Piacentino who, in order not to incur the crime of illegal possession of a firearm, would have got rid of it by throwing it into the stream and thus made it possible to find it with magnet fishing. According to the first analysis, the Beretta had been immersed in that trickle of water for no more than ten years.

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