That's exactly what I was thinking. You pull something out of the water and 'restore' it. You're proud of what you did so you show it to all your buddies and word trickles back to the 'authorities' that you pulled a gun out of a certain body of water. The next thing you know, someone's knocking on your door. You probably won't be implicated in the crime, but you just opened up a big can of worms!There’s a reason that guns are thrown away. I’m not sure that I would want to be in possession of a firearm found in a body of water.
I used to hear when I was a kid, "letting the cat out of the bag is a lot easier than putting him back in."