No one disputes the right of ownership. This is an ethical question, not a legal one. The owner has the right to use the stock for firewood and the barrel as a tent pole...
As to restoration - it depends on what is being done. Glueing together a shattered fore end or wrist is restoration... treating a heavily worm eaten stock with some of the new chemicals available in the museum world is conservation. Reconversion isn't either ... its alteration to conform to what someone thinks something might have looked like. We can't possibly know what was there originally and nothing we do, no matter how convincing it looks will actually be real. I think we have to ask ourselves, and other collectors, just how interested in history we are if we condone altering the artifacts to suit our current wishes.
