Sim G wrote:I think you're splitting hairs now. Ultimately, if a revolver or .22 semi pistol is a factory option and one of those options is a U.K. legal LBR or LBP, once it's placed in the box for shipping, would be the manufacturing process complete.
If it conforms to U.K. dimensions once made, it's a s1 for import. If, it would fall into s5 for import, then it will always be s5 regardless what was then done to it to give the appearance of s1. That is what the law says.
Well if I am splitting hairs then that's only because what the law does, or what those interpreting it do.
The process you talk about in your first paragraph is what makes sense, and surely what the law intends. But there are those who argue that if the Acme Firearms Inc manufacturing process includes a stage where fully finished but unboxed and never offered for sale S5 handguns are shipped by the maker to a low-volume specialist subcontractor who modifies them into S1 ones, and returns them to Acme, who then box them up and offer them for sale then they are not truly S1.
Even if you had a one man band gunsmith in the US or any other country build a s1 spec gun from aftermarket or OEM parts, it would still be imported as a s1 regardless of the original completed design that contained these parts.
Let's ignore the economics, and ask the question what if these parts came from a third party who got them by disassembling new completed originals and then sold them to the gunsmith? What would be the difference between those parts and the exact same parts suppled by the original maker before they'd been assembled?
AFAIK we have only one domestic maker of S5 revolvers, and they are a bit "boutique", but hypothetically what would they have to do in terms of manfacturing processes to be able to offer an S1 version?