S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

24" and less, a place to discuss all things handgun related, section 7.3. Long barrelled revolvers, long barrelled pistols and section 5. Overseas contributions are more than welcome.

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TRG-22
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Re: S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

#41 Post by TRG-22 »

I have read all of the above, and what's there is that if a maker sends his gun out from the factory with a >= 30cm barrel and a rod added to it to bring the OAL to >= 60cm that's OK, and what's also there is that it's not as simple as changing the barrel and adding a rod.

What does "changing" mean? Acme Firearms find that 99.9% of their revolver sales are for 5½" barrel length, so that's what they build on their production line, but they divert some and change the barrels to longer ones in their custom shop. Not that simple?

Or Acme firearms make a "platform" gun designed for it to be easy to change barrels, stocks, handgrips and some bozo in manufacturing configures the wrong one for an order, they spot this in despatch but they can't simply send them back to manufacturing for the bozo to simply fit the correct barrel?


Or, forget the barrel changing, let's say they build one which had a 12" barrel right from the start but they need to add a rod to make it S1 compliant, but it's not as simple as adding a rod? How do the aforementioned Taurus and Alfa fix the rods to their guns if they can't simply add a rod?
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Re: S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

#42 Post by Sim G »

The law concerns converting prohibited weapons so as to appears of another category. The legislation becomes relevant on converting an existing weapon.
In 1978 I was told by my grand dad that the secret to rifle accuracy is, a quality bullet, fired down a quality barrel..... How has that changed?

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Re: S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

#43 Post by MistAgain »

Forget about checking your marmalade , just sit back and check some reality .

Firstly , do you really think a factory is going to build a batch of 4 inch revolvers , then pull the barrels and replace them with 12 inch barrels ?

When the importers of Alfa, Chiappa or Taurus order UK spec long barrel revolvers , they order direct with the maker . The maker then puts the order into their production schedule .

It makes no difference if the barrel is put on first , or the rod put on first , in fact it makes no difference is the rod is welded onto the frame by a sub contractor in the next village.

What matters is that there is an unbroken audit trail , from the moment the order arrives till it leaves the factory as a completed Section 1 firearm.

Now if Inspector Knacker was having a bad hair day he could contact Alfa , Chiappa or Taurus and ask them if they had supplied Section 1 firearms to specific UK companies , and provide some serial numbers .

The reply from Alfa , Chiappa and Taurus would be simply yes , and they could probably even supply the exact time that the frame was machined .

But what would happen if Inspector Knacker contacted Smith & Wesson ? .

Their reply would be simple . We dont build revolvers to UK specification . We dont sell frames .
We have never supplied Dell Boy ( the venal UK RFD)
But the serial numbers you supplied relate to a S & W 686 shipped to a USA distributor 12 months ago , a S & W 586 shipped to a USA distributor 2 years ago , and a S & W 66 sold to a USA distributor 25 years ago .

Thats the reality of the matter .
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Re: S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

#44 Post by TRG-22 »

Sim G wrote:The law concerns converting prohibited weapons so as to appears of another category. The legislation becomes relevant on converting an existing weapon.
And we're back to what counts as "converting", i.e. who is allowed to do it, and when and how, and what counts as an "existing weapon".

It's almost as if the law was framed in the belief that the only types of "conversion" there are are the blobs of welds on the fire selector switch done by some bloke in his shed on a Bren gun that had been a fully automatic weapon in the UK for decades, and now people are saying that means that Pietta or Uberti can't "simply" add a rod to the back of their Buntline replicas.
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Re: S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

#45 Post by TRG-22 »

MistAgain wrote:Forget about checking your marmalade
I'm sure that most people here would wish that everybody who wants to wilfully misinterpret what I said about marmalade would forget it.

Firstly , do you really think a factory is going to build a batch of 4 inch revolvers , then pull the barrels and replace them with 12 inch barrels ?
From a commercial reality POV? Of course not, but that's not the point. But if they made revolvers designed with such an easy barrel change that owners can buy a selection of different ones and swap them back and forth themselves it is not inconceivable that an order for long barrelled ones could be fulfilled by the factory swapping the barrells of ones finished and in stock.

When the importers of Alfa, Chiappa or Taurus order UK spec long barrel revolvers , they order direct with the maker . The maker then puts the order into their production schedule .

It makes no difference if the barrel is put on first , or the rod put on first , in fact it makes no difference is the rod is welded onto the frame by a sub contractor in the next village.

What matters is that there is an unbroken audit trail , from the moment the order arrives till it leaves the factory as a completed Section 1 firearm.
OK, fine.

What if the unbroken audit trail tracks the gun being made in the factory without the rod or extended grip or whatever, then sent to a subcontractor to have the rod added or the grip swapped, or whatever, and then returned to the factory for final inspection, testing, boxing and shipping?

Now if Inspector Knacker was having a bad hair day he could contact Alfa , Chiappa or Taurus and ask them if they had supplied Section 1 firearms to specific UK companies , and provide some serial numbers .

The reply from Alfa , Chiappa and Taurus would be simply yes , and they could probably even supply the exact time that the frame was machined .
And that "yes" would be 100% true. But it could be deemed untrue by someone with a different interpretation of what "existing firearm" meant when looking at the flow of production through the factory, back and forth to subcontractors etc, and when/where/by whom different parts came together before the factory shipped out a S1 product.
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Re: S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

#46 Post by TRG-22 »

Suspending financial realities for a moment, what if someone in the UK found a Thompson Contender with an array of various bits being sold in a jurisdiction where what would be S5 handguns here were legal there, and the seller was prepared to split the collection of bits and ship to the UK.

Are we saying that they could only buy the parts which configure a S1 carbine if it could be proved that at no point had the parts they bought and the parts they didn't buy ever been assembled into an S5 configuration?
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Re: S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

#47 Post by TRG-22 »

Well - no longer hypothetical. Not quite the same as my scenario, but here we have someone who has bought a Contender:

https://www.full-bore.co.uk/viewtopic.p ... 50#p399600

So he's bought this:

Image

What if at some point it looked like this:

Image

?

What if that had been what Thompson originally sold, and then the owner, or later owner, subsequently bought other parts to turn it into the rifle which Sandgroper has bought? What would Inspector Knacker, having both a bad hair day and with his piles really giving him gyp find if he asked Thompson about that serial number?
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Re: S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

#48 Post by Rarms »

TRG-22 wrote:Well - no longer hypothetical. Not quite the same as my scenario, but here we have someone who has bought a Contender:



What if that had been what Thompson originally sold, and then the owner, or later owner, subsequently bought other parts to turn it into the rifle which Sandgroper has bought? What would Inspector Knacker, having both a bad hair day and with his piles really giving him gyp find if he asked Thompson about that serial number?
Yes that gun would be legally Sec. 5 if it looked like the second photo at some point. The factory would no doubt have a record of how it was configured when it left the factory.

I dare say you could argue that you bought it as Sec. 1, and perhaps you would get away with it, however the RFD who imported it would I imagine be in for a bit of grief.

This is why you will find respectable/wise importers/retailers will deal with factories directly as SimG has already described.
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Re: S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

#49 Post by MistAgain »

Rarms wrote:
TRG-22 wrote:Well - no longer hypothetical. Not quite the same as my scenario, but here we have someone who has bought a Contender:



What if that had been what Thompson originally sold, and then the owner, or later owner, subsequently bought other parts to turn it into the rifle which Sandgroper has bought? What would Inspector Knacker, having both a bad hair day and with his piles really giving him gyp find if he asked Thompson about that serial number?
Yes that gun would be legally Sec. 5 if it looked like the second photo at some point. The factory would no doubt have a record of how it was configured when it left the factory.

I dare say you could argue that you bought it as Sec. 1, and perhaps you would get away with it, however the RFD who imported it would I imagine be in for a bit of grief.

This is why you will find respectable/wise importers/retailers will deal with factories directly as SimG has already described.
Ah , the good old T/C , brings tears to my eyes .

Back when we had the handgun ban , several police forces took the view that if you had a T/C on your FAC as a single shot pistol you had to either hand it in , export it or destroy it . You could not convert it to a rifle by putting a rifle stock onto the receiver .

At present there is nothing to stop you ordering a T/C rifle from USA , shipping it here , working out how to attach a rod , attaching the rod , remove the rifle stock , cut the barrel to 12 inches and it get it proofed .

So its only a question of getting the USA export paperwork sorted out , paying for it and getting it here .
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Re: S1, S5 conversions (rings bell and runs away)

#50 Post by Sandgroper »

TRG-22 wrote:
What if that had been what Thompson originally sold, and then the owner, or later owner, subsequently bought other parts to turn it into the rifle which Sandgroper has bought? What would Inspector Knacker, having both a bad hair day and with his piles really giving him gyp find if he asked Thompson about that serial number?
If he asked T/C about the S/N then I guess they'd say yes we made it and that's about it. In the USA, the receiver is considered the firearm not the barrel. So as far as T/C is concerned whether the owner makes it a pistol or rifle is none of their business.

As and aside - If I put a pistol grip in it then it would be illegal in the UK but not in the USA, however,
If I but a 12 inch barrel on it with a rifle stock, then it would still be legal in the UK but not in the USA.

So I would say that the T/C Contender or Encore does not add to the discussion one way or the other. ;)
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