SGC 9mm - Catastorphic Failure - Almost lost an eye :(

[ovenpaa]

I always though this was the case as well, once an S5 always an S5. That was until the L1A1 straight pulls with original receivers hit the market.

[Sim G]

Agreed. The current S1 L1A1's is just something everyone just shruggs their shoulders at. Not rocking the boat in case other kit comes along?

[ovenpaa]

I still agree with Iain's comment so I have no idea how that one slipped under the radar.

[Porcupine]

If i'm understand what you mean, its because if also owned a straight-pull AR i.e. you'd have a standard AR lower, you could attach it to the upper with the gas system and hey presto you'd have a fully operational semi-auto full bore rifle! Unless you were actually caught using it the police would have no way to prove you had being using it as a S5 gun. :-P

Surely this isn't a legal problem? There are UK-legal ARs (I forget the name of the company who made them) which have regular gas operated uppers and closed off mag wells on the lower receiver, so they would eject like a semi-auto but could never 'self load' since they couldn't accept a magazine. Obviously if you had this rifle and a straight-pull or .22 caliber AR you could mix and match the uppers and lowers and end up with a S5 gun.

Equally it's quite possible to, for example, have a section 1, tube-fed shotgun on a FAC, and an identical section 2 shotgun except that it has a limited mag tube on an a SGC, swap the mag tubes and end up with an off-ticket and therefore illegal section 1 shotgun. Or you could own a short barreled rifle with a fixed stock and a long barreled rifle with a folding stock - swap barrels/stocks and you end up with a section 5 rifle on account of its overall length.

And we all know how you can own a .22 suppressor for an airgun but if you put it on your .22 rimfire without getting a FAC slot for it you've just broken section 5.

To put the previous post in alternative legal terms:

A firearm that once falls into S5, legally stays in S5 regardless of what you do to it subsequently. So you can't start with an AR15 and modify it to reach the SGC solution - what you have is still a S5 weapon because it started life as such.

Iain

Even if this were true, and that doesn't seem clear,* I wasn't necessarily suggesting they modify S5 rifles - I'd assume they'd build them new that way, as they do for straight-pull ARs.

*Does anyone have any evidence of this? The straight-pull FALs are one example that doesn't seem to bare this out. There are also shotguns in the UK that came with 18" barrels (section 5) from the factory but have been modified to 24" (section 1) with pinned and welded extensions (SPAS 12 is a common-ish example). Also straight-pull M14s, M1 carbines etc, and the LBRs/LBPs with wrist braces/counter weights - do they all come from the factory like that?

[kennyc]

I always though this was the case as well, once an S5 always an S5. That was until the L1A1 straight pulls with original receivers hit the market.

Gavin at ACR went through all the consultation process and had the design agreed before he went into production, so I would guess that he satisfied the powers that be that the rifles he was selling were definitely S1.

[ovenpaa]

I am not personally aware of any AR type .223 straight pull that will eject the spent case without manual intervention, eg yank the lever back.

[Porcupine]

I am not personally aware of any AR type .223 straight pull that will eject the spent case without manual intervention, eg yank the lever back.

They weren't straight-pull exactly, they were single shot. So you'd load a round through the ejection port, release the bolt, fire, have the round ejected automatically, then manually insert the next round, release the bolt, fire, and so on. IIRC they were made soon after the SLR ban and not many were made since the arrival of straight-pull, mag-fed ARs supplanted them, but they do pop up for sale every now and then. It was a fairly well known company who did them... Parker Hale or Armalon maybe... Perhaps even Sterling before they went bust... I'm sure someone will have a better memory than me.

[John MH]

Never seen such a beast.

[Sim G]

Never seen a semi-non semi like you describe in the UK or have heard of one being manufactured in the UK. However, that does not mean the beast does not exist, for indeed it does!!

Randy Luth, owner of DPMS, made a rifle as you describe in order to hunt around the world with an "AR". Don't think they were ever offered for general sale though.

[Blackstuff]

To put the previous post in alternative legal terms:

A firearm that once falls into S5, legally stays in S5 regardless of what you do to it subsequently. So you can't start with an AR15 and modify it to reach the SGC solution - what you have is still a S5 weapon because it started life as such.

Iain

I'm aware that you cannot 'go down a Section' ie 1 to 2 or 5 to 1 etc, i wasn't really talking about that, more from a point of what you could hypothetically get away with using two Section 1 guns if you were that way inclined.

Surely this isn't a legal problem? There are UK-legal ARs (I forget the name of the company who made them) which have regular gas operated uppers and closed off mag wells on the lower receiver, so they would eject like a semi-auto but could never 'self load' since they couldn't accept a magazine. Obviously if you had this rifle and a straight-pull or .22 caliber AR you could mix and match the uppers and lowers and end up with a S5 gun.

Equally it's quite possible to, for example, have a section 1, tube-fed shotgun on a FAC, and an identical section 2 shotgun except that it has a limited mag tube on an a SGC, swap the mag tubes and end up with an off-ticket and therefore illegal section 1 shotgun. Or you could own a short barreled rifle with a fixed stock and a long barreled rifle with a folding stock - swap barrels/stocks and you end up with a section 5 rifle on account of its overall length.

And we all know how you can own a .22 suppressor for an airgun but if you put it on your .22 rimfire without getting a FAC slot for it you've just broken section 5.

The examples you give i.e. the shotgun - S2 guns with a magazine that could take more cartridges are usually crimped, therefore on inspection by the police it could be readily seen that you had modified the gun yourself = threat of conviction = a GOOD reason not to do it. An exception to this is of course a S2 shotgun thats chambered for 3.5", using shorter cartridges you can get 1 or possibly 2 more in the magazine, but is an extra cartridge really going to matter in terms of 'threat to public safety' - which remember, is what firearms legislation is all about :-P :roll:

With the rifle, unless it's some kind of modular gun that the police aren't particularly savvie with* it wouldn't be 'readily convertible' and therefore there would be a determined process involved which again would make most people less likely to do it.

*The Police are well aware of what can and can't be done with an AR for example. So if even if you bought a short barreled but long/fixed stock gun, the actual length measurement is take from the back of the recoil buffer tube, not from the heel of the stock, therefore if you also had a long barreled but folding/collapseable stocked 2nd AR and you mixed and matched, the guns OAL would still be greater than 60cm legal length

With the suppressor example, again firing a powder gun through it would leave residue which would allow the police to prove you've broken the law, yes you can clean it but it's unlikely that most people can forensically clean it. Plus its only a 'minor' offense (max 18 months sentence IIRC) and the actual threat to public safety is minimal.

Now back to the the ability to put a gas operated upper onto a regular lower by owning two guns - unless you're caught red-handed, there would be absolutely no way for the police to prove what you'd done. And given the speed at which you could change the upper/lower, or even just disassemble the two receiver halves - which would take you back to Section 1, unless you were insanely careless, the chances of you being caught would be minimal. You'd then be in possession of the ability to have a semi-auto full-bore rifle whenever you want, and if you can go semi-auto with a rifle, you can easily go full auto (bump-firing or a slide-firing stock). The police know that and SGC knew that so they had to come up with the radical design that is the LRA9