Blackstuff wrote: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:
My point was that you can remove the crimped mag tube and replace it with a regular, un-crimped one (which you might own separately since it's not a controlled part, or as a component of a section 1 gun). Even if 'leaving evidence of having been modified' were the important factor, and I've seen nothing to indicate that it is, you could swap the gun back to its original configuration or even crimp the mag tube yourself.
Blackstuff wrote: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
I'll talk about where you measure guns from down below, but ignoring AR type rifles even, you don't need an unusual design at all. Take a Ruger 10/22, one of the most common rifles going, with a short barrel of say 12 inches like this one in the UK:
Perfectly legal in the UK under section 1, meeting the 24" overall length due to its fixed stock.
Then take another Ruger 10/22 with a longer, 16 or 18 inch barrel and a folding stock like this (receiver and stock when folded add about 9 inches to overall length on top of the barrel itself):
Again, that's a gun for sale in the UK. With a long barrel, perfectly legal because the length, even when folded, is 25" long (16 + 9 = 25). But you could then swap the folding stock from the long gun onto the short one and end up with a rifle of 21" (12 + 9 = 21) - shorter than the 24" minimum and therefore section 5. And yet both of the above examples are legal. Swapping stocks on a a 10/22 is no harder than removing the stock from an AR
and you could swap back again without leaving any evidence.
So I don't think that being 'readily convertible', even when this is possible without leaving any evidence, is necessarily a problem. And even if it was, that hardly necessitates an entirely new blowback action. All you'd need to do would be to make the way the lower attaches to the upper a little different - different size or shape of receiver hinge, something like that. You'd then have a 5.56 AR that could take aftermarket stocks, pistol grips, barrels, possibly even triggers, with a safe and proven DI gas system instead of a new fangled and apparently unreliable and potentially even unsafe blowback action that can't handle high pressure chamberings - and, like I say, you could even make it so it wouldn't take other AR lowers with minimal changes to the design of a regular AR.
Moving to the issue of overall length measurements, the law says that:
"For the purposes of subsection (1)(aba) and (ac) above, any
detachable, folding, retractable or other movable butt-stock shall be disregarded in measuring the length of any firearm."
But, what's detachable? You can take the stock off just about
any rifle and it is still a working firearm. I think the intention of the law was to disregard stocks designed to be removed quickly for concealment like the famous Tommy gun. Of course, in practice you can take the stock off a lot of rifles just as quickly, though they're not usually intended to be used that way, which creates a lot of confusion and uncertainty.
The other relevant pieces of law:
"any firearm which either has a barrel less than 30 centimetres in length or is less than 60 centimetres in length overall [is prohibited]"
and
"any self-loading or pump-action smooth-bore gun which is not chambered for .22 rim-fire cartridges and either has a barrel less than 24 inches in length or (excluding any detachable, folding, retractable or other movable butt-stock) is less than 40 inches in length overall [is prohibited]"
An illustrative example for how overall length is measured would be section 1 shotguns again. These have more restrictive length limitations - 24" barrel and
40" overall length as in the quote above. Clearly, virtually all section 1 shotguns do
not meet the 40" minimum length with their fixed stock disregarded/removed - even though they are still functioning firearms with the stock removed.
So it could be that only traditional, fixed, straight or half-pistol-grip stocks are counted in length determination - since, without them, the gun could be considered un-weildly. You could argue that without its buttstock an AK or AR type rifle is still, not only a technically working firearm, but also practical to use since it has a pistol grip to hold onto. I'll return to that theory below.
Going back to the issue of swapping lowers around, just to add another example of why I don't think this is a problem, you can today own a section 2 shotgun with a pistol grip only (no stock) or a folding stock (still meeting the 24" minimum length due to a 24" barrel), and also own a section 1 shotgun with a fixed stock and 24" barrel, and then swap stocks between them - violating the 40" minimum length for the section 1 gun.
If making a gun that allowed for the 'easily swapping bits to make it illegal' possibility was itself illegal then you wouldn't be able to own most section 1 shotguns or short-barreled rifles because their stocks could be swapped to create section 5 guns - but you can. So why should a Unicorn be treated any differently?
Returning to overall length measurements...
MiLisCer wrote:My Sig 522 when folded is exactly 24" - but if you take the muzzle brake off it, it then becomes only 22". So Moore must have it wrong, as removing my muzzle brake certainly takes it below the 24"
The law says, as we've seen quoted above, that folding stocks should be disregarded for length measurement. It does not say that removable muzzle devices should be disregarded for the overall length measurement - though it seems clear they would not be included in
barrel length measurements unless fixed. So 24" would seem be the correct measurement for your gun... But then, if you
actually remove the muzzle brake, haven't you just created a section 5? Might want to keep that on the DL
If you remove a traditional half-pistol grip stock from a rifle or shotgun you could argue, as in my theory above, that you have
not created a section 5 gun since the rifle is now awkward to use, but a SIG without a muzzle brake is perfectly usable.
Russian Military & Outdoors sell
Saiga 12" barreled AKs with folding stocks - they only meet the 24" minimum because of their muzzle brakes. They say on their website that the muzzle brake has been pinned and welded to meet the 24" minimum overall length ("In order to add to the legal minimum length of the gun, the flash hider was pinned & welded,"). That could just be a liability thing - not wanting to let people take off things that would end up creating an illegal gun, or they might believe, rightly or wrongly, that removable items aren't included in overall length measurements even when the item is not a buttstock (remember the law only says specifically to disregard detachable buttstocks, it doesn't say anything about other detachable parts).
What would be interesting is if there are any short-barreled rifles in the UK with
fixed stocks but also pistol grips, and short barrels. If an AK for example (no buffer tube adding length), had a 12" barrel, no muzzle brake (or only the Soviet slant style) and a fixed stock it would only meet the 24" minimum if the stock
is included - yet if the stock is removed you still have a halfway practical firearm due to the pistol grip. If such a gun is out there and approved by the Home Office then we know that ALL fixed stocks are included in measurements, not just those that incorporate a grip. If on the other hand this kind of configuration is not allowed, then I'd say my theory is right that fixed stocks inclusive of a grip are included in measurements, but stocks where the grip is separate are disregarded.
