Interesting engineering -- the guy has some skills. Given the UK's gun laws, I see how tinkering leads to unusual rifles.
Good for him. I'll stick with our ARs.
July 17, 2020, 08:40 AM
sigfreund
Amazing what people can do.
Something he brings up, though, relates to a question I’ve wondered about for some time: are cartridge belts subject to the restrictions placed on magazine capacities? He points out that there are no such restrictions in the UK, but how are they viewed in mag restricted jurisdictions?
The question isn’t as simple as it might seem because belts aren’t magazines any more than clips for Garands or stripper clips are magazines. The restrictive laws I’m familiar with refer to “ammunition feeding devices,” and that refers to magazines. The feeding part is the critical one because that’s the difference between clips and magazines: despite how the word is very commonly misused, feeding is what a magazine does. It moves the ammunition to a position in the gun where it can be chambered.
An M1 Garand clip by itself doesn’t move the ammunition to where it can be chambered, that’s something the mechanism of the gun does. I would argue that that’s also true of the ammunition belt of a machine gun. The belt acts as a clip to hold the ammunition as the gun performs the feeding action.
But of course, facts and logic don’t have anything to do with many of the laws and regulations that infringe on gun rights. I’m curious, therefore, what the membership says: Are ammunition belts subject to the same capacity restrictions as some magazines?
► 6.4/93.6
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.” — Plato
July 17, 2020, 08:55 AM
NavyEngineer
quote:
But of course, facts and logic don’t have anything to do with many of the laws and regulations that infringe on gun rights. I’m curious, therefore, what the membership says: Are ammunition belts subject to the same capacity restrictions as some magazines?
I had a gunsmith build a semi-auto Browning 1919A4 (belt-fed tripod mounted .30 cal) when I was stationed in California about 15 years ago. I frequently fired it at a state-owned range in the hills of northern San Diego county. It wasn't uncommon for rangers to stop their patrol to tell me I was illegally shooting a beltfed machine gun, so I always brought a letter from the California Attorney General that specifically stated that my semi-auto rifle was perfectly legal in California, as long as no more than 10 rounds were linked together. I always took an ammo can full of 10-round belts to the range with me. Once the rangers saw my letter, I offered them a chance to shoot the 1919. Of course, California may have made that illegal since then, with a goal of keeping people safe from the crimes commonly committed by people armed with 50-lb tripod mounted beltfed rifles!
