.50 Beowulf Magazine Classification Update

[Foxer]

Doesn't the law concerning magazines state differently though?




Thus if you take a standard AR15 magazine in 223/556 and modify it to fit a .50 Beowulf cartridge and pin it to only accept five beowulf rounds, you still follow the rules of the original magazine if you try and put 223/556 back into it.

Well we're kind of mixing two things up, and that's my fault for not being more clear. I worded it poorly. If you take a mag made for a semi auto and 'modifiy' it so it now works in a non semi auto for example then the round count rule doesn't apply. If you were to modify a 223 so that it NOW held 50 (especially for a different gun) then the round count also historically doesn't apply - the 'originally' in the law you quote doesn't refer to pre-mod but rather is meant specifically to ALLOW for the fact that some guns hold different amounts of other ammo (espeically shotguns). So it's the original intended round that 'counts'.

Which should mean that a mag specifically designed for 50 should be pinned to 5 x 50 even if the design came from modifying another design. Because that's what it's designed for.

Let me come at it another way - imagine that the original 223 magazines somehow managed to hold and feed 50's. You could NOT then repin them for 50's and say oh gee now i get to fit 11 223's in there. The mag was orginally designed for 223.

But - if you modify that design in ORDER to allow it to work with 50's specifically and it's no longer the original design, then It's now a magazine designed for 50's. It might happen to take 223, but it is not a 223 mag, it's a new mag based on that design which is made for 50 and there are substantial differences. It's not like you just changed the sticker.

THEY are claiming that while it was modified to fit 50's, the intent of the design is to fit 50's AND 223 and it was purpose designed for both. In other words, the designers purposely intended the mag to be used for both types of cartridges INSTEAD of designing the mag to work with 50's. In other words - the 50's ORIGINAL catridge is BOTH 223 AND 50 intentionally - not 50 by itself.

And i'm saying that because the mag was substantially changed and needed to be in order to accomodate the 50, and because it wasn't designed to be used with the 223 but with the 50 specifically, the original catridge that mag was designed for is 50, not 50 and something else. If you make a magazine that works properly for 50, it just happens to work with 223.

Which is what the law allows for. It was necessary - otherwise how the hell do you 'classify' a shotgun tube mag? you can't. If the shotgun was designed for 3.5 inch shells it's GOING to take 1inch shells, 2 inch shells, 2.5 inch shells, 2.75 etc etc. It's just a tube. You can't make one that'll take the longer shells that doesn't take the shorter ones. So the law accommodates.

And i would argue you can't make a 50 for the ar platform that doesn't also take 223. They argue that you can and these ones were specifically designed for both - or perhaps that it really is a 223 mag and the modifications are insufficient to call it a 'new' type of mag, which it clearly is. Once it is substantially modified it's a new mag.

So they're into a really grey area. Obviously they're going to make an argument that stretches the definitions and such as far in their 'favour' as possible because they hate us. but - that doesn't mean they'll get their way if another authority has to rule on it.