SAS L1A1 (but not really)

[Woodsy]

I'm curious, are there any "official" numbers on how many of NZ's L1A1s stayed in NZ, as opposed to being exported to the US or elsewhere?

NZ had 15,663 L1A1's and 375 L2A1's. 2,500 L1A1's were put up for public tender in 1988 (where my 1,000 came from), and the Police subsequently objected to the influx of semi-auto rifles at low prices so all future internal sales by NZ Defence ceased. All subsequent disposals were overseas. A few of each were retained by the NZ Army Museum and some L2A1's, L4 Brens, and M16A1's have been sold by the Musuem to collectors at auction. Therefore the number of NZ L1A1's sold internally was 2,500, plus there have also been private and dealer imports from overseas of British and Australian L1A1's, probably not exceeding 200. The number of NZ L2A1's sold by the museum would be about 10, but a reasonable number of Singaporean contract guns were imported by a dealer about 15 years ago (20-30?).

---------- Post added at 09:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:36 PM ----------

I wonder how they would work in 22-250?

I had thought about that but they did not work at all well in the magazines so I flagged the idea as being more work than it was worth. One day, just for fun, I built one into a select-fire, fully suppressed .45 ACP using M3 magazines. It was straight blow-back and I ground off the locking shoulder on the bolt and welded it into the carrier in the full battery position. It was only as a workshop toy and it worked (and apparently still does) extremely well. I sold it a few years ago to a mate.