Quote Originally Posted by morison29 View Post
I live in Franceicon and am a regular shooter. My next acquisition will be a live fire semi auto L1A1. However, I find all this discussion about EU directives for de acts very interesting. I have seen many at arms fairs here in France since this came in in the UKicon and have not seen a sign of the measures. Field stripping and removable of barrels etc. are the norm. Barrels are blocked at the breech with a welded plug but with the rifling remaining untouched. What is deactivated, by cutting the feed lips, is the magazine which is treated as a restricted item. On the matter of L1A1s. those available in France at the moment all seem to be in excellent to as new condition and are said to come from storage in the Falkland Islands. Does any one know the truth of it?
Storage in the Falkland islands you say ... I would take that with a pinch of salt. The FIDF sold off their L1's in the late 80's (or early 90's) and replaced them with Steyr AUG's. So very long gone ... I believe they were all imported into the UK and virtually all deactivated.

If these rifles are in excellent condition, then they are probably ex UK war reserve pieces, or they have been refurbished by a company like LuxDefTec. I hear a number of ex War reserve L1's are still stored with dealers in Holland.
Very interested to see were they are being proofed, that might give us an idea...