Pls Help with questions regarding British 1980's gun laws

[breakeyp]

I am midway through writing an article on conversions of military rifles to shotguns.

Can you help me with??


a. What was the time period where .303 rifles and BREN guns were converted to .410 shotgun to make it easier to get them on the shotgun certificate?

b. Do they still exist or have they all been destroyed or deactivated?

Thank you. p.

Information

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[Roger Payne]

No doubt Peter & other can flesh this out, but essentially the seminal 1968 Firearms Act defined a shotgun as a smooth bored weapon with a barrel of at least 24 inches. This led to many dealers 'smoothboring' service rifles by simply over boring the barrels just sufficient to remove the rifling. Many were converted to 410, but that wasn't obligatory, just the removal of the rifling. At the time a shotgun certificate was easy to obtain & allowed an unlimited number of shotguns to be owned, without unduly onerous security arrangements. I started collecting in exactly this way - I was 17 in 1975, got my shotgun 'ticket' & bought my first 'proper' gun, a smooth bored EFD 1918 Mk3* SMLE. Many more followed. Collecting like this was very popular during the 1970's & 1980's up to the point where the 'Hungerford massacre' occurred (1987 IIRC). A raft of knee-jerk legislation followed, removing all full bore self loading rifles from circulation, as well as converted section 5 weapons such as semi-auto'd brens, MG34's, stens & such like. (Many had been converted from prohibited section 5 firearms to ownable section 1 firearms by converting to self-loading fire only. Some had been further converted from section 1 to even more readily ownable section 2 under the 1968 act by being smooth bored to make them into shotguns under the 1968 definition). Even more restrictive legislation followed after Dunblane in 1996, & at the ripe old age of 58 my government trusts me to own a far more restricted variety of firearms than it did when I was 21.

Hope this helps.

P.S. After Hungerford self loading weapons had to be surrendered or deactivated. 22 rimfire was excepted, as were self loading shotguns so long as they only had a mag capacity of no more than two rounds. I deactivated a MG34 & two Gew 43 sniper's rifles, amongst other things. No exceptions were allowed for historic firearms after Hungerford, although the concept of 'heritage weapons' was accepted for historic pistols after Dunblane.

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

Punish the innocent while telling them you are protecting them.
The old freedom for saftey trade.
Thanks for saving what you could.

[MikeVee]

Why don't I find examples for sale of those Enfield smoothbores you described bored standard .410 shotgun?
I would like to buy one.
It seems only the East Asian "muskets" bored for a single round ball (?) at the auctions.
Thanks

[LondonEnfield]

They're mainly a UK phenomenon because of our weird old laws. I'm thinking a lot have been rebarrelled back into .303" because the few that do come up for sale now carry quite a premium price.

[CINDERS]

Obeying forum rules I am not going to go down what John Howard and the Greens did to the honest owners/collectors here in Australia where even slingshots are banned (Sorta - Bait casting comes to mind)

[Roger Payne]

One does still see 410'ed military rifles for sale periodically, but in one of the subsequent amendments to the 1968 Firearms Act (I think after Hungerford), a further edict was enacted that to be valid as a section 2 shotgun the magazines had to be restricted as well, which led to various pinning & spot welding modifications, which sort of killed off their desirability somewhat. It was totally daft, as of course a 410 won't feed from a .303 mag anyway - they're single shot with a redundant mag that just acts as a loading platform.

To be honest, the last few that have come my way I've either rebarrelled or deactivated, but I can't even do the latter at the moment......but that's another story, & one that will not be resolved this side of the EU membership referendum........

[30Three]

it seems another knee jerk reaction from the European gouvernmant may have been avoided recently; when the federations of sporting shooters and hunters all petitioned against the proposed change in import export rules for fire arms.
It apparently had not occured to the people that thought up the new proposals that the automatic weapons used in the Bataclan attack and Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris were not actually legally imported or owned.
The fact that there are thousands of legally responsible citizens that own firearms who do not actually need more legislation was of no interest!
What we need is better policing of the illegal imports and criminal usage.

[Badger]

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Regards,
Doug

[breakeyp]

Thank you all for answering my question. I wanted to pin down the era of the smoothbore military rifle so that I would not get adverse comments when the article gets published if I used the old out of "about xxxx date."