L1A1 in the Twilight War

[Brother in Arms]

I used to work for the much derided century international arms/ century arms international. And while I didn't work there in the 80's (mid 2000's)
So hopefully I can give ya some history regarding them here in the US. But ill try to only cover the "L1A1 type" rifles.

But I began my gun studying and learning at that time. Throughout most of the 80 and early 90's all saw in the US for FN FAL type rifles were British L1A1's built on mostly metric (IMBEL and FMAP Argentine recievers, and some had Imbel but modified to accept INCH magazines!!)

Most I saw had the black Marynol (spelling?)Furniture though some had wood both British and Austrailian and most had black stoving on them but some were blued. Some later ones had crummy thumb hole stock on them for import purposes and had the flash hiders cut off and the barrels recrowned.

For the most part these early guns while mix masters (jokingly called MINCH for Metric and INCH) but where pretty solid rifles. Specifically because century didn't make or subcontract the receivers to US companies. Most of these guns used metric magazines but I saw some that used INCH. With the Inch cut guns you could sometimes use Metric mags in them also but they were wobbly.

Century eventually they started building guns with US receivers but the quality was really hit or miss, some decent and some totally don't function and or cannot reliably. Here is a decent thread of some of those makers

http://www.militaryfirearm.com/Forum...nd-information


As for other common wealth rifles. I have hardly never seen any Canadian C1 or C2 rifles. they are very rare in any form here in the U.S. hardly ever as parts kits. Which makes me think the Canuks have probably hung onto them in storage. I have seen some Aussie rifles, but far more as parts kits later on say in the early 2000's. Also I have seen some L2A1 LMGs built as semi auto rifles. And a few parts kits. I did aquire some of the 30 round canadian magazines which are excellent unlike the 30 round L4A1 magazines from the 7.62 NATO BREN these are unreliable in the L1A1 but look super "Ally" as you blokes put it.

Keep in mind these where all Semi-auto only rifles unless converted to full auto before 1986 by licensed manufacturers of machine guns. That being said I have seen several that had been converted to select fire by back woods bubba gun hack types.

Eventually century couldn't easily get L1A1's anymore and started importing G1, R1A1,STG-58, but that really wasn't until the midish to latish 90's. They made a very small run of L1A1's when I was there in 2006 and I think it was the last of the inch parts. Though they where still making various Metric rifles till 2010 or so.

Hopefully that was useful to someone
Brother in Arms

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Just to add a few comments to what Brother in Arms had to say, for some clarity, here in Australia the L1A1 is the Self Loading Rifle (most commonly aka the SLR) and the L2A1 is the Automatic Rifle (less commonly aka the AR). I'm not sure if the other Commonwealth nations followed the same nomenclature.

The problem with the L4 Bren mags is the spring, it's not strong enough.
They were designed as top loaders so didn't need as much force to push the rounds down whereas the C2 and L2 30-rd mags were designed as bottom loaders and needed a more powerful spring to push the rounds up. We had orders specifically forbidding any mix & match of the mags from the two because while the L2 mag works well enough on the L4, the reverse doesn't "reliably" hold true.
Having said that, I never actually saw many proper L4 mags in use in Australia. Most of the L4 Brens I saw or used were issued with L2 mags

Also, in regards to converting the SLR to full auto, it's not that much of a problem if you "know where to look". The SLRs are built the same way as the FAL rifles, that is to say, they are capable of full-auto from the start because the trigger mechanism wasn't designed to prevent full-auto. This is the reason the "matchstick trick" worked
The indent for the full-auto setting is still built into the receiver even though the British decided to redesign the FAL as a semi-auto only rifle.

The SLR has a pin inserted at a specific place to prevent the trigger mechanism from engaging the full-auto setting and it uses a slightly longer trigger plunger than the AR. I don't know for certain if the SLR trigger plunger is the same length as the plunger used in the FAL (taking into account metric to inch conversions) but they might very well be about the same length.
I'd hazard a guess and say removing this pin is the most common way of backyard gunsmiths converting the SLR to full-auto.

(While the Aussie SAS certainly used this knowledge during the Vietnam War to convert some SLRs to select-fire, they also converted a number of the ARs by removing bipods and other extraneous features. These cut down ARs are often incorrectly attributed in books/magazines as SLRs modified in the field to allow full auto. An understandable enough mistake given the almost identical look of the two, the only certain way to identify the modified ARs from the modified SLRs is to check the rear sight)

[rcaf_777]

Originally Posted by Brother in Arms

I have hardly never seen any Canadian C1 or C2 rifles. they are very rare in any form here in the U.S. hardly ever as parts kits. Which makes me think the Canuks have probably hung onto them in storage.

As stated above the Canadian C1 rifle, C2A1 LSW and the Navy's C1D rifle were retired from active service in 1984, and placed in storage till 2006 when he stockpile was destroyed. The same fate happen the C1 Submachine Gun Canada's version of the Sterling submachine gun.

As they were stored with no though of further use and the fact that they were classified illegal weapons under Canadian law, destruction was the only option, and Canada has also publicly stated that is dose sell guns on the open market.

I believe that if Australia had sold any of their L1A1 to civilians they would have handed in and destroyed after the Port Arthur massacre, in which 35 people were killed by a lone gunman with a AR-15 Carbine.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Gun laws in Australia were remarkably different from state to state.
Western Australia had some of the strictest with any "military-style" semi-auto rifle unable to be owned, sold or transferred, even something as innocuous as the (hideous looking IMHO) .22LR Armscor M16-22 was not allowed because it vaguely resembles the M16.
Ex-military firearms other than bolt-actions were not legal for ownership unless they were licensed as historical/curio items (even museums had to comply with this law) and even with that they had to be demilled. Later the laws were changed to include the prevention of private ownership of any high-powered semi-auto rifle and semi-auto shotguns.

However, in Queensland it was perfectly legal to own any semi-auto that you could find for sale in the USA e.g. the AR10, the AR15, civilian versions of the M14 and the HK G3 & HK33 and so on. And also the L1A1. Queensland as well as New South Wales, were also notorious for lax registration of firearms.
So for example, in Western Australia, the person who wanted one had to obtain a licence/registration for that specific firearm and then go through the qualification process all over again for any additional firearms they wanted, whereas in Queensland and New South Wales, you only had to obtain a Shooters Permit from the local police and this entitled you to purchase any firearm in the gun shop.
One of my father's ex-Army mates who lived in New South Wales owned approximately 30 different firearms or more before the gun buyback.

Whether the gunshop kept a strict register of firearms sold (and their serial numbers) varied from shop to shop. And if you knew the right people you could buy ex-military rifles from places like East Timor or Pakistan - I've personally seen a Pakistani made G3 in private (and obviously, illegal) ownership in Western Australia in the 1990s that was bought in Queensland and smuggled into Western Australia. The laws in Western Australia were so restrictive (some would say anal) that groups lobbied for nearly a decade to allow paintball to be played as a sport in this state and even then there were still restrictions on private ownership of paintball guns (the government decided that they needed to be registered as firearms).

A number of rifles purchased legally in Queensland ended up being traded to locals in Papua New Guinea for marijuana. The guns were passed on to resistance groups in West Papua who were fighting against the Indonesian invasion of West Papua. This trade of guns from Australia for drugs from Papua New Guinea went on for several years and was only effectively ended with the federal government's 1996 gun buyback scheme where the federal government basically dictated what the future of gun ownership in Australia would be.

There was almost a 100% compliance with the handing in of registered but now restricted firearms. However, in Queensland and New South Wales there were many, many firearms that were never registered when they were legally purchased and the vast majority of these were not handed in.
So in some cases, you can still find semi-auto rifles for illegal sale in this country but you'll pay a premium for them and obtaining the ammunition can be a little problematic. A person who qualifies for the restricted licence category can legally purchase semi-autos such as the AR15 or L1A1 but the prices in those gunshops who stock them are almost as bad as the illegal prices e.g. the last price I saw for an AR15 was Au$5800 (around US$4900)

And a last few words on the Port Arthur massacre. The water here is very murky and further illustrates the lax laws that were in place in some states of this country.
Martin Bryant didn't shoot all 35 of the murder victims, some were stabbed and some were bludgeoned.
A live radio report after the massacre (that I personally heard on the day) quoted a security guard at the scene as saying that if security guards in Tasmania were allowed to carry guns, he could have stopped Bryant after the first few shootings - this was later removed from all broadcast lists and never played again.
The anti-gun fanatics and the government like to overlook all of that - it didn't fit with their agenda (you can see where my sympathies are, even without me stating that I have been a legal owner of registered firearms in Western Australia for over 20 years).

Bryant purchased his AR10 through a newspaper add but is thought to have bought his AR15 from a gunshop in Tasmania but he did not have a firearms license. He did however, have a sizeable inheritance of over US$400,000 and it's rumoured by some speculators (although there's no proof) that he offered a lot of money for the guns he bought.
The gunshop had bought the AR15 from the police of Victoria. The Victorian police had obtained the AR15 from either a gun amnesty or a confiscation and sold it along with hundreds of other firearms (obtained in the same manner) to gunshops in Tasmania to raise funds for the police service.

[Brother in Arms]

Wow maybe you should start an OT restriction of firearms ownership thread? Reading all that almost made me throw up. So sad to see what they did to the citizens in the UK,AU,NZ

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Brother in Arms

Reading all that almost made me throw up. So sad to see what they did to the citizens in the UK,AU,NZ

Yeah. Aussies and Kiwis used to be able to shoot BEFORE they joined the military. Very few can now, unless it's the triggers on their Xbox controllers.

[.45cultist]

History generally has British and other peoples needing those skills and weapons at some point, ante bellum both world wars at a glance.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by Brother in Arms

Wow maybe you should start an OT restriction of firearms ownership thread? Reading all that almost made me throw up. So sad to see what they did to the citizens in the UK,AU,NZ

An interesting observation (although what it actually means in regards to those societies, who knows...) is that the larger the population, the more restrictive firearms ownership has become.
New Zealand firearms laws aren't as restricted as those in Australia while Australian firearms laws aren't as bad as the positively draconian laws put in place in the UK.

New Zealand
In New Zealand, the policy seems to be more about checking the fitness of the applicant to own firearms rather than to control types of firearm. So for example, you can still legally own AR15 type semi-auto rifles and can buy 30-rd mags for them as long as you can prove that you are mentally, emotionally and physically fit to qualify for a licence.
(I seriously considered immigrating to NZ but the job prospects weren't good at the time.)

Australia
In Australia, the policy is a rather more emotional response to firearms such that any and all semi-auto rifles (of any calibre) are restricted including .22LR rifles such as the Ruger 10/22 and the general public cannot own semi-auto or pump-action shotguns. Handguns are restricted to calibres of .380 or 9mm or less and magazines for pistols are restricted to 10-rds or less. It is possible to get calibres up to .45 inch (notice that it's based on size of the calibre and not power) if you are a member of an approved category of competition pistol shooting.

I say emotional response because of a number of things but mostly they are as follows: -
The pistol calibre restrictions based on size rather than power is a real quick and easy (and totally arbitrary to the point of mindless) way to control handguns. It takes no consideration of such things as the .44 Magnum round is more powerful than the .45 Long Colt round.
After a police commissioner was murdered in New South Wales with a 10/22 rifle by a criminal gang sometime in the 1990s, there was concerted effort by the police of that state to prevent further sales of semi-auto .22LR rifles to the general public because the rifle was apparently legally owned by one of the gang members.
The restrictions on shotguns make no sense to any intelligent being that displays even a minor amount of rational thought. A civilian cannot licence any semi-auto or pump-action shotgun but there are no restrictions on licencing a bolt-action or lever-action shotgun. The sad reality of this, is that pump-actions were included because they were "felt" to be more threatening, more damaging and just generally more "violent" than other types of shotgun.

When the federal government gathered together it's panel of advisors for gun control, the "experts"** gave them such "truths" as the following: -
(I'm paraphrasing here because I no longer have my copy of the Green Paper, the document outlining the government's response to gun control);
1. Semi-auto rifles are to be restricted because a bullet fired from a semi-auto is more dangerous than a bullet fired from a bolt-action. I know what they were trying to express (that a semi-auto can fire more often than a bolt-action) but if they couldn't express the idea properly I am left to think that they actually had no idea of what they were talking about.
2. Pump-action shotguns need to be restricted because they are more aggressive than a "genuine" sporting shooter needs, everybody's seen how dangerous they are in movies and they are obviously not something a hunter or sporting shooter needs... yes my jaw hit the floor after reading that claim.

** I simply cannot put into text how much disdain I feel towards those people, the panel seemed to be made up mostly of people who were terrified of guns and of anyone who owned a gun. It was by no means a balanced panel and the feelings of many gun owners at the time was that gun control was done for political purposes rather than any true concerns for public safety. Some of us still harbour lingering feelings that it was a political stunt.

United Kingdom
When the 2012 Olympic pistol shooting teams couldn't legally train in their own country... As I understand it, any self-loading or pump-action rifle with a calibre above .22LR and the vast majority of handguns are prohibited from civilian ownership.

[.45cultist]

I've heard a lot of those banned weapons were "lost" or "stolen". I'd imagine that these would surface again.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by .45cultist

I've heard a lot of those banned weapons were "lost" or "stolen". I'd imagine that these would surface again.

That's what happened here in many, many cases.