Antipodean digital shootin’ buddy Jigsaw’s Kafkaesque hassles trying to get a single additional spare magazine for her 1911 reminded me of a few evil high capacity ammunition feeding devices that I keep around for mostly sentimental reasons.
Eight years have passed since I bought these in the heady days immediately following the sunset of Bill Clinton’s 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. We’ve had an entire wave of new shooters who have no idea how bad the Bad Days were. 10 round pistol magazines, “Kilnton Kilps”, shoddily bodged at the factory were fragile and finicky compared to full capacity units. Desperate shooters were faced with choosing between those, normal capacity magazines selling for $100 or more (often of dubious origin and legality), or the temptation of cheap but unreliable and poorly built Triple-K or Pro-Mag knockoffs. Do you remember AR shooters tweaking abused and rapidly thinning aluminum feed lips with pliers and jigs trying to eke a few more trouble free range sessions before the lips cracked or fell off? How about the hilarity of parting the hair of bystanders with the blast from the horrid pinned and welded AK-74 style muzzle brakes that Shrubmaster was shipping their AR uppers with? Ever seen a permanently pinned telestock and wondered why someone would do such a thing?
I bought 6 Glock 19 magazines, and 10 Okay Industries GI aluminum 30 round mags as soon as it was legal to do so, and the little inscriptions on each one reminds me that we are all one single foolish law away from the Bad Days again. The political climate has changed, but as long as there are humans that seek to exert control over others, we are in danger. Glock runs a great program where you can send in any factory magazine, no matter how old, and they will send you a fresh new updated model in exchange, and I’ve mostly transitioned to using Magpul Pmags, but I keep these around anyway. It’s not like I’ve got to feed them, and the lesson they represent shouldn’t be forgotten.
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Oh, I remember those days. I remember a 25 round Butler Creek 10/22 mag going for $80 and crying if anything happened to Glock mags. I also remember how stupid those 10 rounders were and I still have some around. I use them for dummy round practice. You’re right, we need to remember this so history doesn’t repeat itself.
The day it sunset, I went down and bought a trophy Bushhamster mag at our local LE distributor. I didn’t own any high-cap pistols at the time, so I bought a G20 magazine, just because I could, and gave it to the first person I ran into who owned a G20.
Sad that it ever happened, but glad that we’ve got the inertia back over on our side again!
The first Glock 19 I kept* came with two of the neutered 10 round magazines.
They suck. A buddy told me a new follower fixes that, for now, they’re range mags.
I still have a couple AR mags (no AR at the moment) and can’t recall if any have that inscription or not.
Some of my Glock magazines do have the “restricted” marks, most don’t.
Due to current events, anybody figuring the next 4 years will be a picnic needs to wake up and buy a pile of them. After all, if one would have had a friendly visit from a time traveler back in 1993 about pending legislation, who wouldn’t have bought a shipping container full of Glock and AR mags, plus a dozen AR’s with “eeeeeebil” features aboard…even knowing ten years later it’d be rescinded, one could have lived nicely selling 25 dollar product for 100 bucks here and there.
*kept, as in, I’m pretty sure I bought the only Glock I’ve ever seen that had a problem with in the form of the first one I purchased.
what is this glock magazine exchange program you mentioned? I’ve never heard of such a thing, and my google-fu seems weak today. does it have an official name or is it just something they do? I was unable to find anything except for the RSA program…
Here’s some folks discussing it on Glocktalk.
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