Would this be legal if I replaced the pistol grip with a Choate thumbhole stock and the flashhider was permanently attached? To me the flashhider seems a little more useful than the pistol grip.

Um, You can't put flash hiders on Post-ban.
No matter if its threaded screw on kind or permanently attached.

It's illegal period.

However you can install Flash hider on only pre-ban guns.

Wrong.  You can have no more than two "evil" features on your rifle.  For example, the M-14 has a f/h because it lacks the pistol grip, however, it still accepts hi-cap mags (hence only two features).

Circuits,  please re-post your reply.  I clicked on the "edit" key and meant to use part of your reply as a quote- I ended up editing the reply (looks the same as when I use the "quote reply" function).  I apologize.

For those who missed it- Circuits said I was wrong in my reply and that, with a detachable mag, you can only have one "evil" feature.  

He was right- I meant to say "detachable mag" as the other (second) evil feature and not "hi-cap mag".

Those are the two "evil" features I was referring to- the detachable mag and pistol grip.

A politician's definition, not mine.

Once again, SORRY CIRCUITS!

So it should be OK then, right? By eliminating the horrible nasty evil pistol grip I should be able to install a horrible nasty evil flash hider. Unless the outside diameter of the Vortex is 22mm.....

Steve:  don't worry about it - I'll reconstruct it in this reply anyway:  The law reads "detachable magazine and at most one of" in reference to the features.  Detachable mag isn't a feature, it's the defining feature, for rifles.  No detachable mag, and it cannot be an AW under the 94 ban no matter how many other features it has.



No, Mike - not that simple.  The thumbhole stock still counts as a pistol grip for the 94 "AW" ban.

The SAR 2 is an imported rifle, too, so it has to comply with the 89 bush import ban as well as the 94 AW ban.  Your imported rifle can't have a bayonet or flash hider ever, regardless of the number of features, because if someone had tried to import it that way, it wouldn't have been allowed in the country.

With a completely US made AK-74, you'd still have to remove the pistol grip to mount a flash hider, and it couldn't be a standard vortex, either, because it'd still be 22mm.  Alternatively, you could make your magazine non-removable, and load up on all the features you want, except you can't do that with an imported rifle, either - just a domestic product.

Now I'm confused. Why would the thumbhole stock still count as a pistol grip? My understanding is that in order to have a pistol grip instead of a thumbhole stock you need to have 10 or less imported parts. Since the pistol grip is on the list of evil features along with the flash hider, why can't I substitute one for the other? It still wouldn't be an assault weapon as defined by the BATF, right? Or am I missing something?

Yes, you're missing that as an imported post-89 receiver, you can't put a flash hider on it ever, regardless of number of features.

The thumbhole still counts as a pistol grip under the 94 AW ban because that's the way that law was written.  Even though the 89 import ban considers a thumbhole stock to not be a "pistol grip", the 94 AW ban is a separate piece of legislation which does count the thumbhole stock as a pistol grip.  Welcome to the wacky world of gun laws.

Point taken, Troy.

MIKE:  The thumbhole still counts as a pistol grip for the 94 ban - no flash hider with that or a pistol grip installed.

That still doesn't make any sense. If you can take a completely stock Chinese MAK-90, which could not have been imported with a pistol grip OR a flash hider because of it's ability to accept a detachable magazine, and replace enough of the parts on the gun with US produced ones so that the gun is no longer considered to have been imported, why can you not simply choose for a flash hider to be your second deadly feature instead of the pistol grip? What am I missing here? That thumbhole stocks were not considered "pistol grips" under the 89 ban but are under the 94 ban? If so, how assinine is that? That's a law just begging to be challenged. I've always tried to a law abiding compliant litttle sheep, but I am seriously just about to the point where I don't really give a fuck what the law says anymore. This shit is getting absolutely ridiculous.

How about if you wire welded the magazine into the receiver? Then you could have all the deadly features you wanted, couldn't you? With a gun as cheap as the AK, I might just be fun to sacrifice one like that simply to piss off the liberals.

Exactly - they're defined differently under the 94 ban than under the 89 ban, and both apply.  It's assinine, but so is banning rifles based on 'features'.



Yes, you can do just that, unless some state or local law in your area prohibits it.  The AK's real hard to load through the top with a fixed magazine, though.  It need not be welded - so long as it's fixed and not easily removable without tools.  There was a fixed-mag AR made, if I recall correctly, where the mag was on rails.  You could press the magazine release, and drop the mag down, then rotate it to load with loose rounds or stripper clips - something like that would work for an AK better than loading through the top, if you decide to seriously pursue the fixed-mag option.