[Newton]

I visited a stand at last weeks Phoenix gun show that was selling copies of HK "pistols". These were in fact HK51 and 53s clones that didn't have a buttstock. The same guy was also pushing the conversion kits which would turn your "pistol" into a genuine HK51/53.

I just wondered how many people happily purchased both without ever wondering why the guy was selling them as separate items in the first place.

I see more of these Krinkov "pistols" and HK53 "pistols" etc at every show, just looks like a violation waiting to happen.

[SaxonPig]

Were these new guns? If so, apparently it is legal to convert a rifle to a pistol at the time of retail sale by merely checking the handgun box on the 4473 or whatever they call the form now. Someone on this forum discussed doing this and I didn't believe it was legal so I wrote to the ATF and the reply I got said it was legal. I was stunned. You can only do this on a new gun being sold for the first time but I was still shocked.

So, according to the ATF letter I got, you could ask the gunshop to saw the barrel off an AK and install a pistol grip in place of the buttstock and sell it to you as a pistol.

Bear in mind that once you do this it is a pistol forever. You muct treat it just like any other handgun as far as laws are concerned. Like you can't put the buttstock on with the short barrel because that would be illegal unless you also put a 16" barrel on it. And even if you did both the ATF still considers it to be a pistol. You can't make it a rifle once it's declared on the form to be a pistol.

[Chipperman]

Were these Vectors?

They are made and sold as pistols, because of the short barrel. The biggest advantage of these is for people who own a sear. They can put the sear into the gun, making it a machine gun. Then they can legally put a buttstock on it. If you do that with a rifle, you are stuck with the longer barrel. If you cut the barrel down, then you have to register it as an SBR when the sear is removed. Doing it as a pistol saves you a $200 tax stamp.

[Gewehr98]

The receivers and serial numbers were registered by the manufacturer as pistol receivers when built, instead of rifle receivers.

BATF has no problems with a designated pistol receiver either staying a pistol receiver or being built into a full-sized rifle (with appropriate length buttstock and at least a 16" barrel) at a later date. Hence one finding the AK and AR pistols, and folks building benchrest and target rifles from Remington XP-100 bolt-action pistol receivers. However, taking a rifle receiver or complete rifle and converting it to a pistol after the fact will bring unwanted attention from the BATF. SBR conversions can be done, but need proper NFA paperwork and still aren't really pistols - they're Short Barreled Rifles.

As for just dropping an autosear into an AK or AR pistol, that will require NFA paperwork, too - assuming the autosear was legitimately documented prior to the machine gun ban of 1986, which ended the sale or manufacture of new machine guns to civilian buyers.