Did I sufficiently 'neuter' my preban 30 round AK mag?

I live in NY, and I think you all know what's happened here regarding standard capacity magazines...

I have a 30 round AK magazine (pre ban) that I have a sentimental attachment to.
Might sound weird, but I am from the UK and this magazine was part of my excercising of my newly-acquired Second Amendment rights upon moving to the States, so I'd like to keep it as a memento.

I put the magazine into a C-clamp and squashed the walls inwards, preventing the follower from moving. I also ground away both front and rear locking lugs and sawed off one of the feed lips.
There's no way this mag could ever be restored to working condition.

Do you think this is sufficient to count as being 'destroyed' for legal purposes?

Yeah, I felt a bit like crying and throwing up too.

It's only a magazine, if the ban gets overturned I can buy another.
I thought about trying to reduce the capacity, but it's not worth the hassle if I was ever in a situation where I had to explain it to a cop or in court.

goldie said:

You should have had it put in a mold & had acrylic injected in there, making a paperweight out of it....

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I did think of filling it with resin, but decided against it for two reasons; cost (resin is expensive) and reversibility.

If you had a magazine filled with resin and dropped it in a container of acetone for a few days, you'd most likely end up with a fully functioning 30 rounder.
After hearing the horror stories about NY cops duct-taping bayonets to rifles to prove that the ground-down bayonet lug still worked, I don't want to take any chances.

That's why I also ground the locking lugs and feed lip away, so even if the mag was 'unsquashed', it still wouldn't work.

Part of the reason I acted so fast was because there seems to be no agreement on when the magazine actually becomes illegal. I've read 30, 60, and 90 days, a year, and that it hasn't been decided yet.

Imagine for instance turning up at a police station to turn a magazine in, and finding out you're a day late and getting locked up.

Remember, I'm from England. I've had to destroy/surrender my property before and I know how this stuff goes down.
I was in a gun shop in the UK once, and witnessed a guy who was on the verge of tears because he had been away on business for six months and arrived home to discover that he was a criminal for owning an air pistol.
The guy in the gun shop was telling him to saw it into pieces before handing it in at the police station.

I don't want my kids to grow up without a dad just because some cop drilled a pop rivet out of my magazine.

Not worth the risk for a $20 mag.
I don't want to be the test case to determine if a pop rivet or a welded pin is 'readily reversible'...

If I am ever able to legally own standard mags again, it's not like AK mags are hard to come by, there must be millions of them out there.

My question was really more about whether what I did to my mag is sufficient to cover my a** from a legal standpoint?

Arbor said:

If everyone gave up as easily as you, we would have no chance. This is not England.

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I have a lot more to lose than you.
Until I can apply for citizenship in a couple of years, I am a Permanent Resident and thus I would risk being deported and not being able to be with my wife and kids ever again.

A $20 magazine is just not that important.

Hopefully this silly law will be overturned, and then I will buy another one.

Yeah, that's a good point.
Maybe I'll take it to a police station and get a receipt for it.

goldie said:

What i meant was an acrylic block like those ones they preserve butterflies,scorpions, & stuff in.

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Yeah I know, most of those types of resin dissolve in acetone, MEK etc.