MA: Identifying Pre-Ban Glock Mags

Frosty,

Apparently others know him whereas I don't, so there may be more to this picture than I saw here. Also I was out working most of the day and am way behind in reading what's going on here.

In other words, don't worry about my remark.
 
LenS said:
Frosty,

Apparently others know him whereas I don't, so there may be more to this picture than I saw here. Also I was out working most of the day and am way behind in reading what's going on here.

In other words, don't worry about my remark.
Click to expand...

Len,

I didn't worry about it, I just treated it as good advice.
 
Hi guys, I was linked here from concealedcarry.com. I joined so I could ask thisw ne question that came up the other day.

I am a ME resident, but work in MA. I have resident ME CCW, and nonresident NH and MA CCW (Class-A). I bought a new glock (standard cap, naturally) and I CCW it into MA. Having been a MA resident most of my life since moving out last year, I am pretty familiar with the gun laws. Someone told me to watch out having std capacity glock mags, as they might be illegal. Am I exempt because I an a ME resident? In other words, does the high-cap law apply to residents, or all people carrying there?
 
jamz, welcome. Hope you will become a regular contributor. I remember your name from somewhere...TheHighRoad maybe?

I believe that this subject was covered earlier in another thread, but I cannot remember what was decided. I want to say that possession of a (Mass) illegal large capacity feeding device (hi-cap magazine to everyone else) while in Mass, even if legal in your home state, is illegal here. But I cannot recall if this was the final word. Hopefully someone can help point us to the correst answer.
 
jamz said:
Hi guys, I was linked here from concealedcarry.com. I joined so I could ask thisw ne question that came up the other day.

I am a ME resident, but work in MA. I have resident ME CCW, and nonresident NH and MA CCW (Class-A). I bought a new glock (standard cap, naturally) and I CCW it into MA. Having been a MA resident most of my life since moving out last year, I am pretty familiar with the gun laws. Someone told me to watch out having std capacity glock mags, as they might be illegal. Am I exempt because I an a ME resident? In other words, does the high-cap law apply to residents, or all people carrying there?
Click to expand...

It applies to everyone inside the borders of MA. There is no exemption
apparent in the law for joe citizens of other states.

The easiest workaround to this is get some preban glock mags... if you
want to be 110% safe, get some NFMLs or something. At this point they
should be relatively easy to find. Then you might want to rebuild it (new
spring especially) if its worn out... I had a G17 mag I got that had a -really- weak spring!

-Mike
 
Yes, illegal for anyone not LE/mil to possess "new" hi-caps in MA, even if not a resident here (only exception is FOPA, traveling thru).

Best bet for real (unquestionable) pre-bans are on GlockTalk or EE on AR15.com.
 
jamz said:
THanks for the advice all. Frosty, you probably remember me from THR. Been on there for a while. :)
Click to expand...
I thought so. Well I'm glad that you found your way over here.
 
Just got back from 4 seasons and got a std capacity "gen 1" (according to the excellent photo) magazine and a 10 rounder just in case. :)

Thanks for the advice all! Now I am no longer committing a felony because I didn't read the country's most convoluted, arcane, muddy firearms regulations closely enough. [rolleyes]
 
Does anyone have any feedback on the refurbished Glock police trade ins that are at all the gunshops lately? They all come with 3 NEW 15 rounders that are matches to the 3rd gen photos at the begining of the thread. I was told that they were legit. Thanks for any info.

Looks like a great forum so far, nice to see so many people from the MA who understand what we have to deal with.
 
Dave, welcome to the forum.

The mags are highly suspect/questionable and if you read everything I've posted here about them, you will understand that we can't get any straight answers from Glock.
 
My 2 cents

So where does a person stand when they go to a show and purchase what are claimed to be "pre ban" and they prove to be new stock from Glock?

I recently purchased a Glock 23 refurbished froma reputable shop in MA. It came with 3 Hi Capacity mags that are comparitvely no different than glocks "NEW" product they are selling outside of MA. ............. and from the looks of the mags, they were virgins!
 
If someone makes an issue of it and proves that they are post-ban, you are screwed. The distributors are telling the MA dealers that they are "pre-ban" but at least one MA dealer doubts it since they look pristine and both he and I doubt that the companies sat on tons of new pre-ban mags during the ban when they could have got top dollar for them, only now to sell them for cheap money.

A number of LEOs have claimed to "know" which are which, but when I talked with the techs at Glock-US, they don't know it all and they claim that Glock-Austria is evasive when they ask about them.

So, bottom line is that the risk is ALL on the buyer and we don't have anything absolute to base this on. Pat Sweeney in his latest edition of his Glock book (written just before the Fed ban sunset) claimed that he knew which was which . . . and just before he went to press, a friend approached him with documentable 3rd gen pre-ban mags for his Glock in .45ACP! I know of someone else (a forum member) who makes the same claim and I have NO reason to disbelieve him.

Caveat emptor!

We desperately need to overturn the hi-cap mag law to avoid innocent people getting burned and spending 10-20 years in jail when they had no reason to believe that what they bought was illegal to possess. Last legislative session, Jim Wallace told me that we "didn't have enough friends in the state house to get this passed". I'm afraid that after the next election, we'll have fewer friends still.
 
The high caps I got are Gen 1 according to the picture, the one in the gun gen 2, like the gun.

I hope it doesn't ever come up!
 
Pre-ban Glock Magazines

The first image on page one of this thread is an accurate representation of pre and post Glock magazines.
 
Glock 3rd Generation Pre-Ban Magazines

There were some 3rd generation pre-ban magazines made with the caliber designation placed high up near the magazine lips and follower, prior to the beginning of the addition of LEO/Military markings. However, these pre-ban magazines do not have the bevel on the right side of the magazine body, up near the magazine lips. There are also other differences in the magazine body which can be viewed by looking at the front of the magazine, at the top front edge of the magazine body. I will provide images in the near future. In the meantime, interested people can view images of the back of Glock magazines at the following link: http://glockmeister.com/magtype.shtml
 
What I would like to know, is there any date code or other manufacturer code that is present on current production post ban magazines that would allow us to tell with absolute certainty the manufacturing date of the magazine?
A question for Darius:
If there is no such a code, how can someone be persecuted just based on these web paged? I would imagine there has to be something official from Glock themselves stating which features lettering were available when.

Thanks,

Andrew.
 
What I would like to know, is there any date code or other manufacturer code that is present on current production post ban magazines that would allow us to tell with absolute certainty the manufacturing date of the magazine?
Click to expand...

Yes. On some magazines (primarily Italian-made in my limited experience) there is. I'm not sure if I should share it in open discussions however (talk about paranoia!).
 
there has to be something official from Glock themselves stating which features lettering were available when.
Click to expand...

Not according to the good folks in Glock Tech Supt in US. They told me that Glock-Austria made all sorts of tweaks and changes to mag design over the years and refused to tell them the "break points" on when a particular change was made.
 
Pre Ban Glock Magazines

Glock technical personnel have made it clear that there are a number of iterations of their magazines, and that for example the location of the caliber designation does not prove that a magazine is post or pre-ban in any way manner, or form. The only hard fast rule to follow is that post ban magazines either have the LEO/Military markings on the back of the magazine, or after the sunset of the AWB, newer 4th generation magazines have very noticeable changes in the magazine body dimensions, up near the magazine lips. It is ultimately the burden of any LEO and prosecutor to prove that a magazine is post ban, and possesed illegaly by a private citizen. The prosecution will have no problem doing so if the LEO/military markings are present on the magazine body, and/or you are in possesion of a new 4th generation magazine that has noticeably different magazine body dimensions up near the magazine lips. If you have magazines that do not possess one of these two features, you probably have pre-ban magazines.
 
To Hi Cap or not to Hi Cap ...... That is the question!

My approach ................... when I'm packing ............. I'll go with a fresh 4th generation "lo cap", when I'm at the club, I'll shoot the questionable "hi caps". Lets face it, if you can't get the job done with the first 10 you got realy big problems! [rofl]
 
icyclefar said:
My approach ................... when I'm packing ............. I'll go with a fresh 4th generation "lo cap", when I'm at the club, I'll shoot the questionable "hi caps". Lets face it, if you can't get the job done with the first 10 you got realy big problems! [rofl]
Click to expand...

Problem is that most 10 round magazines are broken. I certainly wouldnt
trust my life to one, if I could possibly avoid it. Some of the HK and
Beretta ones seem okay, but by and large SigSauer and Glock have
horrible "crippled" magazines. They work, but they just seem to be
wrong, like paste and glue special kind of wrong. Rounds rattle around
in the mags, and/or are extremely hard to load. That cannot be
a good thing. I only use my 10 round G19 magazines at the range,
otherwise, its a normal cap mag.

Also, why on earth would you want to intentionally inhibit your
capacity? That kinda defeats the purpouse of having a Glock, given that
they have the highest size/capacity ratio on the market, just about. I'll
take every extra cartridge I can get my hands on.

FWIW, when the federal law was intact it basically said that lack of
the crime bill markings was pretty much the burden of proof required for the
accused to assert that their magazines were preban. Wether MA has
adopted this verbatim or not is a different story, and I don't even know if
there is any case law on the issue. That would be the pudding, really...
and I think the problem is that there is little to none regarding high
capacity feeding devices and the AWB. There are probably many that
deal with illegal possesion, eg, a "large capacity" mag being posessed by
someone without an LTC, existing as a tackon charge to get a criminal
more jail time... but from what I remember, that's a completely different
section of the law, one that isn't chronologically limited- eg, no license =
no posession, regardless of age of magazines.

-Mike
 
Moderator said:
I think this is a false staement. Do you have proof of this?
Click to expand...

Only anecdotal incidents involving such magazines, that make them less
desireable than the normal ones. I guess I just consider them broken
because the gun was not designed around them.

When I had issues early on with my G19, I only had problems with the 10
round magazines. Every time I switched to the normal preban mag, the
issue went away. (it was a strange last round extraction issue.) Eventually
it disappeared completely, but it was still enough to convince me never
to trust the gun with the 10 round magazine installed.

Sig P226 crippled mags rattle when loaded. The ammo doesn't sit right
in the magazine, as it was originally designed to. Fully loaded 15 rounders
don't rattle. This annoyed me so much that I sent my 10 round mags to
a friend in CA and bought more prebans to replace them all.

If you're an HK fan, don't drop any USP crippled magazines on
a hard surface- the basepad may break off, even if the magazine is
unloaded! You can still break the plate off a normal mag, but it takes
a lot more effort to do so, because of the way the basepad is secured to
the mag. Although, I have to give HK some credit here... at least they
made their mags easier to load than others.

Almost every crippled mag is a pain in the ass to load to capacity, save
for a few here and there. If you're doing 10+1 in the pipe, it's harder
to seat the magazine.

Some of these problems are trivial, granted, but it's enough to make "clinton
mags" less desireable than the ones that were intended to go with the
gun.

They work, but IMO, it's the same as driving a car with four donut tires
on it. Semantically speaking, the car isn't broken, but it certainly
is crippled. Maybe "crippled in more than just capacity" is the term I
should have used.

-Mike
 
Last edited:
andy t said:
What I would like to know, is there any date code or other manufacturer code that is present on current production post ban magazines that would allow us to tell with absolute certainty the manufacturing date of the magazine?
A question for Darius:
If there is no such a code, how can someone be persecuted just based on these web paged? I would imagine there has to be something official from Glock themselves stating which features lettering were available when.

Thanks,

Andrew.
Click to expand...

Andrew,

I am unaware of any date code on new Glock mags, or, for that matter, on old ones. I am also not aware of anyone being prosecuted for illegal possession of new, post-ban large capacity mags in Massachusetts.

This does not mean, however, that it couldn't happen one day.

Best advice I can give: if you want large capacity mags in Massachusetts, stick with the pre-federal assault weapons ban mags, the ones made prior to mid-September, 1994. Do otherwise at your own risk.

Darius
 

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