[rocko]

The sale of current production European hi-cap unmarked magazines to the general public is illegal. You doubt this? Contact HK, Inc. directly at (703)450-1900.

Well, for legal advise you'd probably do better contacting a lawyer vs. HK USA. Unless there was some section of the law that I am missing, the following seems pretty clear:

"The lack of a serial number as described in section 923(i) of title 18, United States Code, shall be a presumption that the large capacity ammunition feeding device is not subject to the prohibition of possession in paragraph (1).'"

This, of course, does not deal with the importation of such magazines - I'm sure it is illegal to knowingly import unmarked mags manufacturered post 9/94. But ownership and sales once incountry seem to be protected. Furthermore, if a mag is completely unmarked (as in not even with HK's super secret date coding system), and preban, unmarked mags were produced prior to the ban, how exactly does one tell the difference?

We do report the sale of such magazines (when we find them or customers report them to us) to HK, Inc. in Sterling , VA., they (HK, Inc.) take whatever steps they see fit, and it is they who contact BATF regarding such sales of these magazines. We try to educate the general public as well as other dealers about the selling of such product so they don't get ripped off because of some peoples $greed$.

That may be, but it isn't what you stated originally in HKPRO. Somewhat better than contacting the authorities directly (I have no problems with the firearms community "policing" itself internally as I stated in a post above), if you go to HK with the expectation that they will go to the authorities themselves, it is almost just as bad. While perhaps HK USA did not import any preban mags themselves, it doesn't mean that no legal preban mags exist.

Perhaps it is your intent to keep people from getting ripped off, but in your (or one of your employee's) original HKPRO postings, it really did not come off that way. It certainly isn't HK's intent, or they would simply release the details of their date coding system (for those magazines that are not LEO marked, but coded) so people can easily make the determination themselves whether or not a mag is legal.

HKPro.com has new posting rules due to sales of these types of magazines. They have taken the "good guy stance" as well. We support there move to prevent the sale of these types of magazines to the general public.

Tom can do anything Tom wants on his board. I don't blame him for changing the policy - if nothing else, it is likely just not worth the trouble or aggrivation for him. However, Tom changing policy on a private internet forum does not exactly set legal precedent.

Oh yeah, regarding what appeared to be a somewhat vieled threat of a libel suit against me (unless I am to interpret a private message with the subject of "libel" asking me if my ISP is such as such), libel would require that I made a false statement. Since I was simply relaying information posted by a user of the name "CSA" on HKPRO that claimed to represent your company, I don't think anything libelous was said.

Rocko