922(r) Compliance And The Saiga 12 Shotgun
Many US three-gun competition shooters have adopted the Izhmash Saiga 12 shotgun. The Saiga 12 is a redesigned AK adapted to feed rimmed shotgun ammo and fitted with a semi auto only trigger and sporter stock. An industry has grown up around supplying US made parts and accessories for these weapons. Annoyingly a transfer bar is used to enable an additional trigge to pull the original one. This, as you might expect, was not a good idea. In the States, owners often replace this Rube Goldberg sporter trigger with a US made AK group. This makes for a much better shooting shotgun
It is now possible to add a bunch of other components such as pistol grips, folding stocks, rail systems and high capacity mags. The Sunset of the 1994 assault weapon ban made this possible. US Code Title 18 Section 922(r) mandates that you can’t have more than 10 non US parts in the weapon from a list of 10 designated ‘important’.
The Saiga 12 as imported has 14 imported 922(r) parts, so if you take off the 5 round non US mag you deduct three imported parts. If you go for a US manufactured Saiga 12 mag, you add three US made parts taking the total down to 11, BUT you lose the ‘sporting’ exemption and it becomes an illegal weapon. It is risky to rely on Saiga mags to attain 922(r) compliance as someone arguably only needs to swap your magazine for an imported unit to make the weapon illegal.
One way round this is to change out one more 922(r) part for a US made version – typically the gas piston – taking you down to the magic number of 10 and a legally compliant weapon. Unless of course you live in California (where the magazine must be locked to the weapon) or in other states which have magazine capacity limits or various other parts of the 1994 AWB incorporated into State or municipal laws. Obviously, most shooters are going to want to turn their Saiga into something a bit more martial looking and components are available to replace almost anything other than the receiver group with a US made version. You can read an excellent article on 922(r) compliance here.
Copyright: Franklin M. Orphir 2011