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High Standard Trophy carbine kit
jeffb1911
Member Posts: 2,113 ✭✭✭
Picked this up in trade at a local show. A barrel that has the round stud and looks to be set up to attach to a High Standard Trophy that is 16" long and has a wire stock attached to the left side of the chamber area. Has a 3/8" grooved scope mount on it as well. Has the name H. Harborth and 22LR stamped on the right side. Anyone ever hear of such a thing? i remember as a kid something in the American Rifleman about it, but that has been many years ago. Any idea what it is worth? Or hear of H. Harborth?
Comments
Numrich Gun Parts Corp offered a riflette kit like this.
Over the years the Numrich riflette had been discussed several times on my forum. These were never popular and few collectors show any interest. There is some interest because of the novelty. Sort of like the Fiala but not nearly as nice looking. With the butt stock permanently attached to the barrel it gets around the NFA regulations that the Fiala now been exempted from.
Picked this up in trade at a local show. A barrel that has the round stud and looks to be set up to attach to a High Standard Trophy that is 16" long and has a wire stock attached to the left side of the chamber area. Has a 3/8" grooved scope mount on it as well. Has the name H. Harborth and 22LR stamped on the right side. Anyone ever hear of such a thing? i remember as a kid something in the American Rifleman about it, but that has been many years ago. Any idea what it is worth? Or hear of H. Harborth?
I've seen a Hi-Standard .22 pistol-to-carbine conversion for sale before.
It was different than the one depicted in Mr. Stimson's image, and I think it was a custom one-off made by some gunsmith or engineer. The owner was asking several hundred bucks for it. I sort of vaguely remember that the stock and barrel were attached together into one unit, kind of like the Mech-Tech pistol-conversion carbines, and build quality looked surprisingly good (at least from the outside. . .never actually saw the thing in use).
Sorry if this is vague. . . I've scoured the internet for images of this or others, and couldn't find any.
For what its worth, there is still some confusion about the legality of this sort of conversion. Some say that once you convert a pistol into a rifle this way, you can't legally change it back, because "once a rifle, always a rifle" and in converting back to a pistol then you're creating a "short barreled rifle", which is a restricted item.
The BATFE did take this position at one time, but they DO NOT anymore, and have now specifically said this type of conversion/deconversion is OK.
Specifically, according to the BATFE you **CAN** now legally change a pistol to a rifle this way then back into a pistol again, so long as the thing is never in an illegal configuration along the way. Here it is, in writing:
quote:http://www.atf.gov/files/regulations-rulings/rulings/atf-rulings/atf-ruling-2011-4.pdf
Held further, a firearm, as defined by 26 U.S.C. 5845(a)(3)
and (a)(4), is not made when a pistol is attached to
a part or parts designed to convert the pistol into a rifle
with a barrel of 16 inches or more in length, and the
parts are later unassembled in a configuration
not regulated under the NFA (e.g., as a pistol).
quote:John Stimson
The legality of the configuration was well covered by teh author of the article in the NRA magazine. Of course that was 1979 and what interpretations if any about this setup that they may have revised is unknown to me.
See above. I'd like to know what the author said about this in 1979. I honestly don't know what the "official" legal status of this type of conversion was then. While I think conversion to a rifle has always been legal, "de-conversion" back to a pistol might have been in a grey legal area.
But there definitely been some "evolution" of the BATFE's views on this in the last 35 years, mostly because of litigation surrounding Thompson-Center gun kits that could potentially be "manufactured" into different configurations. Without rehashing that, which is well covered elsewhere, until 3 years ago, the BATFE said that while you could legally convert a pistol into a rifle, once you did that, you couldn't legally convert it back into a pistol again (ie "once a rifle, always a rifle").
As of 2011, now the BATFE has determined that you can convert from pistol to rifle and back again legally. This gives tremendously more "value" to pistol-to-carbine conversion kits like the Mech-Tech and this Hi-Standard one. While legal before, there isn't all that much point to converting a pistol to a rifle, if you can't go back again. . .might as well just buy a dedicated pistol-caliber rifle to begin with.
Note that its still illegal to take a RIFLE then convert it into a pistol without NFA registration. That doesn't apply to Hi-Standard pistols, obviously, but it does apply to AR-platform guns, for example. If you want something that you can convert back and forth, it has to be listed at the time of manufacture either as a handgun or rifle AND handgun (not just rifle).
The author of the article was the technical editor of the NRA Publications. In a letter to the ATF he described his plan for this carbine modification. The author said that the wire stock would be permanently attached to the 16.25" barrel so that the stock would not be able to be sued with the short barrel. The Chief, Firearms Technology Branch responded That as described, the project would not be subject to the provisions of the NFA provided that the overall length was at least 26" but that if the barrel were shorten4ed to less than 16 inches it would be classified as a short barreled rifle and subject to all the registration and transfer provisions of the NFA.
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