History of the m14s/m305 from Marstar- John, how about filling us in?

John:

it seems like you and Marstar have been instrumental in making this rifle available to Canadians.

For the newer board members (including myself) are you able to say a bit about how this came to pass, and maybe even speculate about how many have been sold in Canada?

Thanks!

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

...i'm very interested to see where this thread goes.

Realizing John obviously needs to protect certain trade secrets, I'd be curious to hear some of the more general broad-strokes.

my understanding is that the m305s was 'reverse-engineered' to arm pro-communist guerillas. when that didn't work out, well, there was a market for it in the western world.
gotta feed those chinese govt takeovers of cdn petroleum companies- and other western industries- somehow, right?

Actually, as I understand it, the dies for the M14 were sold to China (Taiwan), so they could be produced as the Type 57 rifle for the Chinese arsenals.
Why reverse engineer something that you can purchase for pennies on the dollar?

I too would like to hear about Marstars involvement in making the Norinco semi auto variant available to the Canadian market.


Kirk

Originally Posted by kirkf

Actually, as I understand it, the dies for the M14 were sold to China (Taiwan), so they could be produced as the Type 57 rifle for the Chinese arsenals.
Why reverse engineer something that you can purchase for pennies on the dollar?

I too would like to hear about Marstars involvement in making the Norinco semi auto variant available to the Canadian market.


Kirk

I think that's Republic of China (Taiwan) which is said to have bought the tooling, vs People's Republic of China (mainalnd China), where Norincos are born- my understanding is that the People's
Republic of China is said to have reverse-engineered the M14.

Marstar are not the only Dealers who bring in M14 from China. They may not only be the first to import . Anyone with a Firearms Liscence , with or without a Broker can Import , just do the proper paper work . But thats another thread or not.

Originally Posted by gunluver63

Marstar are not the only Dealers who bring in M14 from China. They may not only be the first to import . Anyone with a Firearms Liscence , with or without a Broker can Import , just do the proper paper work . But thats another thread or not.

it seems (from what i've seen from my limited time on this forum) that they're the folks who seem to have the longest history of bringing them into Canada... so i think they'd likely know the most about it.

for the cdn fans, think it's just fortunate that the US banned their import, otherwise, like so many things, we'd have to wait our turn while that market was being fed.

well, i have one from way back when that's marked AL 000xxx- al stands for ALAN LEVER- that would be back about 88 or so- it's a BLUED number, and you can see where the bayonet lug and the f/a selector switch were milled off- they also screwed with the scope mount hole to appease the americans

I have one with serial # AL0000X which I understand was from the first batch imported by Allan Lever in the 80's-90's