Imagine the following scenario...wrt hi cap AR Mags

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iamcanjim

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Imagine I design a bolt action rifle in .223 remington. Imagine I make it compatible with 30 round AR magazines.

Imagine I get a factory in Eastern Europe or China to make the rifle.

Imagine I call the rifle the xt556. Imagine I stamp the magazines to say 30 rounds .223, for use in xt556 rifle only.

Imagine I have 250 rifles made (selling for about $800 each) and 10,000 magazines made. (selling for $200 each)

Would I make money?
 
$200 per mag is a bit steep.

Put it this way though. Say you charged $50/mag, you would sell $200 worth of mags easy (hell, you would probably sell $600 worth of mags easy).

Hell, there is a dealer right now selling 12/13rd mags for $50 and they are uber-backordered
 
I certainly wouldn't market it as compatible with AR15 mags, I would actually go out of my way to state the mags are proprietary and actually make sure there were some differences.
 
Actually, the mass use of such a proprietary magazine would help to illustrate the point that laws restricting AR mags to 5 rds are truly useless. Criminals just unpin or bring in illegal mags and lawful gun owners use other mags with no ill-effect
 
gorky said:
$200 per mag is a bit steep.

Put it this way though. Say you charged $50/mag, you would sell $200 worth of mags easy (hell, you would probably sell $600 worth of mags easy).

Hell, there is a dealer right now selling 12/13rd mags for $50 and they are uber-backordered
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I would have to charge such a high price for the mags to make up for the loss of developing and selling the rifle.
 
Perhaps if you made the same bolt rifle that did not take AR-15 magazines. But the normal capacity magazines you design and make for your bolt rifle (i.e. 30 rounders) also fit/functioned in an AR. That would be the ticket. Your rifle would then not be designed to take AR mags.

People still wouldn't pay $200 a magazine just for spite since you'd be deliberately gouging them.

Now if only we could all get proper firearm legislation without the stupid magazine capacities in the first place.
 
iamcanjim said:
I would have to charge such a high price for the mags to make up for the loss of developing and selling the rifle.
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Or you could just sell more mags (easier solution). You might get some people to buy mags at $200 a pop but not even close to as many that would buy boatloads of mags at $50/ea.

Hell, if you make a decent gun, you might even be able to make some money back on that too.
 
I wouldn't be gouging them. I would be developing and manufacturing a rifle that I would be losing lots of money on in order to bring those magazines to the market. Perhaps not $200 but a lot more than $50.

Besides, I would have a monopoly on 30 round mags.

One of the things necessary would be to make somehow sure your customers understood the economics of the project without having to come right out and say it. Which, judging by the comments on this thread, would be difficult.
 
I also imagine the RCMP streamrolling your idea into the ground because they find your bolt action rifle as "not readily available in Canada", because it is a one off production and they have seized all the shipments of rifles, legal or not.
 
OK, I'll throw one out.
Imagine that Iamcanjim designs an all new mag that has the same dimensions as a Stanag mag, WITH ONE NOTABLE DIFFERENCE. The rectangular hole on the left side for the the mag retention thing is replaced with a SMALLER ROUND HOLE.
So it simply will not mate up with a standard AR-15 magwell. The guns rectangular pin does not fit into the smaller round hole so the mag falls out.
But Iamcanjim's own bolter gun has a suitable round pin that securely locks the newly designed mag in place. Jim sells a few bolter guns and a few matching mags.

Shortly afterwards, someone else comes along comes a retrofit kit for AR's and every other gun that uses the AR mag to swap in a small round pin.

Opinions?
I dont know what the answer is. My genius is not in legal matters, but in inventing solutions to irritating problems....
 
Tootall did avoid the obvious pitfall of "you just modify the mag to take square holes again."

If you were modifying the rifle . . . to use an existing magazine designed for a different rifle . . .

Well isn't that how the SKS and XCR pistol mag combo works?
 
Believe it or not, there are a lot of business people on this forum that understand the concepts you are talking about. We are not ignorant of R&D costs. We are just not very tolerant of being told that $200 is a fair price for a magazine to recoup R&D costs. $2 million gross off of 10k mag sales will have the appearance of price gouging, no matter how your dress it up. If your material cost of $10/mag (which I think is high), you will be netting $1.9 million off magazine sales to offset your R&D, nevermind your sales from the rifles.

There are reasons why Canadian manufacturers have not taken on this project (and you can be sure many have considered it). My understanding is that the R&D is the easier part of it. The legal side of the rifle/mags/magazine limit is an issue. Dropping $100-$500k on R&D is a bit of a harder pill to swallow if one malicious ruling by the RCMP can make the entire project an exercise in futility.

Then again, there is plenty of speculation that at least one Canadian manufacturer is pursuing this course of action. I would not be surprised if we see something on the market within a year.

iamcanjim said:
I wouldn't be gouging them. I would be developing and manufacturing a rifle that I would be losing lots of money on in order to bring those magazines to the market. Perhaps not $200 but a lot more than $50.

Besides, I would have a monopoly on 30 round mags.

One of the things necessary would be to make somehow sure your customers understood the economics of the project without having to come right out and say it. Which, judging by the comments on this thread, would be difficult.
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