Capacity confusion

QI have been offered a very lightly used but old Remington semi-auto in a private sale. Problem is, it is a five-shot and its current owner holds it on a firearms certificate. Is it possible to have it modified to a three-shot, so that I can hold it on my shotgun certificate?

Mike says: Five-shot semi-autos first had to be held on firearms certificates under the knee-jerk legislation which followed the Hungerford massacre of 1987. At the time, gunsmiths modified thousands of five-shot semi-autos to three-shot so that they could continue to be held on shotgun certificates.

The modification called for two things to be done: the magazine tube had to be crimped so that it could contain only two cartridges, and the tube had to be locked into the receiver in such a way as to make it impossible to remove it.

One way of crimping the tube was to use a plumber’s pipe cutter with the sharp cutting wheel replaced by one of rounded profile, while hard-setting Loctite industrial adhesive, or a steel pin, could be used to anchor the tube to the receiver. After this work, the gun had to be submitted to a proof house for an official stamp.

I can’t see why this procedure can’t still be carried out, but it does seem to be doing things the hard way. After all, there are thousands of good, reasonably cheap three-shot semi-autos on the market, and many will shoot a better range of cartridges than the old Remmie.