^^^^ This is a very good product. I also keep a Birchwood Casey Super Black Touch-Up Pen with my gunsmithing tools for touching up small dings.
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Maybe I am stupid but I still don't understand. Is owning a rifle, shotgun or pistol required to be employed by these departments? Where does the liability fall when this privately owned and maintained weapon is involved in an AD/ND and a fellow officer gets shot in the back? What happens to the weapon if it is used in the line of duty and IA decides an investigation is required? Is the officers personal property held as evidence? I just can't wrap my mind around LEO's being required to furnish their own weapons.
The rifle is an optional additional weapon?
The department should use USGI spec magazines, they fit everything, including H&Ks, S&Ws, Rugers, even the occasional L85 etc.
This thread is also why the military officially discourages the use of privately purchased weapons...
If a LEO carries a personally purchased firearm, as a rule, they should be indemnified by the department if they meet the training criteria for said weapon.
If a LEO, or a civilian for that matter, is involved in a deadly force incident the weapon will be collected as evidence.
The motivation for LEO to purchase their own carbine is the potential for needing a weapon to respond to a school shooting incident. The LEO will feel it is worth several hundred dollars of their own money to be better equipped to meet the threat.
We have our share of small police departments in our area that have tight budgets. That is why local gun clubs and retired LEO in my area donate range facilities, targets and equipment to those agencies.
There is no clear cut answer to your questions other than to say what was mentioned by T2C. If an officer is qualified with said weapon to the standard he would most likely be covered. Some agencies mandate you can only choose from the "approved list" which is usually the "big names" some are more lenient.
Most agencies I know that allow private purchase also require weapons to be inspected just like agency owned weapons and modifications must be in line with dept guidelines.
You do realize that there are some agencies/departments that give their officer an allowance or even require their officers/deputies to furnish their own weapon. Then you have agencies like mine that give the officer the option of using personally-owned guns...provided they meet specific parameters and are signed-off on by the senior firearms instructor and/or chief.
I know many guys that will suffer with garbage rather than risk using a personally-owned piece in the line of duty and lose it indefinitely as evidence. I know some guys that have their guns back from shoots, and others that have had them gone for years and counting for cut-and-dry shootings/use of force. Then you have the camp that they would rather risk losing good personal property in that unlikely event for the security of having a higher-quality or more familiar piece of gear at hand if said even does happen to occur.
It's all about the written policy...what it says, who it protects, etc. We once had a long-gun policy so poorly written that it would not allow "removable sights" or optics. So unless you had a fixed carryhandle AR or something old-school with fixed irons, you would be in violation of the policy and potentially out in the wind if things went south. Our policy has been revamped and is much more modern. There is still the caveat that all personally-owned guns can not have factory modifications to the firing/ignition system without approval to help insulate against bubba'd up guns being used on duty...as per what IG mentions above.
The Gen 3 Pmag design was made (intentionally or not) to work with most lowers out there, but not all. The anti over-insertion tab interfaces in a place that is not well dimensioned by the TDP. If you are unlucky and don't have a lower that is perfect, you can easily make it work by using a simple hand tool (if you know how). This won't hurt your lower. For some users like the OP this is critical, because it guarantees that the mag being passed to you by a teammate will fit in your rifle. How is that foolish? Foolish would be ignoring this issue and hoping that your teammate never hands you an M3 mag.
OP, have you actually posted a pic of the lower with a mag inserted? I took a closer look at my Mega lower. It fits Gen 3 PMAGs, but it's a little tight. I noticed that the way the trigger guard holes are drilled allows the trigger guard to sit a little lower. So the trigger guard was protruding a little too much, but the lower itself was fine. I removed a little material off the plastic trigger guard with sandpaper and mags snap in much easier. If your problem is just the trigger guard, it's an even easier fix than filing the receiver.
FWIW, my BCM lower has the holes drilled so the trigger guard rides much higher, so it has no problems.