Steel ak mags are fine. There is no need for any plastic magazines. I won't be buying any. I don't give a shit if magpul makes it or not. They should stick to making ar15 crap. Hopefully people run out and buy these and get rid of the steel mags. I'll buy em.
Ehhh, I can see a use for the Magpul magazine over steel. While the steel magazines are strong enough that I think you could literally beat someone to death with one (empty steel AK magazines also make good bottle openers), they're freakin' heavy.
They are heavy - I think a steel AK mag weighs about 3/4 lb empty.
While working as a PSD operator in Iraq, we used AKs (mine happened to be a Bulgarian milled underfolder) as our main rifles and we typically carried 6 mags in the vest, 1 in the rifle itself and a grab-bag of 12 mags or so at our feet. That's, what... 14 lbs just in magazine weight alone?
While 4 or 5 mags aren't going to be a huge deal to carry, obviously weight is going to become a factor if you're likely to need to drag them all around with you on a jaunt.
I always thought a steel AK mag was a pound empty. But yeah, when you're walking and need to carry other essentials like water (a gallon of that weighs 8 lbs), that weight adds up faster than people realize.
Once, I heard someone say "ounces make pounds" was a lightweight backpacking mantra.
I imagine you could if you did enough studying/license-buying in importation and the laws.
The problem is you'd probably spend $150 sending back the parts for one rifle in accordance, and you'd still have to destroy (and leave destroyed) the receiver anyway.
Y'all over clean your ARs. I clean and lube mine when it's throwing shots everywhere because the barrel is too dirty. And it still functions 100% at that point.
Once, I cleaned the barrel but didn't clean or lube the action. It went for another cleaning cycle that way without any issues, which tells me an AR action needs cleaning at most half as often as the barrel does.