The Opening Round • 17 British Special Branch officer studies a homemade pistol, with a jungle workshop carbine lying on the mat beneath him. The other items are Mau Mau oathing paraphernalia. Photo taken near Nairobi in 1952. (Courtesy of Africapix.) guns were seized. Each had been converted to fire live ammunition. One person arrested told police, 'We don't have to spend fortunes for black market guns; we can remodel our own guns from the replica toys." By 1979, the practice of conversion had become so widespread that the Japanese government was considering regulations against the replicas. Police had confiscated more than 1,000 converted weapons in 1976, out of the 500,000 replica models manufactured. By 1979, that number had risen to 2,600 conversions out of nearly 1 million models. No further restrictive law was passed, however, because the Japanese admitted the futility of such action. In 1986, District of Columbia police issued a report that criminals apprehended with what appeared at first to be Uzi submachine guns turned out to be carrying nonfiring replicas. On the other hand, officers were cautioned against assuming that all Uzis would be nonfiring replicas. A BATF report the