GLS_1956 wrote:I do not know how Australia gun laws work, but in the USA you can turn a handgun into a rifle, but not vise-versa, so we can put a longer barrel on the Contender and add a buttstock and not have a problem. But if we just add the buttstock we have a "Sawed-off" rifle and are in no-no land.
Longarms and pistols are treated as completely different things here.
Difference licenses, different use requirements, different storage requirements, can use rifles mostly anywhere, can only use pistols at a target range and so on. A little work has to be done to keep up a handgun license, they really don't want people having them.
I did some quick searching and couldn't find anything, I expect though if you lengthened the barrel and stock of what was clearly a handgun they would prohibited on the basis you could convert it back to a pistol.
They've used this excuse before on semi-auto rifles converted to straight pull (which are legal here) prohibiting them because they can be 'easily' converted back to SA.