The Pakistani Ministry of the Interior made an announcement in November of this year, that Pakistani citizens who have Prohibited Bore licenses with registered fully automatic firearms will have to either surrender their firearms or convert them to semi-automatic by January 31st, 2018. Punjab Arms & Ammunition Company just recently shared two photos of documents that are being circulated right now, notifying citizens of the ban and how to proceed. The ad in the paper below has “Public Notice” as the title.

The recent changes were a change that Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi wanted, making this a top priority in his August election win. Specifically, this letter states that of the more than 90,000 currently licensed fully automatic firearms (the U.S. has around 170,000 transferable Class IIIs according to some counts), their owners will have several options to become law-abiding by January 31st, 2018-

A) Convert their firearms to semi-automatic only

B) Surrender their firearms to a local Governmental entity, to be compensated 50,000 Rupees for rifles and 30,000 Rupees for automatic handguns.

Failure to do so will result in a Prohibited Bore license being completely revoked. The earlier announcement in November specified a date of January 15, 2018, it must have gotten extended to the end of the month.

This development reminds me of this particular meme to console our Pakistani readers.