You said a blocked magazine. If all it has is a block, that is not permanent. Especially when someone simply removes the floor plate, removes the block without tools, reassembles the magazine, and puts more than ten rounds in it.
If by blocked you meant to include epoxied, pinned, blind pinned, or riveted, then yeah, you are right. We are not exactly sure what permanent is. There are some hints to it. However, that in my mind is not a blocked magazine, but a permanently altered magazine.
I agree own ten rounders and would add or own your own Freedom Week magazines. Much, much cleaner.
Why isn't a magazine with just a block in it permanent? What legal precedent do you have to say it's not a permanently altered magazine?
All we have is some informal advice from a few years ago that suggested epoxied or riveted mags are
probably permanent, but
maybe not the only permanent solution.
If your argument is that a magazine with only a block isn't permanently altered because you can take off the base plate, remove the block, and have a LCM; I would argue that a magazine that's limited to 10 rounds just because there's a pop rivet limiting travel of the follower is
even less permanent than a mag block. With a block you have to disassemble the mag and create a new LCM; maybe that's
converting it, maybe it's not. With the pop rivet you just drill the rivet and
convert your 10 rounder into an LCM with some FOD in the bottom of it, no disassembly required. Is a pop rivet somehow more permanent just because you had to use a power tool, even if it was actually easier and faster to convert than disassembling the magazine?
I have a factory 10 round beretta 92 mag that is limited to 10 rounds because the sides of the mag body have an extra fold that essentially makes them single stack. That's a permanent 10 round magazine right? But 5 minutes with a dremel with a cut off wheel would take care of that without even disassembling the magazine.
The simple fact is we don't know what exactly permanent means in this context and the only safe path is 10 round mag bodies. Anything else is a guess based on Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and our risk tolerance.
It's no different than trying to argue what 'locked' means. Is something only locked if it requires a certain amount of effort to bypass? Or is it locked when you put a lock on it, no matter the quality or size of the lock? Would a reasonable person consider your storage shed locked if you use a dollar store Hello Kitty lock on it? Would a reasonable person consider your magazine a 10 rounder if you can't put more than 10 rounds in it? I guess it depends on 'reasonable'.