Brian D. wrote:schmieg wrote:
A sergeant that worked for me in Viet Nam had picked up an M2 carbine (the fully automatic version of the M1 carbine). It was a fun little toy, but it had no real stopping power or range. I still wouldn't want to be shot by one though.
When surplus M-1 carbines were plentiful and cheap on the civilian market 30 or so years ago, I couldn't help but buy one. With soft point or hollow point ammo (not something the military used or had made, mine were reloads), I found they did impressive work on gallon jugs of water, and the one coyote I shot with the carbine.
It was foolish to sell that gun just because of 250% profit, wish I hadn't done that.
Jim Cirillo of the famed NYPD stakeout squad of the seventies and eighties said that the M1 carbine, with HP ammo, was one of the most effective guns they had in stopping a threat. A Korean war vet I once worked with at a factory had an M2 during the Korean war, and he thought it was great. (at close range) Audie Murphy liked the M1 carbine, but in his book it seemed like all the shots with the FMJ rounds were to the head anyway.
When I was in Miami in 1980, one of the local security guards was carrying an M1 carbine with 30 round magazines. I don't know if that was an approved weapon or not, (at the time no one cared what was considered "approved" for security guard use
) I also don't know how effective it would've been had he had to shoot someone.
The reasons I would not want to use an M1 carbine as a defensive weapon are mainly:
1: At my age, I do much better with a red dot or scope on a carbine
2: longer effective range
3: If you have to actually use it in a DGU, it gets confiscated. I'd rather temporarily lose an AR than a collectable M1 carbine. They do make new ones, but they used to be higher cost than a basic AR is right now. Now if I lived in an urban area where a riot broke out, or in Florida and got an emergency text message of a zombie alert
then anything might be pressed into service.