Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Non AR military style rifle, which would you buy?

M-1 Carbines are cool.

LD,

That’s a VERY good looking M1 Carbine you have there. I’m seeing a carbine that was re-parked at some time, probably one of the arsenal refreshes they did either after WWII or Korea, or maybe done by the importer. I worked for one of the importers, and we did some VERY nice re-Parkerizing if I do say so myself. Our import stamp was IA.CO.SAC.CA, on the under-side of the barrel near the front sight. We imported 7,000 from China, and 4,000 from Israel, and I was the lucky guy who went through every last Carbine. Inspected each and every one, checked headspace, made any small repairs, determined which ones would have to be re-finished, etc. We had a lot of the ones from China that were re-Parked because many had the finish worn off…no rust, no real abuse, just honest wear; and those rifles were mostly mechanically perfect with bright shiny bores. Yours has a beautiful finish and extremely nice walnut. I’m seeing a late style stamped rear sight, type 2 slide, late style safety, first style magazine catch. Hodge-podge of parts, basically your typical M1 Carbine. I always laugh when people bring out an all matching M1 and say it’s all original. BS, no manufacturer ever actually made an all matching M1 Carbine. Many had barrels made by Saginaw or Underwood (or whomever had a good run of barrels the previous month), and all had internal parts made by various subcontractors. Carbines like yours (and mine) are the REAL original Carbines…the ones with a hodge-podge of parts. The "all matching" are guns where someone has collected all the parts and forced matched...I'm not sure why, but many collectors, even serious collectors just kinda play along.

I have an Inland. It was my first M1 Carbine and I specifically wanted an Inland. Inland was the company that really made the M1 Carbine happen. Winchester may have invented the thing (mostly designed by Ed Browning) but they were in no position to actually manufacture the little M1 and they had a rough time tooling up. Inland stepped in and really saved the day. They did all the production blueprints for approval by Springfield Armory, they made all the shop jigs, fixtures, and gauges for ALL manufacturers, and they had Carbines rolling of the production lines before even Winchester did. Most of the M1 Carbine was invented by Ed Browning. He had developed a "light" semi-auto .30-06 that weighed around 7lbs, and after the Army flatly told Winchester the Garand was here to stay, the director of the M1 Carbine program asked if Browning's rifle could be scaled down and submitted for the M1 Carbine project . A couple of Winchester’s engineers turned it into the M1 Carbine, neither they or Ed Browning ever got any real credit for the design. David Williams was brought in when they were having issues with the prototype. He trashed Browning’s gas system which wasn’t the greatest design, cleaned things up, added his short stroke piston design (which was rather brilliant) and generally got credit for the whole thing…there’s a man who knew marketing.

So I wanted an Inland because while Winchester invented it, Inland made it all happen. Here’s a pic of my Inland. I got this out of the pile of Carbines that came from Israel. I wasn’t allowed to have my first pick, which was brand new, still in the wax wrapper…the boss got that one. So mine was the 2nd nicest Carbine in the building out of 11,000 Carbines, and somehow it strangely never got stamped with an import stamp...not sure how that happened😊

It was actually in M2 configuration when I first saw it, so I returned it to M1 configuration before it got documented as an M2 (once a machinegun, always a machinegun according to the ATF).


My other one is an IBM, very similar to my Inland, nicely finished like yours. Both are just an absolute HOOT to shoot, always the rifles that everyone wants to shoot, especially my kids. I think when I’m gone, there will be a Holy War in the Gibson household over my Carbines. I’ll just have to get a couple more so each kid can have one…it’s the right thing to do.

Thanks for sharing the pic of yours. I have a special place in my heart for the little M1, and I always go a little weak in the knees when I see one as nice as yours.

[/URL]

Of course, I'm not sure why an AR wouldn't be your first choice given the aftermarket options and well sorted out functional reliability.

The implication is that you want something similar to an AR, but not an AR and you want something modern. I don't know if it's modern enough, but I'd go with an AK-74.