Good video.  I like his stuff.   Thanks for posting it for us.   

I have always had a soft spot for the little .30 M1 carbine.  Light, fast handling, modest recoil, workable for game up to small deer size if you don't try to exceed the capabilities of the gun/cartridge combo.  For home defense they would seem to fill a slot somewhere between the semi-automatic pistol and the shotgun with some advantages over both.  They are very loud inside a structure and I've never seen one outfitted with a suppressor so there is that to consider.   They have also been either worn out or very expensive for the surplus guns for many years.  Newly manufactured copies of them are available but, again, fairly spendy in comparison to an AR pattern rifle as well as many self defense handguns and shotguns.   

You are not.

I'm hoping that a written version of this is posted soon.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who prefers written articles to vlogs...

I think all of those are eventually posted in print form over at the Lucky Gunner site.  Which is how I prefer to get the info.   

Lucky Gunner is one of the few sites that offer video and print in a complete and complementary manner.

Rather long, so here is the link:

https://www.luckygunner.com/lounge/30-carbine-ammo-testing/

That's one thing I've never understood. By the end of WW2, the M1 carbine had been the most issued rifle to Americans. It exceeded the M1 garand. So why do we see all of the CMP Garands for cheap? Why do movies and pop culture always show soldiers with M1 Garands and Thompson sub machine guns? 


As a random note, I know someone who got shot by one. It was an accident by her brother. Through and through both knees, laterally. It was a cool story for a cool young woman, whom I had the privilege of meeting  .

^ This ^   Also, after the Korean war and before the Viet Nam war the M1 carbines were a lot cheaper than the M1 Garand rifles and so was the ammunition so they went out into the civilian population in large numbers pretty quickly.  That's one reason so many of the surplus ones you see on the market today look pretty worn out and beat up.  They tended to be used rather than put away in a safe and only brought out occasionally.

Hopefully the price on the newly manufactured copies comes down a bit.  I could be tempted to pick up one if they weren't so pricey.  Reviews on the ones by Inland Manufacturing and Auto Ordnance-Kahr have been positive and the ammunition situation has gotten better as well.  If you don't have to pay too high a premium, it seems to be a viable alternative to the ubiquitous AR pattern rifles, the SKS carbines and the Ruger Mini 14 rifles.   

Btw, here's a quick glance at the current prices.

https://www.cheaperthandirt.com/30-carbine/firearms/rifles/?brand=30Carbine

Ouch .

Apparently priority was given to supplying the European theater and north Africa troops with all they needed before sending any significant number of them to the Pacific. 

Which is interesting, because the carbine was probably better suited to the sort of close range fighting found in the jungles warfare that especially characterized the early Pacific campaigns (New Guinea and the Solomon Islands through 1943), as opposed to the more open terrain of North Africa and the Med.

Interesting trivia fact:  Even though the agreed upon U.S.-U.K strategy called for "Europe first", the U.S. military actually had more men in the Pacific theater until the beginning of 1944.  And that's even though Nimitz's central Pacific drive didn't start until November of 1943.

Many years ago as a newly married man I wrestled with the question of what arm would be most appropriate to provide to my wife for her use in home defense.

Being a young soldier at the time, funds were in short supply, so it had to be economical.  Her stature being diminutive, it had to be light weight and low recoil.  Since it was strictly for home defense and didn't have to be toted around, it could be a long gun.

Given the choices available in the early '90s, I landed on the M1 carbine.  At the time I could get one for $300.  At five pounds and a pinch, it is light, short, and handy.  Firing a projectile the same weight as a common .357 load, but at several hundred feet per second faster, I couldn't imagine it being any less effective than the famous man stopper, yet it was much more controllable for my wife than a magnum pistol.  I also found the 30 round capacity to be comforting.

Sound or flawed, that was my logic decades ago.  We still have that old carbine.  Some complain about the reliability of the M1, but my experience has been pretty positive.  A few years ago, the wife got me a Blackhawk in .30 carbine for our anniversary.  It has made a fun companion to the long gun.

I got given one several years ago that had been "modernized".  Someone had bubba'd it to fit a Mannlicher style stock that was available in the 70s.  The problem was that the back half of the stock was a duplicate of Mannlicher stocks for full size rifles.  High comb, and a 3/4" thick cheek pad.  To get my eye behind the peep sight I had to scrunch my cheek down low and force it in tight to the buttstock.  It worked, but barely.

So, given the initial price I paid ($0), I figured if I screwed it up I could always get a new "original" stock and return it to original condition and still be money ahead, I proceeded to draw a line from buttpad to wristgrip with a sharpie, and laid it down on the scroll saw and whacked the riser off.  I then went to work with a palm sander and reworked the stock, shrinking the cheekpad down to about 3/8" in the same process.

Now, it's a one-of-a-kind .30 Carbine.  Not worth anything to a collector, since it was already "ruined" when I got it.  But it's one of my funnest guns.

Not a 30 Carbine, but one of the guns I found in my fathers safe after he passed was an old AR-7 fitted to some Bubba quality wood furniture that seems to be a copy of the M1 Carbine's.     
It too is a fun little gun.

I have kinda always thought of the .30 carbine and M1 as a head of it's time.  Lets replace a heavy, limited capacity, hard to train on weapon, and replace it with a comparatively hard hitting compact light rifle that uses similar sites to what we are already training everyone with in basic.

.30 carbine is a long and powerful pistol cartridge.  I call it a pistol cartridge due to the fact that it has minimal taper, and a rebated rim.  Though it is too large for a revolver or pistol smaller something designed for the .357 mag or larger.  I think I remember some 1911s being built for .30 carbine.

That said I like the idea of a pistol in the same caliber and using the same mags as a pistol caliber carbine for home defense.  So I am more likely to buy a AR style PCC that uses mags that interchange with one of my pistols over a M1 carbine.  But they are cool.

There are new production M-1 Carbines in 9mm.  Chiappa has one.  So does Citadel (at least according to this article (https://www.ammoland.com/2014/01/citadel-m1-9mm-carbine/#axzz655z3Jb5X)).  The Cidadel one uses Breetta 92 style mags. 

I saw a used one at the LGS last week, though I don't recall who made it.

Another observation:

Two 15 round carbine magazines also fit in WWII/Korean war magazine pouches originally designed to fit two 8 round en-bloc M1 rifle clips.    Perhaps the 15 round capacity of the original carbine magazine was chosen for that very reason.