The M1 Carbine For SELF-DEFENSE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT

Guns Magazine, June, 2001 by Charles Karwan

SHOOTERS SEEKING A HIGH-PERFORMANCE TACTICAL CARBINE WITHOUT A HIGH-TECH PRICE TAG ARE REDISCOVERING THIS VERSATILE, VINTAGE FIREARM.

Police agencies and armed citizens need a good long arm to supplement their handgun for defensive purposes. There are very few situations where a person is better off defending himself with a handgun than a good long gun, if the latter is available.

Here the definition of long gun is a shoulder-fired weapon like a rifle, carbine, submachine gun, assault rifle or shotgun. There is a readily available, often overlooked long gun that is superb for this purpose that can out-perform most of its high-tech, expensive competition -- the M1 carbine.

In recent years the traditional shotgun has been losing favor with both police and civilians for defensive use. The reasons for this include excessive recoil, a high degree of proficiency in operation, potential collateral damage from the buckshot pattern, and the limited effective range with buckshot.

In answer, many departments, individual officers and armed civilians have turned to semi-automatic rifles or carbines in either pistol calibers or .223 for use as tactical long guns. Some law enforcement agencies have turned to submachine guns.

All of these guns offer improved ballistic performance and practical accuracy over a handgun. However, none of the pistol-caliber carbines or submachine guns are nearly as effective as the old and often unfairly maligned .30 Ml carbine.

With proper ammunition, the M1 carbine can easily compete in effectiveness with .223-chambered weapons out to at least 150 yards, and few police or civilians have any business shooting at anybody farther away than that.

In addition, the M1 carbine weighs only 5 1/2 lbs., making it a pound or more lighter than most of its competition, including even the pistol-caliber carbines, and considerably lighter than many like the UZI submachine gun at 8.8 lbs. or the M16A2 at 7.9 lbs.

Born Far Combat

The M1 carbine has many other assets as well. It has superb reliability under the worst field conditions. Its accuracy exceeds that of virtually all the pistol-caliber carbines and submachine guns on the market and is comparable with that of many of the semi-automatic .223 rifles.

Another huge advantage for the M1 carbine is that, unlike most modern firearms, it has pre-ban high capacity 15- and 30-round magazines readily available in quantity at very modest prices. The same holds true for spare parts and accessories.

Ballistically, the M1 carbine's little .30 Carbine cartridge packs about 2.5 times the kinetic energy of a standard .45 ACP or 9mm load fired from a pistol. This is solidly in the energy territory of the .44 Mag. revolver. Indeed it has only 90 ft./lbs. less energy at the muzzle than the Russian 5.45x39mm cartridge and is only a little farther behind the .223 when fired from 14.5" or 16" barreled carbines.

Options And Tactics

Although a cartridge's muzzle energy is not the sole criterion for measuring its effectiveness, it is a good indication of the cartridge's potential if it is loaded with properly designed expanding bullets. With military-type FMJ bullets, the .30 Carbine will drill right through car bodies and such.

This capability is highly desirable to police officers in many situations. When the .30 Carbine cartridge is loaded with expanding bullets, its effectiveness as a manstopper increases exponentially. One police unit used M1 carbines loaded with JSPs in several shootings. They found the carbines to be extremely effective. Quoting one of their more experienced officers about the results from shootings with a .30 Carbine using expanding bullet ammunition, "We never had to shoot anyone twice."

Out to at least 150 yards, the .30 Carbine cartridge usually makes a more serious wound than does the .223, .308 or .30-'06, when the latter are used with FMJ bullets. It is also greatly superior to any of the common defensive pistol rounds fired from a handgun or carbine, even when the latter uses hollow point ammunition.

Even the FMJ .30 Carbine load is far more effective than is commonly thought. After interviewing many veteran M1 carbine users from World War II, Korea and Vietnam, we found that the vast majority of these soldiers found the M1 carbine to be quite effective even with GI ball ammunition.

One former Marine who saw extensive combat with the MI carbine in the Pacific in World War II was quite emphatic that the little gun and its cartridge were effective in the close-range combat that he experienced. He also stated that he greatly preferred the M1 carbine to the Garand for that type of fighting because of its much lighter weight, shorter length and higher magazine capacity.

First-Hand Experience

Another veteran M1 carbine user interviewed was a U.S. Army Special Forces adviser in the early days of the Vietnam War. He had advised indigenous units armed almost exclusively with M1 carbines, and used the gun extensively himself in combat. He stated that the M1 carbine was very effective in the jungle combat that they typically experienced. Interestingly, he said that when M16s eventually replaced the M1 carbines, he found that the new gun offered little if any significant advantage in effectiveness over the older M1 carbines.