.30 Carbines

It has been no secret that I hold M1 .30 Carbines dear. In 1965, one of the 250,000 or so sold by the DCM to NRA members for $20 was my first center fire.

- Mike Venturino

It coincidentally arrived right at my sixteenth birthday as a gift from my father. Many more have passed through my hands since, there being two M1s, a counterfeit M1A1 and an M2 (select fire) here now.

Sure, they were despised by many combat troops in both World War II and the Korean War for lack of stopping power. That was with full-metal-jacketed bullets. With soft nose bullets or hollow points, the .30 Carbine can be downright wicked on tissue – not that I would promote it for anything much bigger than coyotes. Also mentioned often is that M1 Carbines were loved by support troops, because of their 5½-pound weight and 36-inch length.

With more than 6.25 million M1, M1A1 and M2 .30 Carbines made between 1941 and 1945, it would be logical to think the market is flooded with them. Not so: Untold thousands were lost in combat. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of the surviving rifles were passed out to other countries as foreign aid; one I owned in the past carried Bavarian police markings. Many of the foreign aid M1 Carbines disappeared forever, but some came back, often in “junker” condition. Such reimports are clearly stamped.

M1 .30 Carbines are now highly valued by collectors if they retain all, most or at least many as-issued parts. Two of the four .30 Carbines here are good examples. Both are in World War II as-issued condition. One is by Winchester, the second most-prolific maker. It is highly valued for the name if nothing else. The other is of Standard Products manufacture – highly valued because that company made only four percent of the total production. Neither of these carbines sees heavy use for those reasons.