M1 Carbine vs new pistol caliber carbines

Good question. I have a perfectly serviceable Quality Hardware M1 Carbine from 1944, and quite a bit of .30 Carbine ammo, but I just picked up a Ruger PC Carbine.

Maybe one reason is the fact that the M1 is over 70 years old, while the Ruger is spanking new. Or, possibly, it is a case of wanting a little diversity of choices. Or, and most probably, some of us are "gun whores" and buy what we fancy with no regard for actual utility.

There is a newly made Inland M1 carbine being made (this is not the WW2 Inland, it's a new company) in .30 carbine so there actually is some interest. It's not, perhaps, a great deal of interest, but the company making it seems to think there's enough to make it worthwhile.
But I still don't see .30 carbine ammo being stocked at local stores in any more abundance, so I do wonder about M1 carbine popularity.

The main problem for me is that a M1 carbine is going to run over $1,000, ammo's expensive and has to be lubed to reload. Also the WWII originals are too collectable for a knock around gun.

Which pistols take M1 magazines? There is your answer. Appeal is mostly to do with being able to use a longarm that accepts the same mags as your sidearm. The M1 has the same issues as the MP5, UZI, Thompson, etc.

Is there a 30 caliber carbine pistol that you can carry IWB ?

I'm a little interested in .30 carbine but I also sort of think "If I'm going to spend that kind of money on a long gun that isn't a pistol caliber then I might as well get a 7.62 NATO."

With a 9mm PC carbine, it takes the same ammo that I carry daily and for some people, it not only takes the same ammo, but takes the same magazine as their EDC firearm.

I have three M1 Carbines, two WWII and one Universal. I don’t shoot them as much due to the cost of ammo.
I have an AR9 carbine that takes Glock mags.I also have handguns that shot 9mm. And it only cost 19 cents a round to shoot factory ammo.

The biggest thing is that 9mm carbines are generally SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than M1 carbines. If M1 carbines were $250 and Hi Points were $1000, well...

9mm is also logistically easy. I'd imagine most firearm enthusiasts have at least one 9mm pistol, so they already have ammo for it. And if they shopped well, there's a pretty good chance it will accept the same magazines.. 9mm is also the cheapest centerfire cartridge.

It's also very easy to buy a reliable new production 9mm carbine with a warranty and factory support. It seems much more difficult to buy a good M1 carbine, and I see a lot of hate for AO and Inland. And buying a used one seems risky, GI or otherwise.

The other part is that for $600-1000, you are well into AR15 range.

Go back 30-40 years and .30 carbine ammo was plentiful and cheap. Those days are long gone. PCCs allow one to use their pistol magazines in many cases. Ruger was very smart with their new 9mm carbine allowing use of Ruger SR mags and Glock 17 mags, especially the 33 round ones.

The .30 soft point cabrine was considered a good stopper.

But today a hot 10mm from a carbine would be just as good.

Pretty much what every one else said.

Looking at it sort of backwards and through the window of the Wayback Machine.

When I got my first M-1 Carbine at 14 in those glorious days of the 1960's (yes a teen then had few cares beyond the old men getting us into a war that would leave us glowing in the dark for a thousand years, Coal, oil and. water we were told running out before we hit 30, the collapse of the dollar and world economy, and the pretty good odds if you were male at being forced into a shooting war in Asia for your nineteenth birthday) I picked up nine fifteen round mags for a buck fifty (really) Saved up for a single 30 round GI for a fiver (mainly just to look cool) and was then appalled, appalled I tell you that the Berdan nasty French .30 Carbine ammo my grocery store (yes, grocery store) carried was almost three times as expensive as .22LR......and the 'Merican made clean reloadable stuff available at the hardware store or bait shop was even more expensive.....Heaven for fend! Why it was almost as expensive as that weird 9mm Luger ammo folks shot in WWII bring back Lugers and P38s or that odd fellow at the hardware store shot in his admittedly neat looking S&W Model 39.

Fast forward a decade and almost another......Don't think the music got any better. The cars got worse........ and gas prices!?!?!?!?

I was all excited when IJ introduced a 9x19 mm M-1 Carbine. It was supposed to take P35 FN HP mags. Didpite my affection for the .45ACP cartridge I had a host of 9x19 pistols at the time and one of them was a P35 FN HP. 9mm Parabellum ammo was now everywhere and even I reloaded for it. I was teethed on an M-1 Carbine and had one......but even in the 1980s ammo was getting more expensive and harder to find. Unfortunately while the IJ took HP mags, they had to be modified to work in the IJ Carbine and then no longer worked reliably in the P35 FN HP.

The lack of magazine compatability killed the deal for me.

Turning off the machine and stepping into the now. I still love the M-1 Carbine......but a new one cost mare than two of the new Rugers at actual MSRP! M-1 Carbine Mags and ammo are both specialty items today. Shoot if I kept my eyes open I could out fit the three non carbine armed folks in my family with a trio of Hi Points five mags and a case of 9x19 ammo for the cost of a new made M-1 Carbine!

' Corse I would still have MY beat up old .30 M-1 carbine...........

-kBob

The M-1 Carbine is my mom's favorite rifle!

I love -kBob's story. It is of course close to my own except I'm apparently older.

I also have a WWII surplus M1 carbine that I bought for very cheap as surplus as a kid in the 1950s and the ammo at the time was dirt cheap and plentiful. I loved it for the smaller size and weight and that it was semi auto instead of lever action which were are of the other center fires on our farm. I loved it so much that I spent time with a drill at night making my own hollow points out of that surplus ammo for what my young mind supposed was a more effective round.

In addition to cattle and horses, we raised a lot of sheep. Feral dogs were a problem, especially at lambing time. the carbine became the gun I used to lay on the roof of the sheep shed with during lambing season after carefully penning up our collie. Over a 10 year period, I killed a lot of dogs with that gun.

In the early 1960s, Ruger introduced their .44 magnum carbine. I had to have one and still have it. In some ways I like it better than the M1 Carbine, but they are different guns for different purposes. Today, I'm no longer guarding sheep so the higher capacity is far less important and the surplus ammo is gone. So, the Ruger .44 magnum carbine gets used far more often than the M1 carbine. I am glad I have both however.

I have a Ruger Single Six in 30 carbine with I think a 6" barrel and you sure don't want to touch it off without ear protection. The 9MM can be enhanced by adding a longer barrel. Case in point we were doing a demo at Ft. Knox of the Dover Devil 50 cal MG and the Dinky Dover Devil 9MM SMG that had like a 10" barrel IIRC.
This armored officer had the issue vehicle crew body armor OD green that looked like Class IIA police armor and he wanted to know if a 45 or a 9MM would penetrate it. I just happened to have a 45 Govt Model in my truck so we mounted his vest and shot it with 1911 230 gr. ball ammo (GI Issue 45 at 25 yards). It failed to penetrate but cracked the 1/4" plywood behind in about a 4" web and the vest fell off. In short the wearer was likely to sustain cracked ribs.

We put the vest back up and shot it with 9MM SMG ammo and it went right through vest and plywood and kept going.

I got to thinking how he was going to explain how his body armor was shot when he turned it in. haha.

My father got his fathers M1 carbine. I now have it in my safe (yes, three generations so far and my daughter has her eye on it). I can't see myself selling it and It is still a good shooter. It hasn't gotten much use lately; but it is actually a great trail gun. It has the advantages of being reasonably lite, fair, pine-cone blasting, accuracy, and very little recoil.

All that said, would I spend 1K on a new one? No way.

The locking mechanism is a tremendous overkill for a pistol cartridge. It also appears to be quite expensive to reproduce (consider the mini 14 and the current manufacture M1, they are both reasonably expensive).

Pistol caliber carbines versus an M1 carbine?

My only reason I never got an M1 carbine was based on the cartridge it fires. I didn't want to add another cartridge to my inventory.

I have 9mm and I have .357 in handguns. I want carbines in both, semi auto for one and lever for the other.

Then there is the fact that the AR prices dropped while M1 carbine prices didn't.

I've had a Carbine for over 40 years, so fortunately purchase price isn't a factor. I also have a Kel-Tek Sub2000 in 9mm and a Rossi 92 in .357. While they're both nice, if I had to pick a favorite, it would be the M-1 Carbine.

Call it mystique, call it history, call it walnut and Parkerized steel, but to me, there's nothing that compares in a light weight centerfire PCC. As far as ammo prices, AIM and SOG run specials every once in awhile for Carbine ammo, so I stock up at less than $15 a box of 50. That's not too far away from 9mm, certainly less than .357 or .44 Mag, and worth the extra price to me for the fun of shooting a historical piece.

It has everything to do with the price of a M1 carbine and the ammo, not to mention availability. I bought my first M1 carbine for $120 in 1992(?). when they were being shipped back from Korea.

An M1 Winchester was in our rear porch in our New Jersey Chicken Farm house with 15 round mags in a drawer near by . There were lots of them that never went overseas and when the war ended wound up in civilian hands especially around those big WW2 bases like we had for prisoner detention , or armories ect. that closed down in early 50s. . The M1 .30 Carbine is a great farm use round , replacing the popular .32-20 and .25-20 in that role in the 50s and 60s and beyond. I used that old Winchester up thru the 90s for livestock slaughter and pest control and for under 100 yards it was perfect. I sold the now old but never rearsenaled Winne for $1200 about 15 years ago as I have a nice Inland and a great early Dunellen Plainfield made one that is Aimpointed and I actually took to a big time Carbine course where it was a hit. Hint: NO 9mm ammo I am aware of comes close to my favorite Remington soft point ammo in a carbine for terminal performance. MAYBE hot 10mm ammo can best it in a carbine, I was impressed by FBI spec early H&K 10mm ones on vehicle stop teats I attended. The .30 Carbine works ok on un armored vehicles too, almost as well as .762x39 does.
The truth is I do NOT keep the .30 carbine ready to go as first line of defense in the new millennium , preferring little light AR platforms with Winchester 64 grain ammo for personal defense as they reach very well for effective 200 yard precision shots which no M1 carbine can do that I know of.

RON in PA said:

Go back 30-40 years and .30 carbine ammo was plentiful and cheap. Those days are long gone. PCCs allow one to use their pistol magazines in many cases. Ruger was very smart with their new 9mm carbine allowing use of Ruger SR mags and Glock 17 mags, especially the 33 round ones.

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Yeah, but that Ruger is so fugly Hi-Points laugh at it. lol

Its all about the price of ammo.

I don't think you can compare the two. The 9mm PCC has so many things going for it that I don't see anyone considering an M1C for just a fun range toy or SD carbine. I have an original 43 Inland and I reload for it. When I first bought it about 4 years ago I couldn't even find once fired brass. Had to scrounge the internet for months and finally came up with about 500 pieces for about 0.10/pc. I pick up brass for my 9mm's every day I go to the range for the effort of taking it out of the brass bucket. So far the brass hasn't cost me a dime and I probably have 3-4K pieces. Here's another thing to consider. The MV of 30 carbine is around 2000 fps. That requires a FMJ bullet. 9mm is around 1100 and doesn't require FMJ. I use lead in all of my 9mm reloads. I use FMJ for my M1C reloads. So even reloads are much cheaper with 9mm.

A USGI M1 carbine is a relic. Unless you want to learn how to strip a bolt and replace the parts to keep one running I suggest you buy something else. The surplus bolt tools run about $40 and clean USGI mags run about the same. I found a supply of those in Austria a few years ago and bought a bunch for about $20 each. Those are long gone. I shoot my M1C about once a year.

IMO the # draw to PCC is ammo commonality, cost, and availability.

Cartridge performance is way down the list as PCC's are largely for target shooters or competitors.

The M1 Carbine, while a great carbine, shares ammunition with no other practical firearm and is expensive.

Most the major points have been made such as ammo cost and availability and compatibility with existing pistol magazines. Although I do like to make the case for a true SMG mag like the Scorpion utilizes. A major point that hasn't been made is that of bullets. While the .30M1 might look better on paper due to its velocity, the 9mm has had decades of R&D invested in better self defense bullets while the .30M1 has had practically none. Not to mention that cheap plinking/practice ammo is dirt cheap. The .30M1 has one speed, wide open. While the 9mm has a much broader range of loads and bullet weights from superlight JHP's to heavier subsonics.