Ball ammo .30-06 opens vehicles like a can opener. I used it as a comparison (okay, I actually brought it out for fun), when we were deciding on 5.56mm loads to use in our department’s new M16s and had been provided a Pontiac GrandAm for just that purpose. While the 5.56 rounds would punch through the driver’s side door and into the passenger side door, dimpling the outer skin but not penetrating it, the Garand sent its round whistling through both sides, throwing up large showers of dirt upon impacting the bank on the other side.
Much as I appreciate that gun, if I have to leave, that beloved Garand would stay behind, unless there was someone who needed it. That choice is due to its disadvantages.
Not only is the M1 Garand limited to eight rounds of ammo in its en bloc clip, but when that eighth round is gone, so is the empty clip, and you may not have time to recover it. (Conversely, box magazines can easily be recovered when empty, a topic coming up in the training section of this book.) In other words, in short order you could end up with a single-shot weapon. Other than that, it is an excellent long-range weapon even without a scope, is reliable to a fault and, like the Mini-14, possesses the form of a safety that it passed down to its progeny, which includes the M14/M1A.
Its attributes aside, the Garand is heavy, a full 11 pounds when loaded up. God bless our guys who lugged it around during two wars! Of course, they also had the advantage of being kids during those wars, which I, unfortunately, no longer am. It is also a long weapon, one designed for open battlefields, not house-to-house fighting.
Want the power advantages of the M1 Garand without the clips? Then the Springfield Armory M1A is for you, if you can afford it. At around $1,700 it’s pricey, but it solves the eight-round en bloc clip issue of the Garand and gives you a 20-round box magazine in exchange. It also retains within 100 fps or so the power of the .30-06 in the form on the 7.62 NATO (.308 Winchester) round.
While the M1A solves the en bloc clip issue of the Garand, it is still a long and relatively heavy rifle. The standard walnut stocked version weighs in at 9.3 pounds unloaded and is 44.33 inches long. The length and weight can be mitigated somewhat by selecting the walnut-stocked Scout Squad, which shortens the overall length by four inches, but somewhat unfortunately maintains the same weight as the full-length version, likely due to the addition of a Picatinny rail on a metal upper fore-end handguard. If you want more length and weight removed, you can go with the original SOCOM 16 version, which drops the weight down to 8.8 pounds and the overall length to 37 inches. This is accomplished not just by shortening the barrel, but by adding a synthetic stock. This makes the M1A applicable to long-distance carry and room-to-room CQB. Don’t select the SOCOM II. This well-intentioned variant turns the M1A into a 10 to 10.25-pound behemoth, a weight just not worth the effort for survival purposes.
CHAPTER FIVE
Short Stuff: Scout Rifles, Levers, and Pistol-Caliber Carbines
During the late 1980s and early ’90s, before it was realized that the 5.56mm loaded with expanding bullets (like the ones Hornady’s TAP loads wear), weren’t the over-penetrating dangers for police work they were once thought to be, pistol-caliber carbines were viewed as the answer for light-recoiling, reliable, semi-auto weapons that would extend an officer’s effective range to between 100 and 150 yards. Marlin produced a recreational sporter during that period called the Camp Carbine 9, and later the Camp Carbine 45, both of which were simple blowback, wood-stocked weapons never intended for police service. But they were pressed into service, much like the M1 carbine, because nothing else was available, and because the 9mm version used either Marlin-supplied or Smith & Wesson Model 5906 pistol magazines. As a number of police departments were using the 5906 high-capacity 9mm duty pistols, they realized that officers could fuel their carbines with the magazines already carried on their belts. (The .45 version used 1911 single-column magazines of any manufacture.)
When the Marlin started to become more popular, Ruger jumped into the fray with the PC9 and PC40 carbines. Built with black synthetic stocks, both guns were far more robust and suitable for police work than the Marlin guns, which had virtually disappeared after the assault weapons ban of 1994 anyway; Marlin likely decided to go back to concentrating on making lever guns and avoid any chance of controversy. The Ruger guns were also blowback weapons and used Ruger magazines from the P Series of semi-auto pistols. The problem there was that few agencies issued or permitted Ruger semi-autos as duty guns, so the magazine advantage was mostly nonexistent. As good as the PC9 and PC40 were, they fell out of favor when the expanding .223/5.56mm rounds started hitting the law enforcement market and government M16s became available. The two Ruger carbines are no longer cataloged or manufactured, having quietly been deleted from the Ruger inventory.
There are three pistol-caliber carbine-type weapons truly worth considering, especially for a vacation or travel gun. One is the Century International Arms UC-9. The UC-9 is made from an assortment of genuine UZI parts and assembled here in the U.S. It has a 16-inch barrel, is semi-automatic (having been converted to fire from a closed bolt instead of from the original open bolt of the full-auto UZI submachine gun). At nine pounds, the UC-9 is no lightweight, but in return you get a mostly steel weapon that makes handling even the hottest 9mm rounds an effortless task. Yet the gun is very compact at only 24 inches overall with the stock folded, and a mere 31.5 inches with the stock extended. The UC-9 provides a lot of close-range firepower within that package and, according to the online catalog, comes with two, 32-round all steel magazines. However, the hard copy of the catalog says it comes with four magazines, which my sample did.
The UC-9 is one of the few pistol-caliber carbines worth owning. It makes a great travel gun, due to the fact that it can be fired with a closed stock from, say, inside a vehicle if surrounded, or opened up full length for longer-range fire, out to 100 yards or so. The sights, while original, are rudimentary, as they were designed for a very short-barreled weapon to be used primarily at CQB distances. However, the longer barrel and closed-bolt operation gives it added versatility and likely increased accuracy over the submachine gun version, and the trigger is long but easy to operate. This is a special-purpose weapon indeed, but one that’s easy to fire. In fact, this gun was the very first firearm my sister-in-law, Mandy, the photographer for this book, ever fired. She did very well with it, and it was a great introduction to shooting for her. It is an excellent choice for the recoil-sensitive members on your team. I was surprised to find that Mandy favored it over the four-pound lighter Auto Ordnance M1 Carbine. Value for this weapon is great. I found it for sale, new—technically the UC-9 is not a “new” weapon, as it’s a mixture of new and old parts, condition very good to excellent—for $771 with five magazines.