Firearm of the Week - Posted for Big Mullet

Greetings Liberty Lovers;

This week’s firearm is the M1 Carbine

Prior to WWII the army realized the full-size M1 Garand was impractical for service oriented troops, like drivers, supply people, medics, etc. Alternative weapons such as the M1911 pistol or the Thompson machine gun were effective at close range but limited at 75 to 100 yards. The army decided a new weapon was needed. Something that didn’t add a lot of weight and would have a range of 300 yards.

The M1 Carbine filled the gap between short range pistols and the long range fire power of the M1 Garand. In 1938 the Army requested the Ordnance Department to develop a light rifle or carbine. This led to a competition in 1941 by a variety of manufacturers and designers. The prototype for the M1 were chambered for a new cartridge, .30 Carbine. This was smaller and lighter than the 7.62 (.308) or the .30-06 that was currently being used. The .30 Carbine round is straight walled and looks like a long pistol round or old style rifle round.

Through a variety of trials the M1 took on the Garand-style rotating bolt and operating rod style. Therefore, it looks like a scaled down M1 Garand. Aside from size another big difference was the M1 Carbine took a box magazine versus the enbloc clip used by the Garand.

There are several variants of the M1 Carbine including a folding stock, select fire and specialized scopes.

There were lots of manufacturers of the M1 Carbine:
General Motors/Inland
IBM
National Postal Meter
Quality Hardware and Machine
Rochester Defense
Rock-Ola Manufacturing
Standard Products
Underwood-Elliot-Fisher
Winchester

Mine is a GM, barrel dated 5/1945.

I have shot mine. I’m not sure how anyone got 300 yard shots off on it. I shoot it at 100 yards with no consistency with groups. It will get bullets down range quickly. Fun to shoot.

Big Mullet

Barack Obama: Losing $84 billion big success

If you have spent anytime here at all you know that I am a rabid Chevy fan. I own 7 or 8 Chevy cars and trucks, but I doubt if I will ever buy another new GM product.

This entire bailout was bad, it's still bad. It was poorly designed, even more poorly executed and just shady from the very beginning. It was a horrible deal for everyone...except the unions.

$84 BILLION dollars, that means that GM owes each and every man, woman and child in this Country like $273 bucks. If you just figured tax payers, it would be about $560 bucks each. I would settle for a 2011 Camaro SS...

By Kerry Picket - The Washington Times

Barack Obama has some 'splaining to do about taxpayers' profitable "investment" in General Motors. It turns out the president is imagining things.

Though Democrats tout the auto bailout as a success, recent reports illustrate the taxpayer cost of the GM auto bailout was substantially larger than the Obama administration and a Congressional Oversight report has owned up to.

"American taxpayers are now positioned to recover more than my administration invested in GM,” President Obama said, according to a piece in USA Today last November. Steven Rattner, former head of the Treasury's auto task force agreed, telling CNN in November: “Recent progress at GM gives reason for optimism that it may be possible for taxpayers to get every penny back.”

In fact, Investor's Business Daily reported that even the White House’s Director of the National Economic Council remarked that the Treasury Department Department had a good chance in "recovering most, if not all, of its investment in" GM.

However, a March 16 Congressional Oversight report, tells a different story. It estimates taxpayers will be out of $25 billion. Additionally, the report points out that “full repayment will not be possible unless the government is able to sell its remaining shares at a far higher price.”

That's only the beginning. Both the White House and the Congressional Oversight report omit the fact that during its bankruptcy, GM got a $45 billion tax break, courtesy of the American people.

GM is driving “away from its U.S.-government-financed restructuring with a final gift in its trunk: a tax break that could be worth as much as $45 billion,” reported The Wall Street Journal last November.

Read the rest at the link above...