Obama Quitly Signs Ban To Prevent Ownership Of The Famous WW2 M-1 Garand Rifle

Heh, you wouldn't think they take any pride in weapon maintenance with the way their soldiers hardly clean weapons. Then again there's a whole hierarchy and draft thing involved in that. Anyway this is a real shame, I'd love to get my hands on one of those rifles.

 

The whole ping thing is basically a myth. While it did make a sound unless 2 soldiers were battling it out in a bathroom they wouldn't have heard it or have known which enemy soldier behind which bush was about to run empty.

 

You're correct, it's difficult to "top off" but still not too difficult to remove the partial enbloc. One of the knocks on it in combat was it made a very distinct "ping" when ejected. All 3 of mine launch it with authority after the last round is fired. As far as loading, practice.....the dreaded M-1 thumb is more of lore and fiction than fact unless one is careless or stupid.

As much as I love it, it's not a practical weapon outside of the range. I stood sponson watches with it while anchored in places like Hong Kong and Singapore years ago. It can be used for any large game on the North American continent with the possible exception of the largest bear but even then it's probably ample. As far as criminal acts, it's near worthless unless some nut mans a tower.

 

With dozens to hundreds of soldiers firing rifles, machine guns, bazookas, mortars, artillery, etc at each other the pinging of 1 American soldier's M1 would not have mattered at all.

Plus combat took place at ranges of up to a few hundred yards with rifles. They didn't broadcast the ping over a loudspeaker.

 

Not every fight was large. I remembered hearing about it on a History channel special. I think it was more along the lines of a squad or team having one or two guys not fire so that when everyone ran out they still had people up. Whose to say but it would make sense in that situation to have a few guys not fire right away because you don't want your entire squad to be empty on ammo at the same time, especially if you have some characteristic sound that gives away your condition. I don't think they had the same rifle to machinegun ratio we have nowaday that kind of negates that.

 

Yeah the tower nut is about the only thing I could really see anyone use a M1 for, well other than some kid jacking their dads gun. Certainly no one is going to see it as a viable weapon for crime. Hell assault weapons are hardly used to begin with, and if you're at the point you're going to use one of those why downgrade to a semi-auto rifle with less ammo?

 

It was generally a problem when small groups encountered each other, Like in the ardennes forest or other heavily wooded areas where patrols would literally run right into each other sometimes.

Not to mention there were small clashes in compact areas happening CONSTANTLY in the Pacific Theater.

 

I don't know about that last part. Combat seems to take place at pretty close range. Just because you see the enemy doesn't mean you want to shoot them; you want them as close as possible without noticing you (and hopefully in the open) so you can easily mow them down. Shooting 300 yards out just isn't going to be that effective; more a waste of ammo.

 

The history channel also told me that over 20 million soldiers died during WW1. I think they may have confused WW1 with the Spanish Flu.

 

all have the constitutional right to bear arms - any type. so...when people think they can sign away parts of the constitution, well people can choose to let them or not. I don't think we should let the bullies take away our rights. And i wouldn't want to be the guy to try to take away your weapon. So buy as you are able and keep a spot in the back yard ready for the clown who tries to take away your legal rights.

 

The decent into mediocrity and anti facts that the history channel has fallen into over the last few years has deeply saddened me.

I remember 10 years ago when they constantly aired really good documentaries you could trust. Now its almost all crap. I would trust most Wikipedia articles over the few documentaries they still show (i can`t wait for this 2012 BS to blow over, they will lose half their programming possibilities...)

 

Heh, got me going to Wikipedia to look it up because yeah, that seemed pretty (*)(*)(*)(*) high (and it is, 9 mil according to wiki). Man that would have been hell to fight though. I'd have wanted to fly if I ended up over there. The odds of survival weren't that great but I'd feel a hell of a lot safer in a flying lawnmower with the option to fly back home than taking artil/gas/charging the barbed wire with machine guns firing at me just to get into another hellhole. Oh man and the tanks, the tanks that had their exhaust come out on the inside and which caused people to get very sick when they finally got out of those loud death traps... Atleast in modern warfare you have AC and smart weapons that are more likely to outright kill you lol.

 

GL keeping the government form confiscating your 50. cal machine gun, grenade launcher, and sea mine collection...

 

I think the average life expectance of a fighter pilot in WW1 was 2 weeks. Then again, maybe the History Channel lied to me about that too.

In comparison, an Australian soldier had "only" a 18% chance of being killed during WW1 and they went through years of it, not just 2 weeks of high flying hijinks.

 

Lol, maybe they'll have to go back into history. I can't believe they started doing reality shows. Then again I'd already stopped watching when it was UFO hunters, then bigfoot and friends, and finally the 5th remake of the fall of Germany. History is a very broad subject so you'd think they'd have a lot more going on.

 

Sounds right. They got in a few hours of flight training, like enough to take off and land, and if they survived then went out to their unit. Hardly knowing how to handle their plane (likely something they didn't train on) they were easy prey for anyone who'd been up in the air for a while. Most people didn't know the enemy was there until their buddy went down or their plane was getting shredded by fire. I used play a WWI flight sim called Rise of Flight game and that really got me sucked into WWI air battles lol. The forums are a great resource of information because there are many people who are very much into the history of it all. It's really interesting stuff. Not only were the planes crap but no one really had any idea what they were doing since no one had been up in the air before. Individual planes would turn the tide of the airwar too. You're shooting down huns one week and the next thing you know they have a plane you can't touch! Really crazy stuff. Still if you got good at what you did, you'd have a good chance of surviving, well I think anyway.

 

The flight thing seems about right considering how fast planes were dropping and how high some kill counts were (like the red barons confirmed 80+ for instance, which is still the record almost one hundred years later lol).
Planes fell out of the sky like insects during dog fights because of the materials they were made of.

 

flying lawnmowers made of twigs and canvas with machineguns attached, what's not to hate! Still, the ground looks much worse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=decZP5PfrVM

 

There were 2 things that caused the change.
Like MTV in the early 90`s, the History Channel was either starting to lag in ratings or was simply not up to par for advertisers.
So like MTV they began showing dramatic BS (except instead of reality shows is was a couple alien/monster hunter documentaries late at night).
These got far more views than they anticipated and so they expanded them into day time and eventually prime time slots. Now almost all their shows are crap besides Modern Marvels. (although I do watch Pawn stars occasionally to see some of the more interesting stuff that gets brought in)

The second thing was the leadership change. Along with the change in shows, a lot of the higher ups at the network either got switched out or moved on. The new team focused more on getting ratings than keeping the channels integrity. My Uncle does a lot of work on professional documentaries and he told me once that when he was talking with the guy running the channel about possibly doing a civil war series the guy actually asked him if he could find any real footage of the battles....
Another time he made an excellent documentary on his fathers experience in WW2 that was actually shown on PBS. When he took it to the History channel they wanted to edit so many important things out that he flat out refused and left.

They should rename it the "Aliens, Conspiracy and Antiques BS channel".

 

Wow, that sucks. Does explain a lot though. I knew things were going down hill when TLC went from learning to reality TV and near child porn.

 

LOL! Americans are free to own semi-automatic weapons, but can't own an M1 Garand? What are you smoking?

 

While researching your post, I went to several gun sites- and frankly the opinion of most of the people with experience importing such weapons from Korea appears to be that most of these will not be in good shape, and will mostly be a boon for the enthusiasts looking for parts. And dumping 800,000 weapons on the U.S. market? If it happens, it will depress the heck out of the value of the current weapons held by American collectors.

So have you found any recent information on this? And what made you bring up this issue from 14 months ago? What possibly made this a 'current event' in your opinion?

I haven't yet seen a good reason why these shouldn't be allowed to be imported- but it is hardly a ban on ownership as you claimed, and it certainly isn't a 'current' event. Now if you can tell us what the current status is...that would be useful.

 

Actually I don't disagree with you on that, I had both a Garand and carbine imported through "Bluesky" that the Koreans had. The Garand had stock repair that was second to none BUT both weapons had bores that were wiped slick. Both needed barrels but I initially got them cheap and swapped them off for better.

 

Ya think? Not according to soldiers that were actually in the hedgerows only 5 yards apart.

 

Well good, now we know where your misinformation comes from.