when I get together about a hundred bucks I buy another Mosin-Nagant. If I can manage to get $200 scraped up, I buy a Mauser.
thats too bad...
bolt actions are bolt actions. the garand was the first semi-auto adopted by any military in the world and everyone feared it...
The Office of the Director of Civilian Marksmanship (DCM) was created by the U.S. Congress as part of the 1903 War Department Appropriations Act. The original purpose was to provide civilians an opportunity to learn and practice marksmanship skills so they would be skilled marksmen if later called on to serve in the U.S. military. Over the years the emphasis of the program shifted to focus on youth development through marksmanship. From 1916 until 1996 the CMP was administered by the U.S. Army. Title XVI of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1996 (Public Law 104-106, 10 February 1996) created the Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice & Firearms Safety (CPRPFS) to take over administration and promotion of the CMP. The CPRPFS is a tax-exempt non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation chartered by the U.S. Congress, but is not an agency of the U.S. Government (Title 36, United States Code, Section 40701 et seq). Apart from a donation of surplus .22 and .30 caliber rifles in the Army's inventory to the CMP, the CMP receives no Federal funding.
The National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice (NBPRP), an advisory board to the Secretary of the Army (SA), which was created in 1903, was disestablished by this law and replaced by the CPRPFS. The initial board was appointed by the SA and is responsible to develop all policies and procedures for the implementation of all aspects of the CMP.
the DCM was told to start making a profit by the philanderer in chief clintoon. the name was changed to Office of the Director for Civilian Marksmanship Program and the price of Garands went from $165 to $300. theyve climbed every year since. also the garands used to be "one in a lifetime" to "no more than 12 to include stripped receivers in a year"...
the army was pulled out of helping with the National Matches in 1968 i think. right about the time of the GCA 1968 (go figure) and thats when they stopped issuing ammunition on the firing line...
by the way here are my 8 garands:
if you dont know, Springfield Armory (the federal armory in mass) was the first to build Rifle, Caliber .30, M1. Winchester was brought in in late 42 with the first rifles coming out in 43 (i THINK). they built about 4 million thru the end of 45. after WWII WRA wanted some money out of their tooling so they sold (with the feds blessing) the machinery to Italy. in 52 the feds started to think that there might not be enough rifles in the even of a big war (Korea was underway) so they contracted with Harrington Richards Arms and in an effort to move some small arms manufacturing out of new england got International Harvester Corporation to build some. they started using receivers forged by SA. HRA and IHC started to deliver rifles in 54 i believe...
in the meantime Italy set the old WRA tooling up in the Pietro Beretta and Breda arms plants. these two companies made and sold rifles to just about anyone who wanted them. some 20,000 were produced for Denmark in 1955 and marked with the Danish Crown and FKF (Forsvarets Krigsmaterial Forvaltning or Defense Warmateriel Administration). others were made for persia with a persian crest. they all have there own serial number ranges...
the US left M1s in Denmark after the war (about 20,000 and sold another 40,000) and the Danes adopted the rifle as Gevær M/50 which translates roughly to Rifle Model 1950. the Danes produced their own barrels and then later their own bayonets. the barrels were produced by Våbenarsenalet or Arms Arsenal and are marked VAR.
my rifles are SA, WRA, HRA, IHC and Beretta. i put off getting a Breda for so long that i can no longer find one, even if its just a receiver to put BMR or BMB parts on...