FlSwampRat
Member
I'm starting this thread in Rifle Country to stop hijacking the .357 magnum discussion in Handguns:General Discussions forum. Clearly neither a rifle nor a carbine are handguns.
@el Godfather was right, that thread is about .357 magnums and not the rifle/carbine debate.
Carbines and rifles existed in the 1600's. This is way before lever guns were around. A couple of hundred years before. Lever action guns haven't been around for half that length of time. Applying lever gun specific features to differentiate between two categories of firearms that have existed for twice as long as lever guns seems pretty misapplied. At least when extending lever action features to all guns, lever and non lever equally. There are literally centuries of firearms designated as carbines that don't "have barrel bands, saddle rings, carbine-specific buttplates and strictly round barrels."
As for the M4 and M16 having "significant differences other than barrel length", I think you enumerated the two. Obviously an M4 would require a shorter barrel shroud and the M16 might have had a collapsible buttstock had such existed back when it was adopted. Other than that and the overall size, they are functionally identical.
The clip comment is relevant as you are using examples of lever gun makers applying the names carbine and rifle to one or another of their lever guns, essentially coopting the general terms to pertain to just their lever guns and you are assuming that such an application applies now to all rifles and carbines thus making centuries of carbines somehow not carbines because they don't have saddle rings, barrel bands, etc.
As for arguing about the terms, it seems that since these terms have been around for at least 400 years the contemporaneous manufacturers are doing the arguing trying to re-purpose or redefine the terms for their own wishes.
@el Godfather was right, that thread is about .357 magnums and not the rifle/carbine debate.
Obviously an AR is not going to have a barrel band. As I said, those are levergun-specific features. Just as the short handguard and collapsible buttstock are features exclusive to the M4. The point being that the carbine versions have significant differences other than barrel length.
Winchester is just the only manufacturer where this is clear in their current catalog, along with the replica manufacturers. As I said, those levergun features were never exclusive to Winchester. Marlin was the same way. Sharps rifles and carbines followed the same parameters. As did Colt. I don't know why people want to be so argumentative about this. I didn't make it up and it's certainly nothing to get into an argument about. The "clip" comment isn't even relevant.
Carbines and rifles existed in the 1600's. This is way before lever guns were around. A couple of hundred years before. Lever action guns haven't been around for half that length of time. Applying lever gun specific features to differentiate between two categories of firearms that have existed for twice as long as lever guns seems pretty misapplied. At least when extending lever action features to all guns, lever and non lever equally. There are literally centuries of firearms designated as carbines that don't "have barrel bands, saddle rings, carbine-specific buttplates and strictly round barrels."
As for the M4 and M16 having "significant differences other than barrel length", I think you enumerated the two. Obviously an M4 would require a shorter barrel shroud and the M16 might have had a collapsible buttstock had such existed back when it was adopted. Other than that and the overall size, they are functionally identical.
The clip comment is relevant as you are using examples of lever gun makers applying the names carbine and rifle to one or another of their lever guns, essentially coopting the general terms to pertain to just their lever guns and you are assuming that such an application applies now to all rifles and carbines thus making centuries of carbines somehow not carbines because they don't have saddle rings, barrel bands, etc.
As for arguing about the terms, it seems that since these terms have been around for at least 400 years the contemporaneous manufacturers are doing the arguing trying to re-purpose or redefine the terms for their own wishes.