WestKentucky
Member
I’m going at it from a different angle. Spoiler... I’m going to say get the garand though.
I don’t have a whole lot of experience with garands, but what little experience I had with one was not pleasant. The gun was immaculate, and shot a lot better than it should have considering that rifle supposedly saw use in Europe, and later in Korea. The whole thing was incredible and had me salivating to go buy a garand, and I was very seriously considering it. The guy that owned the gun had inherited it and a small amount of ww2 era surplus ammo. We shotgun that ammo up in a hurry, and then a few days later he called me and told me the gun was broken. Locked up tight and not budging. He had bought cheap modern ammo and shot a couple boxes of it, and had bent the op-rod pretty bad. That’s a costly mistake to make, and he is lucky it didn’t do more damage. The whole thing is that modern 30-06 hunting ammo is loaded hotter than military loads were. So if your going to buy boutique blasting ammo then get the garand, but stay away from the garand until you learn to reload and make appropriate pressure curve ammo for your rifle. If you already reload then that’s awesome, get the garand. If you have no intentions of learning to reload, then I guess stick with the AR unless you can afford to buy proper ammo for the garand. If you can’t afford to buy proper ammo for the garand, then get the garand and use it as motivation to keep working your 2nd job to pay for the ammo.
I don’t have a whole lot of experience with garands, but what little experience I had with one was not pleasant. The gun was immaculate, and shot a lot better than it should have considering that rifle supposedly saw use in Europe, and later in Korea. The whole thing was incredible and had me salivating to go buy a garand, and I was very seriously considering it. The guy that owned the gun had inherited it and a small amount of ww2 era surplus ammo. We shotgun that ammo up in a hurry, and then a few days later he called me and told me the gun was broken. Locked up tight and not budging. He had bought cheap modern ammo and shot a couple boxes of it, and had bent the op-rod pretty bad. That’s a costly mistake to make, and he is lucky it didn’t do more damage. The whole thing is that modern 30-06 hunting ammo is loaded hotter than military loads were. So if your going to buy boutique blasting ammo then get the garand, but stay away from the garand until you learn to reload and make appropriate pressure curve ammo for your rifle. If you already reload then that’s awesome, get the garand. If you have no intentions of learning to reload, then I guess stick with the AR unless you can afford to buy proper ammo for the garand. If you can’t afford to buy proper ammo for the garand, then get the garand and use it as motivation to keep working your 2nd job to pay for the ammo.
