Home defense carbine: AR, AK, or M1 Carbine?

[amd6547]

The M1 carbine is a unique weapon, as it was designed to replace the pistol and be a easier to shoot and a little more powerful.
I have, in the past, relied on pistol caliber carbines as my HD longarm, and they work fine.
But, my M1 carbine shoots a more powerful, 357mag-level cartridge, and does it in a lighter weapon that points like my finger, and due to the locked bolt, gas operation, actually has lighter recoil.
It also has the ability to reach out to 100yds without trying hard, and with very good accuracy. Not important for HD? I have personally seen a situation which could have justified a 50yd shot, and a friend of mine got into a situation where he had a 50yd shot at a bad guy, and the responding police told him he should have taken it...He didn't feel confident in his handgun.
If you have never shot an M1 carbine, get one from the CMP for $495...You can always sell it for more than you paid for it. You might just be surprised at what the favorite weapon of Medal of Honor recipient Audie Murphy is capable of.

 

[61chalk]

Just make sure you hit the BG, an then you don't have to worry so much about over penetration over into the nieghbors house right...?
For me its my .45 auto, an Mossberg
.12 ga. For your choices it would be either AR or M1....I would not use AK.

 

[TexasRifleman]

I'm amazed that some people actually believe that all rifles will shoot through walls and that all handguns and shotguns will not.

The firearm is simply the bullet delivery mechanism. Ammo choice is what decides penetration, not what piece of machinery is used to fire it.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Any of the first three are a good choice with proper training and ammo selection.

A lot of people mentioned overpenetration... as several others have pointed out, anything that penetrates deeply enough to reach the vital organs of a human being is going to penetrate several interior walls with relative ease. To my mind, that means the key factor to reducing overpenetration concerns is hitting the target.. A secondary concern is stopping the target as fast as possible with as few rounds as possible.

For both these reasons, I like a long gun, any long gun, because it maximizes my ability to put rounds on target in an effective manner and except for pistol-caliber carbines, they are more likely to be effective when they do hit. On top of all of this, a long gun is the easiest for a minimally-trained/untrained person to use and retain. A handgun is made to be convenient and easily carried at the expense of power and accuracy.

Now there are plenty of valid reasons to use a handgun for self-defense and a long gun may not always be a viable choice; but if you have the ability to use a long gun, you should take that choice.

 

[H2O MAN]

My G21s are what I use en route to my long guns

 

[Moose458]

In this situation, ONE OF THESE THREE, I would pick the AR because the .223/5.56 round will not penetrate a normal wall. Ask me how I know this. Also I couldn't care less what a DA will say about what ever I use as long as I am still around and the bad guy isn't. However, I don't want to use something that may end up popping off a neighbor. What I can't understand is, why it is so hard for some people to answer the question as asked? Nobody asked about a shotgun, or a 9mm carbine , or anything else. AR, AK, or .30 carbine, or none of the above that was IT.

 

[JT'sDad]

Here is a link to my M1 Carbine home defense set up:
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=450598

Soft points are the standard load and I would like to try the Corbon Self Defense load as well.

 

[Maverick223]

Nobody asked about a shotgun, or a 9mm carbine , or anything else. AR, AK, or .30 carbine, or none of the above that was IT.

Similarly, if someone asked you what to use to kill the cape buffalo digging up your flowers, and said that they had an AR, AK, and a M1 Carbine how would you respond? Would you say that the AK is the best...or suggest something not on the list...like a .458 Lott?

 

[RP88]

I'm not sure on how much punch-through .30 carbine has, but I'd go with either the M1 or the AR with TAP or other reliably fragmenting bullet type.

 

[benEzra]

AR-15 with 55gr JHP's would be my first choice. Contrary to some posts upthread, .223 JHP typically penetrates less, not more, in wallboard than most .45 or 9mm JHP. It may still go through several interior walls, though, so you still have to watch your direction of fire, just as you would with any other gun.

The noise factor is also not as big a difference as some might think. .45 ACP out of a 4" barrel and .223 out of a 16" barrel are not all that different in terms of peak decibels, although a braked .223 would be worse.

I'd set the AR up with a light, BTW.

 

[mljdeckard]

lvcat2004, handguns ARE suboptimal for EVERYTHING. When you use force, it should be overwhelming force. I have not yet encountered any bad guys wearing body armor. This is NOT why professionals use long guns.

If you aren't comfortable going room to room with a long gun, you need to be trained in how to do it correctly.

 

[JShirley]

You know, it would be great if the people who piped up actually knew what they were talking up. Some in this thread obviously do...and many don't.

First things first: if you're in a "shooting solution", a longarm is better. This should be pathetically obvious, but since it must escape some, longarms are more powerful, often hold more rounds, and use a stock, which both aids rapid target acquisition (even if not using sights) and control.

Now, of the three mentioned, the two U.S.-made choices seem better because of ergonomics. BULLET SELECTION is very important when choosing how to defend your house. Ammunition in virtually every rifle caliber can be found that will have less chance of shoot-through of a threat than most handgun ammunition.

M1 Carbines tend to be VERY penetrative, if you're not careful about ammunition selection.

There are plenty of thirty caliber rounds that can be found that rapidly expand and/or fragment, giving reduced chance of target shoot-through than almost any handgun rounds. Debating this just shows ignorance.

Most foster style slugs at close range do not tend to overpenetrate bodies. They actually penetrate a few inches less than 00 buckshot.

Many people don't seem to understand that shooting lightly constructed bullets at very high velocity means LESS penetration in tissue, while also making a hell of a mess of the target. This is why expanding rifle rounds for home defense pose LESS danger to your neighbors. If you're not using dedicated (TAP, etc) defensive rounds, choose varmint or light-for-caliber hunting rounds, and test them in medium. Choose a handgun round with known performance characteristics- say, a 9mm 124-grain Gold Dot- and shoot it into water-filled milk jugs. Then take your rifle round and do the same thing. Compare the two. Most likely, the rifle round will not penetrate more, and will cause dramatically more damage. If this is not the case, choose a different loading. Too easy.

Now, some of y'all should talk less about stuff you don't understand, and go out and shoot stuff more.

Incidentally, anyone who uses the term "shotty" automatically loses pretty much all respect from me.

John

 

[Drue]

I voted "no carbine." Any of the choices would work but I prefer a shotgun. I believe that it provides more stopping power with less noise and at a lower cost. I am rather partial to my AR, AK and M1 Carbine. Short of TEOTWAWKI, any weapon used in a defense incident is going downtown for "ballistics" or "evidence" or whatever. You may or may not get it back and even if you do, who knows what condition it will be in. An inexpensive pump shotgun would be much less of a loss to me. Someone firing a 50,000+ psi rifle in an enclosed room without protection, may or may not hear the shot in the heat of battle but is certain to suffer permanent hearing loss to some degree. The shotgun would lessen this effect.

My $0.02

Drue

 

[lvcat2004]

lvcat2004, handguns ARE suboptimal for EVERYTHING. When you use force, it should be overwhelming force. I have not yet encountered any bad guys wearing body armor. This is NOT why professionals use long guns.

If you aren't comfortable going room to room with a long gun, you need to be trained in how to do it correctly.

Wrong, that is an oversimplified generalized ludicrous statment repeated over the internet over and over without merit. Try to run a non-stationary IDPA/IPSC type competition with a long gun--can you do it faster with a longgun??

I have absolutely NO problem with people using longgun in CQB if they are trained for it. If the OP is asking which gun to use, he/she is obviously not familiar with using any of them in CQB, and sounds like he/she is more familiar with the handgun. Although we could say the same thing about a handgun--that many people are not used to handling it in CQB, but the FACT is that a handgun is a lot easier to handle in CQB without formal training and the shot accuracy at 7 yards between a handgun/rifle is not significant, not to mention that it would be harder for most people to rapidly acquire a sight picture with a longgun in such CQB situation. What about stopping power?? If you can't stop a BG at short indoor distance with normal handugn SD ammo then you have some other issues, don't blame it on the caliber.

Would you really need a 30 rouund mag. for HD?? You could, but if you have a 45 in hand and slinging around a longgun that you are not familiar using in CQB situation then it's more of a liability. You don't need 100 rounds of ammo to engate a suburban intruder.

Stick with what you are used to shooting in that particular setting. You might be a great African Safari hunter with 375, but that means nothing in CQB, at night, etc. Stop watching too many movies with SWAT/SEALS with tacticool AR's.....that's not real life.

 

[Float Pilot]

Back when I came off of active duty the first time and started Law dawging, I was working out in villages. At that time I conducted a series of test against log structures since that was the primary type of building in Alaska bush villages at the time. The M-1 carbine full jacketed mil-spec rounds will go through LOTS of wood. Even the commerical soft point ammo penetrated over 10 inches of old logs on some occasions. It will go through a sheet rocked house wall like butter. A 7.62x39mm round would only be worse.

I also had to shoot many (like over 200 over a couple years) wild dogs as part of my duties and the 30 caliber carbine round proved to be a horrible round for stopping a big sled dog with rabies. My deputy used his Mini-14 for the same work with only slightly better results. I even tried the 30 carbine round on small arctic Caribou and they were not impressed much.

I later tried my little Rossi m-92 leverguns in both 357 mag and 44 mag on caribou and that proved to be an outstanding sucess. Although the 44 mag was a bit much unless I used solids at a low velocity. Even the 357 mag carbine was a meat destroyer if I used the federal 125 grain hollow cavity police loads. Those really hauled out of the carbine and the exit wound on the far side of a 200 pound caribou was as big as a tea saucer.

A 12 gauge shotgun proved to be much better for village rabid dog control and the dangers of over pentration for regular police work also made it the weapon of choice in close quarters.

 

[mljdeckard]

A handgun is what you use to fight your way back to the long gun you never should have put down in the first place. It is ALWAYS backup. Handgun rounds are inferior for self-defense. That they are more convenient to carry doesn't make them any better.

The OP needs to be trained to use the gun no matter what it is.

Do you know how many rounds you will need for an HD situation? I suppose you have had one of those HD situations where you knew exactly who and how many would be coming, and their time and intent as well.

If you aren't used to the best weapon for HD/SD, you need to GET used to it. Don't make excuses that you don't know how to use it. LEARN IT.

 

[MTMilitiaman]

I'm surprised so many people are confused enough to believe he'd be better served without a carbine. In terms of everything that matters, from terminal effect, to accuracy, controllability, and capacity, a carbine in vastly superior to any handgun. If you have a choice in the matter, you'd be better served with a long gun.

On the other hand, it's not a surprise to me that the "over-penetration" gremlin reared it's ugly head after only one post. Apparently, some have so little experience with rifles that they don't really know it is a question of ammo selection. Any rifle cartridge found in a popular semi-auto carbine is going to be capable of being loaded for home defense. I can load my M1A to provide adequate but not excessive penetration for home defense. The Uly 124 gr JHPs I keep in my AK also have excellent penetration for home defense. No one here is advocating FMJ ball ammo as this would not only be less effective than available expanding ammo, but also foolhardy due to its penetration. With modern expanding ammo, all of the choices here are perfectly fine for home defense as none of them will penetrate appreciably more than most handgun rounds. The bigger concern is hitting your target, thereby elevating the concern for missed rounds penetrating walls to other rooms or domiciles. I really wish people would do some research and think before they post, as this is well known and published information that is easily available. Over penetration isn't nearly the concern most make it out to be, esp given the risk posed by under penetration, or by missing the target completely. Given the added accuracy and controllability of a carbine, with proper ammo selection, it actually poses less of a risk to neighbors.

Tens of millions of these things have been sold to the American populace. Do the majority of people really have no better use for them than shooting targets at the range? Do people really not realize the awesome potential these semi-auto carbines hold as defensive weapons? I hope not.

Personally, I am more confident in the AK. I can use both and wouldn't feel under-armed with either, but I appreciate the absolute reliability of the Kalashnikov as well as the performance of the 124 gr Uly round found in Wolf's MC JHP. No 5.56 round is going to match its ability to take the fight out of someone in a hurry.

Of course, AK's aren't as PC as ARs. That is a risk I am willing to take. I normally keep an AK with a reflex sight and Surefire on it next to my bed and have absolute confidence in its ability to handle any scenario, as opposed to 8+1 rounds of comparatively anemic 230 gr Gold Dots from my SIG P220.

 

[Moose458]

Maverick223
Quote:: Similarly, if someone asked you what to use to kill the cape buffalo digging up your flowers, and said that they had an AR, AK, and a M1 Carbine how would you respond? Would you say that the AK is the best...or suggest something not on the list...like a .458 Lott?


OK Chief, Try to stay with me here. The question asked was... of these three rifles the AR, the AK and the .30 carbine, which would you chose for home defense, and why? OK? He has these 3 rifles and it has to be one of the these 3. Nobody said anything about cape buffalo or a T-Rex or anything else. If he had asked what type of weapon he should buy for HD then you can suggest anything you like, but he said IT HAS TO BE ONE OF THESE 3. Is this really that hard for you to comprehend?

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Although we could say the same thing about a handgun--that many people are not used to handling it in CQB, but the FACT is that a handgun is a lot easier to handle in CQB without formal training and the shot accuracy at 7 yards between a handgun/rifle is not significant, not to mention that it would be harder for most people to rapidly acquire a sight picture with a longgun in such CQB

Lycat2004 - perhaps I am misunderstanding you; but exactly how is doing ANY kind of shooting with a pistol easier than with a rifle? I take new shooters out and let them try out a pistol, carbine and shotgun under time pressure. They inevitably make better hits with a longgun and usually the carbine wins for speed and accuracy. I also don't understand your argument, you say that it is much easier to handle a pistol without training (which again contradicts my own experiences) and then you say that the accuracy difference is insignificant between a rifle and pistol at those distances?

I guess I don't grasp how a pistol can be more accurate than a rifle for the untrained since that goes against everything I've ever experienced and I've had professional instruction in CQB-shooting with both rifle and pistol. I also don't understand the argument that reacquiring the sight picture is harder with a stocked rifle than it is with a pistol.

What about stopping power?? If you can't stop a BG at short indoor distance with normal handugn SD ammo then you have some other issues, don't blame it on the caliber.

I think you are greatly over-estimating the effectiveness of a handgun. About 80% of those shot with a handgun survive - and many people are able to continue hostile activites after being shot multiple times. Look at the recent Burger King shooting that was much discussed... the whole thing happened in a few seconds and both parties were shot multiple times.

 

[Mags]

I tell you what if the handgun is so inferior let me shoot you once with my 45 and if you survive you can shoot me with your 223.

 

[JShirley]

That may be the stupidest statement I've ever read here.

No-one wants to get shot with anything, even a pellet gun. Doesn't mean a pellet gun is optimal for anything except target practice or small game at close range. I've killed a good bit of stuff. Not as much as some: I think my best season, I only killed six deer, three armadillo, and two squirrels. The point being: even with a solid hit, even a white-tail deer may take a half-hour or so to bleed out. Just because you've killed the critter doesn't mean you've instantly put it down, and if you think your .45 will magically drop people on their tush every time with one shot, you're flat wrong.

The handgun is inferior for everything except concealment. Don't get upset at people just because you don't like the facts.

John

 

[Ed Ames]

My only reservation about the M1 is that the owner may not wish to risk it if they have another choice.

People are too ready to compare weapon systems against each other rather than against the situations they'll be used in. The AR or AK is a better primary weapon than the M1 carbine. However, you are unlikely to be facing an even fight where the ability of the weapons will dictate the outcome. Your knowledge of your home, your ability, the fact that they aren't expecting you to be armed, the fact that you need only survive to be successful unlike your attacker who must survive, evade capture, and get away with something they value... those are going to tip things more than the difference between an M1 and an M4.

 

[Mags]

That may be the stupidest statement I've ever read here.

I was definetley not serious in my remarks in post 70 the point I was trying to make is being on the recieving end of a handgun is not a pleasureable experience. And yes a rifle is the superior weapon, the handgun is indeed inferior to the rifle.

 

[JShirley]

Handguns conceal better. That's the ONLY thing they're better at than a carbine. I'm not suggesting a WWI-era battle rifle with a 25" barrel, I'm suggesting that a carbine with a 16-20" barrel is considerably better for, well, almost everything. Even rapid presentation.

As I pointed out (but DON'T BELIEVE ME- DO THE RESEARCH!), using the right ammunition in a carbine will not only stop a threat faster, it will do it with less potential danger to the neighbors.

Someone else said something about not being able to see the sights with a carbine at close range. If they're really that close, it's too easy- you swing the barrel up until the front sight covers the threat and press the trigger twice.

J

 

[Zach S]

A few thoughts came to mind while reading this thread.

First off, I'd rather "attacked" in court by the DA over my choice of HD guns than see a mortician.

Second, I have about $1300 or so in my AR, and about $675 in my glock. My family's well being is worth more to me than two grand.

Third, as the BOT demonstrates, the best way to avoid errant rounds hitting your neighbors' house is to hit the BG, or choosing something other than a firearm for HD. Pistols, rifles, and shotguns all share the danger of collateral damage.

We use an AR here. I used to use my shotgun, but the lady cant shoot it. We can both shoot the AR, and since I have ARs in 5.56, 9mm, and .22lr, that's what we get the most rangetime with.