The CMP has M1 Carbines available in limited supply

The M1 Carbine was a workhorse of the U.S. military through WWII, Korea and the early part of the Vietnam conflict and the ones being sold by the CMP came from military surplus stocks. (Photo: CMP)

The federally-chartered Civilian Marksmanship Program will have a small amount of venerable USGI M1 Carbines up for grabs to the public at the first of February.

While the organization has largely just sold off M1 Garands in various grades for the past several years, the group announced Thursday they will have a supply of M1 Carbines available for mail order starting Feb. 1 on a first come first-served basis. They will have guns made by Inland, Winchester, IBM, Quality Hardware, Saginaw, Standard Product and Underwood in two grades: Service for $685 each and Field for $625 each, with free shipping.

The bad news is that, while you can pick your grade, you can’t pick your manufacturer as they are luck of the draw and eligible CMP members can only buy one Carbine per year.

If you miss out on the mail order and are close enough to the Anniston, Alabama, or Port Clinton, Ohio CMP locations, you can pick one up there on Feb. 4, though they advise each location will have an “extremely small” selection.

The CMP is a federally chartered non-profit corporation tasked with promoting firearms safety training and rifle practice. It originated as the Office of the Director of Civilian Marksmanship in 1903 under orders from Congress to improve the country’s marksmanship skills to minimize training in case of war.

Split off from the U.S. Army under the Clinton-administration in 1996, it still conducts training courses and holds shooting competitions nationwide but draws its primary source of funding through the sale of surplus firearms to qualifying members of the public which were donated to the organization by the Army.

Now all they have to do is start selling those M1911s…