I have a Marlin Levermatic chambered in this round, and I like it.
My dad was issued an M-1 carbine as a 2nd looey leading a rifle platoon during the Korean war. He discovered quickly that it would stop working if it got dirty (for example, with dirt thrown up by an artillery strike). He threw it away, and took an M-1 Garand and ammo from a dead soldier, and carried that thereafter.
He spoke poorly of the carbine, and highly of the Garand and BAR the rest of his life.
The United States Carbine, Caliber .30, M1 is a funny weapon. GI’s either loved it or hated it. My father, a WWII ETO vet with the 28th ID, didn’t have much use for them, as he found a Garand or BAR better at penetrating cover in the forests and urban areas of France and Belgium.
Others, especially in the Pacific, thought it was just the ticket. They made six million of the little buggers, so somebody liked them.
It’s odd that the Korean war functioning issues seem so prevalent when you don’t here much about this during WWII. I suspect that it’s a combination of cold weather and the condition of the little rifles when pulled out of mothballs.
A gunked up gas piston (not something a soldier in the field was expected to maintain), weak recoil spring, or any application of grease instead of oil will hurt reliability, and I think the WWII fifteen round mags were probably more reliable than the Korean era thirty rounders. I don’t think the NK or Chinese soldier were any tougher than German or Japanese soldiers of WWII, and some modern testing on ball ammo vs. frozen clothing has pretty much dispelled the winter clothing stops the Carbine round myth
I also think a lot of the reports of NK soldiers taking hits from carbines and shrugging them off have to do with full auto M3 carbines simply not putting rounds on target, or GIs using the rifle beyond the practical effective range of 200 yards or less.
Somebody will probably chime in and claim the round won’t stop grandma if she’s cranky, but accounts from the likes of Jeff George and Jim Cirrilo seem to indicate otherwise, and from a logical standpoint, the ballistics at short range are a better than a .357 Magnum.
It’s a fun rifle to shoot as a plinker, and with 110 grain HP rounds, I’d not sneer at it as personal defense weapon.
My father was also issued a carbine as a 2nd lieutenant in Europe. As soon as he got in the field, his NCOs told him to get rid of it. They said that the nazis knew that officers got carbines, so they were looking to kill the guy with the carbine.