[conservatism_IS_compassion]

AHC had a story last nite about a moonshiner who killed a revenuer and, while in jail, concocted the feed mechanism which was used in the M-1 Carbine (not the Garand). The warden got him sprung from jail (immediately before WWII).

[elcid1970]

That was David “Carbine” Williams who invented a floating chamber/short stroke piston which was incorporated into the design of the M-1 carbine.

[Lurker]

Carbine Williams.

[archy]

That was Dave Marshall Williams, aka *Marsh*, whose brother was my former Yugo mechanic when I spent a bit of time around Cumberland County, NC in the mid-1970s. It was the short-stroke gas system, not the feed/magazine unit for which he was partially responsible, and there's a very heavily fictionalized account of those events in the film Carbine Williams in which Marsh was portrayed by Jimmy Stewart. Williams also had quite a bit to do with the *floating chamber* used in the .22 conversion unit for the M1911A1 pistol and allowed the less-powerful .22 cartridge to function the slide of the larger and heavier .45; the same idea was applied to the .30 caliber light machinegun, a real ammo and money saver, and which allowed practice with the guns on indoor ranges at local armories. The system also turned up in some Winchester and other commercial semiauto shotguns after WWII, and the Ruger Mini-14 gas system is derivative.

I also got to bend elbows with some of 'ol Marsh's neighbors and kin, who showed me the half-inch holes in the ceiling of one local watering spot where Marsh had unloaded a pair of .45 Colt Commanders upward one New Year's Eve. Edicts about ex-cons with firearms were either not then in force, or were simply disregarded thereabouts, as were many other edicts from the King in Washington.