If memory serves, not many MAS 36s had been either made or issued before the fateful weeks in the spring of 1940.
It took over ten years for the French to finalize the design, there was a lot of interference in war production by the labor force (thanks to a strong French Communist Party in those days of Hitler-Stalin “unity”), and even without the labor sabotage French industrial practices were far from modern and involved lots of SLOW handwork. Also, for multiple reasons, the French government simply did not take rearmament seriously until they were at the “four minutes to midnight” point.
Most French troops went into battle with old 8mm Lebels from World War I...on quite a few levels, the French poilu was being forced to refight 1918 in the spring of 1940.
I was in grad school in the late 1980s. I worked at a large gun dealer during Christmas Vacation also any other time I had time off.
I recall he got in a fair number of those French bolt actions and all were in excellent condition. He also got even more of the French semi automatics.
They all looked good to me but I checked in several dealer flier and catalogs he had and the ammo was very hard to find. Finally decided it just wasn’t worth the bother despite the low prices.
One odd thing is they had no safeties, none at all.