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What makes a carbine a carbine and not a rifle? Everything I can find online just says a carbine is "shorter". Well, if you took some ridiculously long rifle and shortened it by an inch, would you call that the "carbine version"? Is it just something determined by the manufacturer?

Cutting down a long rifle is what the Soviet's did with their Mosin Nagant Model 1891/30 in order to create the Model 1891/59 Carbine.

Yeah, I have a Mosin carbine. The question is still...what makes it a carbine? If you cut 1 inch off of a 50" rifle, that's still a dang long rifle, right? :) I wouldn't call it a carbine. I'm just curious if there's any "criteria" or if it's just a manufacturer's prerogative to decide.

A carbine was originally a rifle short and light enough for a cavalryman to handle while riding a horse.

Of course the threshold between rifle and carbine is subjective. A bigger, stronger man could handle a longer piece.

- Jim

So it really is just as subjective as it seems? That's not a bad thing, I was just trying to figure out if there was a more concrete answer. The difference between a revolver and a semi-auto or a rifle and a shotgun are more clear. LOL

There are many subjective terms in the field of firearms. Why isn't a Tommy gun called a carbine? It is a short rifle. What makes a round Special or Magnum?

- Jim

It probably bears no resemblance to reality, but I've always thought of carbines as not only being short and handy, but also chambered in intermediate calibers. For instance, the M1 Carbine with its .30 Carbine round. That caliber is (or was at the time) more powerful than handgun calibers, but not as powerful as rifle calibers.

But then I look at the difference between carbine length AR15s, and "rifle" length ARs. And the .223/5.56 round is definitely a rifle caliber - unless it is chambered in a Sig 556 pistol, or an RRA LAR-15...

And then there's the Ruger Mini-14/Mini-30s, which I've never been able to think of as anything but a carbine...

My head hurts...

That makes sense...but then you flip to the Mosin.... and they're ALL the same caliber, 7.62x54r, but there are carbine versions and none... and yeah....

The Annoyed Man wrote:... I've always thought of carbines as not only being short and handy, but also chambered in intermediate calibers.

That goes with their use by horse-mounted cavalry. You can't take a lot of recoil on horseback.

(However, after a brief bit of research, I find it surprising how many 19th-century carbines were .44 caliber and larger.)

Very few soldiers ride horses today (except in Afghanistan), but the low-recoil factor goes with being mobile and getting off a shot without taking a stance and carefully mounting the rifle.

- Jim
[edited to correct mental flatulence]

Morgan wrote:That makes sense...but then you flip to the Mosin.... and they're ALL the same caliber, 7.62x54r, but there are carbine versions and none... and yeah....

Or the SMLE in .303 Brit. The "Jungle Carbine" was officially the "Rifle No. 5 Mk I" so the same firearm could be called both a carbine and a rifle.

The Mauser Kar98k was the same length (barrel and overall) as the M1 Garand rifle. They came into service around the same time but in different countries.

It's all subjective.

This one got me wondering, so I searched it and found pretty much what seamusTX wrote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbine" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wikipedia is pretty cool!

JLaw

I had not read that article. It sounds pretty accurate, except for one thing:

The writer says that carbines typically have a barrel of 18 inches or less, and a rifle longer than 20 inches is generally not a carbine. That range would be the objective standard that Morgan was looking for, but it seems too narrow to me. However, I am not even pretending to be an expert on this.

I know about the cavalry origin of the carbine only because I am interested in horseback riding and the history of things related to horses.

- Jim

Well, it's at least a rule of thumb... even tho it's broken in the article itself, like talking about the Russian Mosin that had the Carbine that was "shortened to 20 inches"...

I did skim that article earlier but I was at work and didn't read it word for word. I do like Wiki, but have found some terrible info on it from time to time so I don't like to COMPLETELY trust it.

I don't accept anything on Wikipedia without corroborating it elsewhere, but the articles on firearms that I have read were accurate. I'm surprised that whoever manages the site keeps those topics clean. There are so many anti-RKBA goofballs.

- Jim

seamusTX wrote:I don't accept anything on Wikipedia without corroborating it elsewhere, but the articles on firearms that I have read were accurate. I'm surprised that whoever manages the site keeps those topics clean. There are so many anti-RKBA goofballs.

- Jim

The site is regulated by its members. That is why it is not so reliable on some things, and fairly reliable on others. With social and political issues, you'll find that the pages are often wildly inaccurate. Opposing party members raid one another's pages, trying to make the other guy look bad. In fact, the problem was so bad during the first Bush term that the wikipedia management had to ban IP addresses originating on Capitol Hill because congressional staffers were bushwacking their bosses' opponents. Anybody can become a member, and gain the ability to edit pages there. Heck, I've edited pages there.

However, when it comes to technology/engineering issues (which would include guns), the pages tend to be edited by enthusiasts who have some knowledge of the subject, and who aren't obsessed with making some slanderous political hay. So you can still find inaccuracies, but they tend to be of the variety of incomplete knowledge, rather than deliberately malicious information.

In this wiki page on the S&W Model 29, that is my pistol sitting in a basket, 2nd from the bottom on the right of the page. I see that some edits I had made at the time I uploaded the picture have since been edited out of the page. That's the thing about Wiki. The information changes, and that makes it somewhat unreliable as a source.