My Birthday Present

Hint: It's not a magic ring.  But we wants it, precious, we WANTS it!  😂

My birthday present to myself this year is a rifle I’ve been looking for for at least 15 years. I was deployed overseas when the last batch of Bavarian Police carbines were returned to the U.S. and offered for sale through the CMP. I didn’t have an address to which I could have them delivered, so I missed out. In a nice coincidence, a very good example came up for sale just last week. I spent a couple days checking references and refreshing my memory about the history, markings, etc. and asking the seller some questions. When I was satisfied it was genuine, I pulled the trigger and bought it.

The WWII U.S. Carbine, Caliber .30, is a special interest of mine, and I have a modest collection of them. This particular one is a two-fer, as it fills two gaps in my collection at once. In the first place (and the part that initially got my interest), it is marked “Bavaria Forestry Police”. In the years immediately following WWII, various German police agencies were re-formed and re-armed with U.S. weapons, both to keep internal order as well as to help counteract the growing threat from Russia as the Cold War intensified. People who know me will understand my special interest in Bavaria, forests and forestry in general and the Bavarian forest in particular, and especially the Cold War. All these aspects made a Bavarian Forestry Police carbine an article of special interest and desirability to me. They don’t come up for sale very often, and I had not yet seen a desirable one for sale at a time and place when it was feasible for me to buy it. So that was point one.

Point two: This is a very desirable, extremely early-production carbine from August 1942, the third month of production. Out of a total production of over six million U.S M1 carbines between 1942 and 1945, this carbine has a four-digit serial number (!). It has the original July 1942 barrel and mostly original features of the early Model 1942 carbines, with some of the expected late- or post-war modifications made to almost all the early carbines that remained in service after the war (the adjustable rear sight and rotating safety being the most obvious). The later model replacement wooden stock is also not uncommon, but I can live with that as I know that this carbine is in the exact configuration in which it was returned to the U.S. from the Austrian police agency (another part of the history) from which it came. It has an Austrian Police-marked trigger group and includes the Austrian leather sling and cleaning kit marked with the town in which it was in service (Ebreichsdorf). It is also in extremely good condition, especially for such an early example.

A beautiful example of an early-production WWII M1 Carbine. One of my very favorite rifles.

It would originally have had a high-wood stock with an I-cut slot for the oiler, so this is a later replacement stock.

Inland Manufacturing Division, General Motors, barrel dated 7-42. Finished carbine assembled and delivered in August 1942.

The post-war marking I’ve been looking for.

Landes Gendarmerie Kommando Nieder Österrreich (State Gendarmerie Command of Lower Austria)

The cleaning kit and sling have additional markings helping to pin down the post-war history of this carbine.

I love these German and Austrian cleaning kits - added bonus that it is included!

Today I sent the cashier’s check via certified mail, and should have the carbine in my possession in a week or ten days. Then I can tear it down to look at the internals, catalog the parts, and fire a few rounds through it before it goes on display with my others.

This one will never be a regular “shooter”. It is too valuable for that, as it is a remarkable artifact that tells a lot about an important chapter in our history, for those who know how to read the record contained in its markings. For the history geeks like me, here is some information on the history of the “occupation carbines”:

http://www.bavarianm1carbines.com/

Happy Birthday to Me!

Music:  Silence

Mood:  Happy

ARI, OCON, and ARU

I just returned from the annual Objectivist conference (OCON) organized by the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI).  I have meant to write about ARI and ARU (Ayn Rand University) for a long time, but have not yet done so (although I think I once put in a "placeholder entry" about ARU, which I never went back to flesh out).  While I am fired up in the afterglow of OCON and before I get overtaken by events of daily life, it seems like a good time to write about all three, at least in an introductory way.

The Ayn Rand Institute (hereinafter "ARI") was founded in 1985, as the Center for Advancing Objectivism.  In a nutshell, Objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which upholds the existence of objective reality and advocates Reason, Egoism, and Capitalism.  Since first reading Atlas Shrugged in 1983, I have held Objectivism as my personal philosophy and have done my best to learn everything I can about it and to do everything I can to help to advance it in the culture.

When I got out of the Army in 1985, I went to the University of Michigan to get my MBA.  There I met two other Objectivists - Darryl Wright and Janet Wich (now Westphal).  Together we founded a student campus club called the University of Michigan Students of Objectivism.  We took taped lecture courses, held discussions, and invited Objectivist speakers to the campus.  It was an exciting time!  ARI was in its infancy, but I remember that they helped us with some funding and also with getting speakers to come to campus.  So in this way, I have been "involved with" ARI almost from the very beginning.   

Over the next few years after I graduated and entered the business world, I stayed in contact with the club and also went to several Objectivist conferences (although they were not called "OCON" at the time.  Eventually, I got wrapped up in raising a family and earning a living, and the last conference I attended was in San Francisco in 1996.  But starting in the late 1980s when I got my first job after the Army, I began contributing to ARI, and have been a contributor more or less continuously since that time, even though I was not actively involved.

Fast forward to the late 2010s, when I was wrapping up my second stint in the Army as a mobilized reservist.  I had re-engaged with Objectivism while deployed overseas, and had once again started paying closer attention to what ARI was doing.  I was amazed at the progress they had made in delivering intellectual content via their website and other activities, and began to step up my contributions as well as to consume more content (online courses, etc.)  But for many years I did not go to conferences or really talk to anyone, I just sort of lurked in the background as a silent admirer, albeit with some contact from donor services.

Finally, in 2023, I went to OCON and I was blown away by the quality and scale of what they had accomplished and what they had planned for the future.  I went to OCON 2024, again this year, and am already registered for next year!  Part of why I have not written about it before now is the level of engagement that I've had with Ayn Rand University (ARU).

Update 6 October 2025

Once again, I see I got busy and never finished this entry.   Jeez.   I suppose when I was deployed this was one of the only things I had to do in my free time.  I can't believe the elapsed time since I started this.

I'm going to write the entry I came to do, and think about what to do here later.