hi guys thanks for tuning in another
video on forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian
McCallum and I'm here today at the Rock
Island auction company where we are
taking a look at a US Marine Corps 22
caliber semi auto training' rifle this
was this was put into development in
1943 because the US Marine Corps had
just adopted the m1 garand now the US
Army adopted the m1 in 1936 and it was
the standard army rifle going into World
War two however the US Marine Corps
always wanting to be or needing to be or
not having the money to not be a little
bit different the US Marine Corps didn't
adopt the m1 until actually midway
through 1942 so they went into World War
one with bolt-action Springfield rifles
and in addition to that all of the
existing pre-existing training rifles at
the US military had were all bolt
actions going back into the 1920s
because men had bolt-action rifles in
general when the Marine Corps adopted
the m1 they decided that they actually
wanted a semi-auto training rifle to
kind of give some of the same sort of
handling the same effectiveness as a
semi-auto service rifle so they went out
looking for a training rifle that would
duplicate the weight and the balance and
handling and the sights and the
semi-automatic nature of the m1 and
that's where hnr comes in Harrington &
Richardson had an employee by the name
of Eugene ricing who had of course
designed and was they were manufacturing
the ricing submachine gun and hnr
grabbed racing and won you know hey you
how about you put together a 22 caliber
version of that submachine gun which he
did and it became the model 65 which is
basically this rifle well when we look
at this up close I'll tell you the
differences between the model 65 and the
MC 58 which is what we have here so that
thing has a 10-round detachable box
magazine the length is virtually
identical to the m1 the sight placement
is basically identical to the m1 has a
very heavy barrel on it so the weight
and the balance is the same as the m1
this is all very nice in 1943 they start
manufacturing them and they end up
making a total of about 18,500 now of
those somewhere between 6 and 10
went to the US military there's a good
argument for 6000 again we'll touch on
that when we look at this up close but
in 1944 partway through 1944 they get
government permission to actually sell
this on the commercial market as well so
they try to market it there and to be
honest it doesn't do all that well it's
kind of funny to actually name it the
general but it's a military construction
rifle it's kind of crude it's not built
to the same level of polish and fine
finish that the buying public is kind of
used to and kind of expects so it ends
up kind of limping along that'll they'll
reintroduce it in different with
different nomenclature after the war
they had the Leatherneck model which was
kind of the fancy gussied up version
glued instead of parkerized nicer wood
nicer rear sight that one doesn't do so
well either they also marketed as the
model 150 and the model 151 with a few
different changes but ultimately what
what they would end up going to is this
the MC 58 in the 1950s so there's kind
of a lag there where this they the the
US military buys a bunch of these during
World War two six to ten thousand of
them and then well that's it okay the
war is over fine but then when the US
Marine Corps adopts the m14 they decide
that they need some more training rifles
and they want a training rifle that now
does a little bit better of a job of
duplicating the handling of the m14 so
they asked for a revision to this rifle
and that's what makes it the MC 58 so
let me show you that so what is that big
difference it's the safety the the
original model 65 s had a safety up here
very reminiscent well basically a
duplicate of the the ricing submachine
gun safety what the Marine Corps wanted
when they ordered more of these they
wanted an m14 or m1 garand pattern of
safety so that's what they got well flip
back and forth just like an m1 or an m14
it is I should point out this isn't this
is it's easy to think of this as a World
War 2 pattern thing because it does
match the m1 garand it wasn't this was
only introduced in 1958 and 59 when the
MC 58 rifle came out as
US Marine Corps rifles these are marked
USMC property and then some standard
Harrington Richardson Marc's caliber
marking these by the way before anyone
gets curious and asks these were surplus
doff by the Marine Corps when they no
longer needed them and a lot of these
were actually sold by the the CMP so
they did legitimately come on to the
civilian market a little farther back on
the receiver we have a few more Marx
will note you have a model number here
model MC 58 however they're below that
we have a line agent our model 65
modified presumably they had a bunch of
receivers already manufactured or at
least the tooling and the stamping of
probably actual receivers in hand ready
to go and rather than make brand new
ones they just stamped on and modified
so they could use those pre-existing
parts and then of course Harrington or
Richardson and our serial number and I
want to talk about this for a moment
88 56 the MC 58 the the m14 trainer
rifles have a serial number range that
starts at 6,000 and it runs up to about
9,500 so they made a total of about 3500
of these what's curious though is that
it starts at 6,000 the model 65 serial
numbers start at one and run to about
eighteen and a half thousand with a yet
unspecified or undetermined number sold
to the Marine Corps I think there is a
good argument to be made it certainly
makes sense that there were probably
6,000 guns sold to the Marine Corps
during World War Two in between 43 and
45 and then when they ordered more in 58
hnr simply picked up at the end of that
serial number range for the Marine Corps
and continued it with the MC 58 however
in the original model 65 production they
continued running that serial number up
with commercial sale guns because while
these were made originally while they
were originally designed for the
military and they were originally sold
to the military that you know of course
by 45 the war was over in the military
stopped buying them and then hnr went on
to sell these on the commercial market a
little bit more to show you on the rifle
we of course have the magazine here pull
that down you can remove the magazine
there
two holes in it and those holes are
marked for eight and ten rounds there
you go eight and ten these are the exact
same magazines that were used with the
earlier model 65 they never changed that
even for the civilian magazines they
never changed them so originally they
had an eighth round witness hole so if
you were using this for m1 garand
training you would load eight rounds and
you'd have a little hole here so you
knew when you hit eight that being said
it was a ten round capacity magazine if
you wanted to load it all the way up the
rear sight is a nice adjustable
commercial red filled aperture sight you
know good adjustable sights good for a
22 caliber training and target rifle the
front sight basically duplicates the the
look and the style of the m1 and the m14
but that's where the control similarity
ends because mechanically this is almost
identical to an H and our submachine gun
which means the charging lever is here
on the bottom of the barrel inside the
stock so that's how you actually cycle
the bolt manually we can take this apart
briefly by removing just this one screw
once that's loose and it is captive just
like a submachine gun then I can pull
this stock up on and if we look at the
mechanical insides of the gun this is
exactly a ricing submachine gun they
just adapted the ricing to 22 caliber it
even has the same firing mechanism so
when I pull the trigger this little
sliding hammer is going to jump forward
there is one recoil spring in the back
are not recoil spring I'm sorry there is
a firing pin spring in the back here
instead of being a big heavy-duty spring
for a 45 caliber submachine gun it's a
little baby spring for a 22 rim fire
just that that little guy there and we
can dropout this which is the hammer so
there is an offset firing pin which you
can just barely see right up there on
the back of the bolt
if you're curious for seeing more about
how how the ricing submachine guns work
I have a previous video on
one of them I would encourage you to
take a look at that video a lot of
people have put a lot of work into
trying to design exact duplicates of the
m1 or the m14 and 22 rimfire is practice
rifles and I found it pretty interesting
to get my hands on one of the actual
Marine Corps versions of exactly what
that's supposed to do this is the rifle
that would effectively duplicate the m14
in small bore for training purposes so
pretty cool and this one is basically
brand new it doesn't look like it's
hardly ever been fired so if you're
interested in adding one of these to
your own collection well this one is
coming up for sale here at Rock Island
if you want to see their catalog page on
it take a look at the description below
you'll find a link there to forgotten
weapons comm and from that page you can
click on over to rock Islands catalog
page take a look at their pictures their
description their value estimate all
that sort of good stuff thanks for
watching