My M-1 Garand was bought many years ago from the Director of Civilian Marksmanship (DCM) for $165 and mailed to my door.

I qualified for that purchase by participating in Civilian Military Rifle Matches at my gun club.

The DCM also supplied our club with ammo loaded into bandoleers for our matches.

It is a very interesting rifle. It was defined as a "gas operated, clip fed, semi-automatic rifle".

It weighs around 10 pounds loaded, depending on wood density.

It is fed by use of 8-round "en-bloc" clips, of .30-06 ammunition.

This ammunition would only be desirable in battlefield conditions when supplied by the military as already loaded clips in a bandoleer which held 6 clips.

The bandoleers and clips were intended to be disposable in battle. Of course, we recycled them many times in our rifle matches.

(Just as a side note... many people confuse the terms "clip" and "magazine". Basically a clip holds cartridges and is used to load them into a magazine.)

To load the rifle, you simple press one of the en-bloc clips into the permanent magazine with your thumb.

If done properly, you use your hand to hold the action open like this.

If not done correctly, the action will slam shut before you can move your thumb and give you what was called "the M-1 thumb".

Smart guys only have this happen once and that is enough to teach them to use the proper procedure.