M1 Garand Rifle Review
M1 Garand (Foghorn for TTAG)
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Why doesn’t FedEx ever make these kinds of mistakes at TTAG Central Command? Or with someone we know. We promise not to press any panic buttons, bother the local cop shop, or lock down any educational facilities. Pinky swear.

“When deliveries come in, we check everything,” Kevin Thomas, Chester (PA) High School maintenance employee told NBC10. “Usually, it’s like school supplies. So I don’t think – in the history, nothing like this has ever happened. So it had to be a big misunderstanding, big mistake.”

Yep, that’s a pretty good bet.

Chester Upland School District Superintendent Dr. Craig Parkinson said they were expecting a delivery of textbooks and supplies for the start of the school year, but instead, something else arrived at the loading dock Friday.

The crate that was delivered didn’t have any reading, writing or ‘rithmatic-related items the school may have been expecting. Instead, they got something that’s a lot more fun and every bit as educational…six M1 rifles.

This being a local media report, it isn’t clear if those M1s are Garands or carbines.

Image courtesy Wikipedia
M1 carbine – Armémuseum (The Swedish Army Museum), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The M1s were addressed to an auto repair shop the next town over, intended for an avid gun collector.

“They had a right to purchase it, we checked everything out, everything was completely legal- nothing illegal about it,” [Chester Police Commissioner Steven] Gretsky said. “And it was one solo individual who purchased the firearms.”

Wonder how much he wants for them.

Police said the delivery to Chester High School was a mistake on the part of FedEx, but parents say it couldn’t come at a worse time – when schools are laser-focused on keeping children safe as they’re getting ready to return to class.

Yeah, lighten up, Francis. The shipment never left the school’s loading dock and no one was endangered at any time.

“We take this matter very seriously and are cooperating fully with investigating authorities,” FedEx told NBC10.

Good to know.

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57 COMMENTS

    • Puts the lie to private corporations being better at their jobs than .gov. I would much rather use usps to ship than fedex.

      fedex has been clown shoes for a while now. Did they get woke?

      • I actually had something similar happen to me.

        The COVID panic hit, so I ordered a pair of stripped lowers for around 40 dollars each, and had them shipped to my local gun store. Now, when I ordered, they had just run out, but they said they would honor the sales price as soon as the next batch arrived.

        Cool.

        About 3 months later, my LGS calls and tells me they are in. Even cooler, the LGS owner only charged me 1 transfer for both lowers. Sweet! $12.50 transfer fee for each!

        Now, the Earth makes another lap around the sun.

        A little over a year later, my LGS calls *again* telling me my lowers arrived. Strange, I never ordered any lowers, I looked through my bank card records to find it, and came up blank. Not wishing to look a gift horse in the mouth, I picked those up as well without saying anything to anyone. This time, the owner charged me the usual 25 each for the transfer, but that was fine, as they were essentially free to me. 25 dollars each, out-the-door.

        And that’s how COVID got me 2 free AR-pattern stripped lowers.

        No where near as cool as a crate of M-1s, but still pretty damn cool in my book…

    • Truth.

      I’m on the Virginia coast and I had them ship my stuff from a sender in N. Carolina to a hub in Virginia Beach (a little over an hour from my house) to Penn., to the Baltimore area, then to West Virginia, back to Penn., then back to the Baltimore hub, then to a D.C. area hub, back to the Baltimore hub AGAIN, then finally to Salisbury MD, to be put on the delivery truck to get to me (I’m about halfway between there and Virginia Beach, so I get stuff from either depending on God knows what). It took almost two weeks to play this game of musical shipping hubs. I’ve had them do similar other times, but this one was the worst. I’ve gotten into the habit of begging sellers to use anything but FedEx.

  1. When I was in high school my principle, Mr. Johnson, would have only said, “Thank you!” Then we would have a few more rifles in the rifle racks. Remember those?

    • When i was in high school and if this would have showed up in shop class, you would have seen many magical disappearing acts. Now you see ’em, now you don’t.

    • We had real live M-1 Garands in our high school ROTC arms room. Ol’ Sarge would even give us the keys to issue them to the drill team UNSUPERVISED. The rifle team would grab our bolt-action .22LR rifles and a couple boxes of ammo to practice in our outdoor range, again UNSUPERVISED. How anyone survived all that I’ll never know.

  2. Without ammo and real live ‘clips’ I cant see they are a danger. I suppose you could poke someone in the eye and injure them.

  3. The average coconut yoot shooter of today would have no more idea how to load and fire a Garand (if that’s what they were) than they would have about how to lower the windows of a 1960’s muscle car.

  4. OMG!!! What a find! I mean it is historical gold.
    That should give them a jump start on their high school shooting team!!!
    I wonder what condition they are in overall?

    • Probably a bunch of CMP Rack Grades. Guys will buy a batch, strip them all down and try and match up parts etc. Then sell of what you don’t use, rinse repeat.

      • Drew,

        You are probably right. My brother used to do that. He’s had plenty of M1’s shipped to him.

        Back in 2005 you could buy them straight from the government in surplus for $10.00 each.

  5. You want to make schools safer? Give those rifles and ammo to a football coach and let him station some of his varsity players on the roof with them.

    Most of them are military age anyway.

    • “We take this matter very seriously and are cooperating fully with investigating authorities,” FedEx told NBC10.”

      BS….there is no “investigation”. The cops spent 10 minutes checking it out and found everything to be ok.

      Stop trying to make this sound like some major investigation, it isn’t.

  6. That’s just what the school needs. M1 carbines for the teachers/staff to protect the school with.

    There is a gun club (DCF&S) not too far from that school where they could get training and practice with the rifles.

  7. Maybe their color guard wanted to use real M1s rather than mock rifles for their show…

  8. “The M1s were addressed to an auto repair shop the next town over, intended for an avid gun collector.”

    So the real question is: Why did the school open the box? Isn’t that against the law?

    In fact, if you think about it, this isn’t really that much different than a FedEx truck stopping to drop off packages for a school while it also carries packages for other people that have guns in them. The problem did not exist until the school personnel OPENED someone ELSE’S package!

    • I listened to the video on the news page… get this: Nobody at the school even OPENED the boxes! FedEx figured out what had happened and came back to get the box.

      This is a TOTAL NON-EVENT.

      • Yeah, they hauled ass back to the school after the gun collector opened the box with algebra textbooks and said WTF?!

  9. I recently shipped a firearm to the manufacturer for repair through FedEx; within two days it arrived at their Indianapolis hub at which point it vanished, which FedEx acknowledge. I would not be shocked if it turns up at a random address.

  10. Mark my words: The gun-haters will use this an excuse to push for FedEx to either stop carrying guns altogether, or to significantly increase the cost to do so, by adding extra tracking services and security for them.

    Remember UPS just recently bailed out on shipping all guns and even gun PARTS.

    If they can eliminate all the commercial shippers, that’s a huge dent in the supply.

    • UPS did not do quite what you say: “UPS’s policy now clarifies that the company does not accept any firearms, frames or receivers, or partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional frames or receivers (as defined by the new federal regulation) unless those items have been identified and given a serial number in compliance with federal requirements”
      So their rules are only with respect to 80% kits
      There has been no change with respect to complete firearms or most parts.

      • I just received ammo from PSA via UPS with no problem.
        However, I am shipping a gun to S&W for repair and S&W uses FedX.
        Hope it makes it both ways.

      • “Their rules are only with respect to 80% kits”

        Or some older pre-1968 firearms that don’t have serial numbers, apparently.

  11. “parents say it couldn’t come at a worse time”

    OH throwing the BS card on that drivel. “parents” didn’t say diddly squat.

    • I don’t think the parents did either. No one actually opened the box and fed ex realized the mistake and came back for it.

  12. WELL LIKE YA’ALLS COMMENTS , ME TOO ; ON DROP THEM OFF AT MY HOUSE .
    ANYWAY MAYBE USE THEM FOR GUARD DUTY AROUND THE SCHOOL . ??

    • Ummm…OK. So a non-story. Driver screwed up or someone else. A M1 carbine is on my want list. It seems pretty handy for home defense(& likely won’t be banned!)

  13. What the hell happened to you, PA? Where opening day of deer season was a school holiday?

    Oh. I see on the map Chester is a geographic lump on the neck of Philadelphia. Carry on with your vapors and whinging.

  14. My question is…if the box was labeled for someone else…why even open it in the first place?
    Leave it sealed and have it delivered to the proper address.

  15. Thought these items had to be signed for, I bet they ripped the poor guys back ground like a 10 foot hole, even tho he did no wrong. Big news Pffft.

  16. Also maybe this is a new procedure to get Fed Ex to fall in line and not deliver fire arms , they hate even ammo delivered to your door. At least here in Crap County Ill, they’ve stopped delivery of that kind.

        • “Rifles that meet most of these criteria, but not all, are not assault rifles according to the U.S. Army’s definition. For example:

          “Select-fire M2 Carbines are not assault rifles; their effective range is only 180 metres (200 yd).” — Wikipedia

  17. This would be business as usual for FedEx. I won’t say that it is deliberate, but in my experience about half my regular FedEx shipments are misrouted at some point along the way, but within the last year or so every gun or ammunition shipment has been misrouted at least once along its way — which most of those mistakes being that the shipment was routed to or through the wrong city.

  18. “Police said the delivery to Chester High School was a mistake on the part of FedEx.”
    I’m not surprised.
    Two years ago, I sold a revolver for $1,000 and shipped it to the buyer’s FFL in Montana, USA.
    FedEx shipped it by mistake to Mexico (wrong nation!) where it was seized by Mexican customs. FedEx refused to pay the insurance claim or even reimburse my shipping cost.
    Why? Because I had followed the advice of my local gun store owner, who had told me to ship it by FedEx Express Saver. It turned out that FedEx policies require shipping handguns by Next Day Air (the most expensive way), so because I used Express Saver instead, FedEx refused to pay the insurance for their mistake, and I was out $1,000.

  19. Why would anybody, even an ‘AVID’ Collector, want six WW2 Garand Rifles.? And why would they need to go through a ‘dealer. ? Am I the only one who smells a very dead rat here?
    It’s this kind of thing that adds the fuel to the fire of those who wish to bring in tougher, much tougher, gun control legislation. Unless the gun -nuts of America soon start co-operating with those people I have absolutely no doubt at all that far more extreme measures will be put in place than are strictly messessary as soon as that political ‘tipping point’ is reached. And sooner or later it will be reached that’s for sure. Constitution or no constitution if enough people want it it will happen. The constitutio can be AMENDED and legal definitions can undergo differing interpretatiions and ‘the right to bear arms’ is no exception
    Those in all sections of the Civilian arms industry will, like those in so many other out moded industries that for one reason or another went the way of the Do-Do will have to find other emloyment.
    In my lifetime I have never been unemployed since the age of 16. In that time I’ve been in the Royal Air Force as an aircraft engineer Armourer and Smallarms Instructor , A farm worker , a Butcher, a Dairyman, a poultryman , a shop manager, a Civil,Servant, an Authorised Meat and Poultry Inspector and a Food Hygeinist. That’s at least six Re-Education/Re-Employment events

    • “Why would anybody, even an ‘AVID’ Collector, want six WW2 Garand Rifles.? And why would they need to go through a ‘dealer. ? Am I the only one who smells a very dead rat here?“

      Al, you’re missing the boat here.

      Of course a dealer would want six firearms, it’s called sales inventory.

      And wouldn’t you want mail order firearms to go through a dealer, rather than to just whoever private citizen?

      • Where’s the statement that the guns were sent to a dealer (article says the box was addressed to an auto repair shop) or were sent from one?

        Assuming facts not in evidence, or just lying again?

    • “Unless the gun -nuts of America soon start co-operating with those people… ”

      If only the British government had co-operated with the Nazi regime, many American lives wouldn’t have been wasted bailing out your sorry asses — again.

      “The constitutio [sic] can be AMENDED …”

      The fascist gun-control organizations can begin that process at any time. They haven’t.

      “That’s at least six Re-Education/Re-Employment events …”

      Al’s the British version of Walter Mitty.

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