Читать книгу Guns Illustrated 2011 - Dan Shideler - Страница 10

The Enforcer BY DAN SHIDELER

Every now and then a gun is introduced for no good reason at all. Perhaps the best example of this is the 4.25mm Liliput semi-auto pistol made by August Menz in the 1920s. Barely larger than a box of matches, the Liliput served absolutely no useful purpose, except perhaps to show what could be accomplished if you had enough time on your hands.

But their total lack of usefulness hasn’t kept some guns from becoming valuable collector’s items. Although the Liliput is now a high-dollar collectible, other good-for-nothin’ guns are still on the affordable side, at least for now. My favorite oddity of this sort is the Enforcer pistol. The Enforcer, derived from the M1 carbine, simply defies classification. It’s not a C&R. It’s not a modern re-creation. It’s not a sporting arm. It’s not a target gun. It’s not a self-defense gun.

In fact, it’s nothing more than a fun gun. And, by crackey, that’s good enough for me!

The story of the Enforcer starts with the original United States Carbine, Caliber .30, M1. Of course, everyone knows – especially if they’ve seen the 1952 movie Carbine Williams starring Jimmy Stewart – that a convicted murderer named Marsh Williams invented the M1 after his release from prison. Everyone knows it; the problem is, it’s not true.

Actually, Williams did invent the short-stroke gas piston that made the M1 carbine possible but that’s about it. The M1 was mostly the work of Winchester’s William Roemer and Fred Humeston, who took a mere 13 days in the spring of 1941 to bang together a prototype. All in all, around six million M1 carbines and their variants were produced between June of 1942 and August of 1945, when the big balloon went up over Hiroshima.

It’s important to know who actually designed the M1 carbine, because that way you know precisely whose name to cuss. Probably no other US military Rifle has been the target of such hostility as the M1 carbine. This isn’t because the gun itself is lousy, because it isn’t. It’s because of the .30 Carbine cartridge, which is generally considered to be one step up from a Wham-O Rubber Band Gun in terms of stopping power. As a rifle cartridge, the .30 Carbine is indeeed puny, but by handgun standards it ain’t half-bad. After all, the carbine was designed to replace the 1911A1 pistol among certain troops, and the slender little .30 Carbine has more than twice the muzzle energy of the big fat .45 ACP. All things considered, I’d rather be missed by a .30 Carbine bullet than hit by one. It’s no .30-06, but it wasn’t designed to be.

After the Korean War ended, zillions of M1 carbines fl ooded the surplus market. Even more were made from spare parts, Plainfi eld and Universal being the major producers of these built-up M1s. Somewhere along the line, Universal decided to “improve” the M1’s design by incorporating two recoil springs into the action in place of the original’s single spring. This ill-advised modifi cation, and the other changes that it necessitated, left the Universal M1 clones as strange, chromosomally-damaged copies of the original. Most internal parts weren’t even interchangeable with those of the real M1s. To make matters, the modifi ca-tions gave the Universal carbines a toxic reputation as jammers.

So, Mr. Bones, how do you market a turkey? Well, Mr. Jones, you make a pistol out of it. At least that’s what Universal did to some of their carbine wanna-bes. They whacked off their buttstocks and replaced them with shapeless little pistol grips. Then they cut the barrels back to 9-1/2 or 11-1/4 inches and did away with unnecessary frills like bolt hold-opens. Thus was born the Enforcer, a pistol like no other before or since.

Production of the Enforcer apparently began around 1972, more or less simultaneously by Plainfield and Universal. Some of the early models used US mil-spec parts. Some Enforcers even used the single recoil spring of the genuine M1 carbine and milled, not stamped, operating rods. This may be why some Enforcers fire and cycle as well as any M1 ever built, while others jam so consistently that they’re basically bolt-operated manual repeaters.

Reliability aside, there’s no doubt that the Enforcer looked intimidating. And so it was, considering its 15- and 30-round magazines. In the parlance of the ‘60s and ‘70s (and I should know), it was wicked, pronounced “wickkk-id!” I’ve had two Enforcers, one Plainfield and one Universal, and they certainly attracted attention wherever they went. I never took them to Maryland, California or Canada, which is probably just as well since they’re illegal there and probably in a hundred other places, too.

There’s quite a debate in certain circles about who made the best Enforcer: Universal, Plainfi eld, or Iver Johnson. The question is muddled because, although the three makers started out as separate companies, Iver Johnson eventually gobbled up both its competitors (Plainfi eld in 1975, Universal in 1983). General consensus holds that the Plainfield version was the best, followed closely by Iver Johnson with Universal coming in a very distant third. Aside from cosmetics (e.g., the shape of the pistol grip and a metal-vs.-wood handguard), they’re pretty much the same thing, with quality ranging from purty durn good to unspeakably rotten. The last of the Enforcers left the Iver Johnson factory in 1986.

Wickkk-id! A late-production Universal Enforcer, complete with 11.25-inch barrel and wood handguard.

Plainfi eld’s version was known variously as the Enforcer and the Super Enforcer. No, I don’t know what the difference was, if there was a difference at all. Universal called its Enforcer the Model 3000 and offered it in blued, nickel-plated, and gold-plated versions. Gold-plating an Enforcer is like putting a crystal doorknob on an outhouse, but the effect must have been eye-catching to say the very least.

If you have an Enforcer stashed away somewhere, you might consider cashing it in for a handful of Ben Franklins. Five or so years ago you could find a decent Enforcer for about $250 (and if you look diligently in the right places, you still can). Today, an excellent Enforcer can run as high as $500 or even more. I have heard reports of a mint Plainfield Super Enforcer selling for $950 at auction. If true, this is a fluke of monstrous proportions.

My only explanation for the renewed interest in the Enforcer is that the kids who could only drool over them back in the ‘70s are now in a position to buy them. Thus demand creates value. I can’t predict where the Enforcer will top out in terms of value, but I can tell you that mine’s not for sale. It’s wickkk-id!