Ugh…zombie dreams last night. Well, sorta zombie dreams. The simplistic zombie movies or shows always have the humans versus the zombies but, realistically, the real danger is from the other humans. This dream sorta followed that line of reasoning.

I dreamt (Dreamed? Dreamt?) I was with a small group of people and we we’re scavenging though abandoned houses. At one point we were in a house and, looking out the window, we could see some rather unsavory types heading towards us. I had a bolt action rifle that took way too long on follow up shots, switched to an M4 which was handy but ran out of ammo, and then finally was down to what appeared to be a Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 with a red dot on it…but only three 7-rd magazines.

Interestingly, in this dream anyway, the pistol caliber carbine with the red dot was the fastest handling gun for the shooting-down-the-hallway-at-bad-guys distances. While the M4 would be almost equally handy, its open sights were slower to utilize than the red dot.

But…it was just a dream. Real world experiences might be different.

But it did make me think about the old Marlin Camp Carbines. The .45 version, which has never suffered from a lack of demand, was a really odd gun. Not accurate enough to be a varmint gun, not high-capacity enough to be a real defensive gun, not cheap enough to be a plinking gun, not powerful enough to be a hunting gun, it was…odd. But…everyone wanted one because it seemed awesome to have a carbine that you could swap mags with your 1911. And that notion is still around today, although you see it far more with Glock pistols than 1911s.

Marlin also offered the gun in 9mm taking S&W mags, but the .45 version was the hands down favorite. The guns were notorious for eating up their recoil buffers and destroying the rather nice stocks that came with the gun. (Straight blowback isn’t always pretty.) Marlin discontinued them in the late 90’s and their prices on the used market have soared.

The Marlin weighed 6.75 pounds ( thats about three kilograms for those of you in countries that never put a man on the moon) which is pretty much what an M4gery weighs. So for the same weight, why wouldn’t you carry the more powerful chambering?

For me, it’s logistics. Same ammo, same mags…that streamlines things tremendously. I wouldn’t want to drop into Iraq with a 9mm carbine, but if I had to beat feet through Katrinville with just what I could carry on my back…different story. Id rather have an AK or AR, but if what I can carry in my pack is all I have available…well, its nice that my pistol and carbine can use the same mags and ammo.

Naturally someone will ask “Then why not an AR pistol and an AR carbine? Same mags and ammo!” Because when I have to be discreet I can tuck the Glock into my back pocket or under my shirt and smile nicely at the giuys manning the roadblock…nothing to see here. Thats alot harder to do with a an AR pistol hanging from a single point sling swinging around under your jacket.

I miss the Marlin Camp Carbines a bit. No one has really come out with a 1911-magazine compatible carbine since then. (Yeah, there’s that MechTech thingy that lets you use your 1911 frame to make a carbine….not the same thing.) It’d be nice if Ruger would do something along those lines but I suspect the money would be in making their PC Carbine/Charger in .45 but taking Glock .45 mags.

The last Marlin Camp Carbine I came across was $200 and that was about twenty some-odd years ago. Lucky. Nowadays they go well north of $1000. If you break some parts, good luck. Replacement recoil buffers are available aftermarket, but thats about it for spare parts. Ruger has absolutely no incentive to dust off the tooling, if it still exists, and bring these things back but it sure would be cool if they did.