We don’t typically talk a whole lot about airguns at Shooting News Weekly, but this is one I had to mention. For Father’s Day this year, my wife and kids snagged me a Crosman CFAM1, also known as a Crosman M1 carbine imitation that shoots standard 4.5mm BBs. Best yet is that it’s a select-fire BB gun. I didn’t know much about airguns, and I certainly didn’t know they make them in full-auto configurations.
Imagine my surprise when I read that on the box. The pedantic gun nerd in me thought they should have called it an M2 carbine, but I didn’t let that thought make it from my brain to my lips. I quickly cut through the tape holding it all together and opened my new treasure.
The Crosman M1 Carbine doesn’t havev the wood furniture of a original M1 carbine. Instead, it’s two plastic shells screwed around the receiver and barrel. It looks like wood, and it actually looks pretty nice and there’s some heft to the Crossman.
The design lacks a few notable M1 features. There’s no external magazine — or even a fake one — and no bayonet lug. I guess it’s ban-state friendly. The gun comes with plastic peep-style sights that mimic those on the M1 Carbine and the charging handle moves, but there is no real ejection port. Overall, it looks and feels nice. It’s not the same as a real M1 Carbine, but it’s impressive for a BB gun, especially one that costs about $120 dollars.
Loading up The Crosman M1 Carbine
This was one of those things I couldn’t, and didn’t want to wait to shoot. Luckily, they provided me everything I needed to go out to the range, which amounts to a box of 12-gram CO2 containers and a ton of BBs, but just looking at the thing doesn’t tell you how it works.
I pulled an anti-dad move by digging out the instructions to figuring it out. The magazine is under the handguard, and the opening allows you to dump BBs into the reservoir. The magazine is an internal type that sits within the reservoir. To load the magazine, you pull it forward and push it through the reservoir.
You might need to wiggle the gun and reservoir a little as it gets low on BBs. This moving magazine can hold up to 25 BBs, but it doesn’t always fill just right to get all 25 BBs in place. The reservoir holds 300 BBs and the fuller the reservoir, the more likely the magazine is to fill completely when used correctly.
The CO2 canisters that power the gun go into the stock. The buttplate tilts upward and reveals an Allen key and matching slot. With a twist, you remove a plug to reveal the slot where the CO2 canisters stack. You’re pressing two cylinders into the gun. The first CO2 cylinder drops in headfirst. The second canister does the opposite, and the two rear ends stack onto each other.
Replace the plug, use the Allen key to tighten things down, and you’re ready to go. You need to rack the charging handle to get things started. With my new BB gun loaded and ready to go, I went to my yard with my boys and started lighting it up.
Shooting the Crosman M1 BB Gun
The selector switch is located on the trigger guard, just like an M1 Carbine. It has safe, semi, and auto positions. I started off in semi-auto to get a feel for the gun. The switch rotates with ease, but there isn’t a real tactile feel when it moves positions. You kind of just have to know it’s where you want it.
The trigger pull is long and a little heavy. When it finally fires, the CO2 generates a nice pop and even some recoil as it sends the BB racing at a little over 400 feet per second. When you get used to the trigger, the Crosman M1 can be fired extremely quickly, and it delivers a very satisfying semi-auto action. The gun can be fired quickly and won’t move off a soda-can-sized target at 20-ish yards.
The semi-auto action gets you a few hundred rounds before any noticeable decrease in velocity from reduced CO2 pressure. I lost count, but at least 200 rounds were fired in semi-auto before we noticed the rounds started to drop a lot faster.
I swapped cannisters, reloaded, and my boys and I flipped the switch to full auto. That’s a blast. It fires extremely fast. It’s tough to fire short bursts of three to four rounds. This thing just emits a a stream of BBs. The Crosman M1 Carbine is an absolute blast to shoot on full-auto. I have two sons, aged 13 and seven, and they both had no problems controlling the BB gun on full auto.
My younger son had to “chicken wing” the gun and use two fingers to pull the trigger. He also doesn’t understand the idea of a short, controlled burst, but the grin on his face told me everything I needed to know. In full auto, the cylinders seemed to last 150-ish rounds before velocity reduces significantly.
One Awesome BB Gun
This isn’t a competition-grade airgun so you shouldn’t expect that level of accuracy. But at 20 yards, you can make a soda can dance and hit the zombie on the zombie target. It’s a lot of fun to do that in full-auto. The sights work well and put the BBs roughly in the peep’s sight zone.
If I haven’t made it clear, the Crosman M1 Carbine is just a ton of fun, and it’s cheap fun. I expect my berm will be full of BBs sooner rather than later. The kids love it as much as I do, and it’s fun and quiet for the whole family. While eye pro is needed, ear pro is not. Plus, I don’t need to go to my range to shoot it. I can sit in the backyard and turn Chek strawberry soda cans into water strainers.
I’m eyeing a full-auto BB pistol next because I have a machine pistol need that can’t be legally satisfied. I’m impressed by the Crosman M1 Carbine, and it scores an 11 out of 10 on the fun factor scale.
I’m glad that you discovered the fun in having one of these. I have the DPMS version, super fun to shoot. Unless the laws change meaningfully, it’s the closest thing to a select fire SBR that I’ll ever own.
Pcps are crazy good now but you have to buy the special air compressor. You can hunt with them. And buy suppressors.
or one thousand pumps with the fancy takes forever. you can run a scuba tank adapter that fits the cartridge, need dive shop, maybe welding supply to fill tank.
the .30 caliber and up stuff going well over 1000fps is amazing.
My wife gave me a Crosman M1 last Christmas. I made her drive me to Walmart in September when I saw they had one and bought it and asked her to give it to me for Christmas. We have been together for over 40 years, and it is by far the best gift she ever got me. I love the sights. Its accurate and delivers hit after hit on a given target. While the full auto feature is the draw, I can testify that it is a great semi-auto BB Gun.
I probably should have shot the thing in September because it had a defect. One that I did not notice for a few weeks. The CO2 cap does not pierce the second cartridge, so it ends up using only one at a time. I get about half the shots that you get and that works out pretty well for me as I was complaining initially that it needed two cartridges to work. With just one cartridge, the full auto works flawlessly, and I get about 90 rounds out of it. After the first cartridge is depleted, I flip them around and shoot through the other one. It turns out that is a hack to save on CO2 for this gun.
Shooting The Crosman M1 in full auto makes you smile every time and holding this carbine in your hands feels so familiar. I was so pleased to see this article on Instapundit. Thank you so much.
I had a full auto M1 “Annihilator” back in the 70s. It was powered by a can of freon rather than CO2. BBs didn’t come out very fast. Less than 400 fps if I had to guess. I had a CO2 pistol which was good for 450 fps and it struck harder than the auto. 400 fps is rather slow for an air gun. It would need at least 3 times that velocity to be reliable and competing with BBs rather than pellets is partly luck. Full auto BB guns can be fun but you need to manage expectations.
Gosh, I’ve always wanted a carbine. The idea of getting close appeals, and CO2/BB’s are rather less than real ammo.
Full auto? In the backyard?? $120??? Yee haw. I gots to go see one…
I’ve been trying to decide which select fire BB gun to get now for years. There are so many. Long guns and hand guns. Thanks for the review.
“We don’t typically talk a whole lot about airguns at Shooting News Weekly…”
and that, quite simply, is a damn shame.
it ain’t called powder burning news weekly.
i have yet to run out of large pellet primers.
can recommend the drozd (bumblebee) as solidly built. there’s a few on eeebey- their getting kind of spendy though. you can set them for semi, 3 rd burst and full. and the latter two have variable burst rates. striking fear into the hearts of chipgophers everywhere.
pyramid (and others) list half a dozen full auto pistols, i’d prolly go for the broomhandle mauser. way cheeper than the russian thing.
I bought one and it is a proven squirell deterent. We were feeding the spring song birds and inevitably the fluffy rats with bush tails showed up to try and eat everthing we put out. A couple of quick bursts and they tended to change their eating habits. The BBs at the velocity do not kill but they must bruise and scare the heck out of them. The carbine should obviously be put on paper firts with single shot and theh bursts. Will be surprised at its accuracy with a smooth bore.