New M1 Garands?
So, CMP showed up at the Arizona Game & Fish Expo at the Ben Avery Shooting Facility last weekend, and they soft-launched CMP-made Garands, likely as a replacement for the dwindling number of USGI surplus Garands.
It makes sense as new barrels (Criterion) and stocks (DuPage) are readily available, and CMP uses them already to rebuild shot-out rifles for sale through the program. New (old stock) bolts, triggers, and op-rods and other internals are still around from the 1950s, in the plastic, so all that was needed was a new receiver as a base for the mix of different new and surplus components, akin to what Plainfield and Universal did with M1 Carbines in the 1960s-1970s.
The receivers are apparently being forged and machined by Heritage Arms in Colorado, a parts maker with a good reputation, so we’ll see.