People joke about the Hi-Point carbine and buy it anyway. It is a skeleton-stocked, pistol-caliber semi-automatic built in Ohio, and it has been in production since the mid-1990s with very few changes to how it works. Hi-Point shared one review of its 10mm model under the headline "Ugly, Cheap & It Just Works", which is roughly how its owners describe it too. Guns & Ammo put it more carefully: low recoil, a common cartridge, and "more accurate than many would expect when shot using loads it likes."

Below are the model numbers, the specs behind them, the pistol magazines each carbine takes, and the variants that confuse listings. The Hi-Point Pistol Caliber Carbines tag carries the live listings.

How it works

Every Hi-Point carbine is a straight blowback. There is no locking mechanism and no gas system: the bolt is held closed by its own mass and a recoil spring, and the pressure of the cartridge pushes it back once the bullet has left. That only works with pistol cartridges, whose pressures are low enough for a heavy bolt to contain, and it is why these guns are simple and cheap to build. It is also why they are heavier than their size suggests.

The stock is a one-piece skeletonized polymer shell with an internal recoil buffer. The sights are a post front and a fully adjustable peep rear, standard on every model. The carbines lock open on the last round, have a manual thumb safety and accessory rails, and Hi-Point rates all of them for +P ammunition.