New Here, Need Assistance

Welcome to the forum.  Being new in '73 I suspect it is a commercial carbine.  If you haven't tried it, there's a section just on commercial carbines. Click on the carbine at the top of the page and it will take you to the reference site.  Pick Commercial on the left.  Or just use this link... http://www.m1carbinesinc.com/  Also try posting a pic or two.  That will help a lot.  Again, welcome!

All USGI receivers had a manufacture name and serial number on rear of receiver.
The replacement sights sometimes obscured the name. The serial numbers will tell which USGI prime contractor made the receiver.
The top banner will bring you to the main pages. On menu click serials to look up.

Some have suggested putting a piece of aluminum foil under the rear sight and drawing a piece of dental floss over it to get an impression of the marks.

Welcome to the forums

Hi Wingman and welcome to the forums from New Mexico!

I am anxious to see what you have. It does sound like you probably have a commercial carbine as it's more likely that Kmart would have dealt with a commercial manufacturer of new firearms rather than a supplier of used, surplus firearms.

If that's the case then the candidates are National Ordnance, Plainfield and Universal as they were the only commercial manufacturers that I know of who could have been selling to retail outlets at that time. All other known commercial manufacturers were either already out of business or had not started in 1973.

Does anyone else want to venture a guess?

I remember seeing a rack full of Military carbines with chrome plated bolts in Tipp City, Ohio about that same time (1970's.) I never looked close, was looking for a strait military Inland. With chrome bolts it was hard to tell what else was molested. I went home empty handed.