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2. they use non-standard bullet diameters. since what little surplus there was is now long gone, reloading for the carcano is a must and getting your hands on .268 and .299 bullets is a huge PITAx10^989879879879879, I won't get a carcano. I don't know why the Italians thought they were so special that they didn't have to standardize but when everyone else was using .264s for their 6.5s, Italy went with .268, and when everyone else was using 307-311 for their 30 calibers, Italy instead went with .299, the only rifles in history to use those diameter bullets.
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That is an interesting issue. Obviously they did not have any concerns about the use of the rifle in civilian hands 70 years after a losing war and civilian shooter's difficulty of reloading for the thing. Troops were to be issued with military ammunition and nothing else. Italy is a nation state so they had to be thinking that they could make all their own ammunition, and I am certain, they probably did.
I expect someone sat down, looked at a ballistic chart, looked at a pressure curve chart, and came up with those goofy bullet sizes.
Our own 223 was developed, basically, by a bunch of guys at Bob Hutton's Ranch in CA. They took an existing round, necked it down, got the velocities they wanted, shot through a couple of watermelons and helmets, which was accepted as proof of lethality, and that round became US military standard.
Now, the US is trying to figure out how to shoe horn rounds that equal the 6.5 Carcano ballistically, into military M16's, because the basic 223 round makes a good poodle round, but not on the larger French poodles, as French poodles don't drop as fast as desired.