Included in the NDAA was an amendment I offered that would allow the Army to release excess 1911 pistols from storage and transfer them to the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) for them to inspect, grade, prepare for sale and sell the pistols to the public.
Now if we could just get an exception to the “once a machine gun, always a machine gun” rule and allow semi-auto converted surplus M14s to be sold through CMP.
So I thought this already passed under Obama. What killed that?
It did pass under Obama, but his Sec of Army never authorized the transfer.
Just thinking out loud, because I haven’t followed the M-14 issue closely, but since the receiver defines the firearm, could there be some level of “re-manufacture” of the receivers, accompanied by re-serial-numbering, that would define them as “new” and thus “never a machine gun?”
Still thinking out loud, could someone manufacture good quality new (investment cast?) receivers economically, while the government stripped down the rifles to a bundle of everything-but-the-receiver?
Just in the spirit of oral history: I had a contraband selector for my M-14 while in the Army, but since we never had any live ammunition, I never got to try it with anything but blanks. I’m pretty sure the M-14 would have been close to useless, on rock’n’roll.
The earlier commercial M14 style rifles were new made receivers with a various amounts of surplus parts. With the reissue of the M14 in the wars the Army has pretty much run out of parts and has had to order them from the commercial market.
I remember that an outfit (Smith Arms, or Smith-something, anyway) used to do a lot of good and affordable work with M-14s and M-14 clones, but with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, stated that they were largely leaving the civilian market to fulfill military contracts.
In any case, by what you say, it would seem the possibility of CMP M-14s has ceased to be an issue.
The M14 wasn’t “useless” on rock and roll, but it was hard to control and took a lot of practice to master.
Shooting it prone on FA was probably the best option.
As usual the attempt to make one weapon cover every base –
change the M1 Garand into a 20 round weapon,
replace the BAR (and Carbine) for Full Auto.
It didn’t work then (make one weapon do all), just like it doesn’t work now –
The M16/M4 (whatever) doesn’t “do all” either.
But 20 .308 rds downrange on FA is impressive. It is a true battle rifle, but probably not the FA solution needed then or now.
“replace the BAR (and Carbine) for Full Auto.”
I never met a soldier from a generation (or even, decade) before my time who didn’t love the BAR — though I understand it had faults of its own. But given that the consensus was to love it, I always thought that simply converting them to the NATO round would have been a practical solution. (For an analogy, a friend had a [legal] 1919 Browning that had been converted to 7.62 by the Israelis.)
I haven’t studied the history but I have the impression the M-2 Carbine was never widely issued — so I don’t think it exactly needed to be “replaced.” I had an early M-1 Carbine (“liberated” early in WWII) and liked it, for the reasons most soldiers liked it — it was light and convenient — but I understand that in formal military studies, they never found anyone who could attest to actually making a kill with the .30 Carbine round, at a range over 50 yards. In Korea, enemy winter overcoats had often been found to be effective body armor against the Carbine round.
I threw in the carbine just to make mention of it. the point being that the M14 was meant to replace all the long guns carried by the troops with one rifle that “did it all”.
The carbine is a nice little weapon, but it is not a battle rifle (nor is the Ma16/4).
I think it is obvious that one weapon can’t do it all and so there needs to be several weapons in a squad/unit to cover all bases.
I agree, change the BAR to .308, replace the M1 with the M14, and replace the Carbine with the M16/4.
Awesome post thank you for sharing
I’m not sure there are that many M14s left. They didn’t build huge numbers and they have been using them as marksmen rifles for a long time.
But it would be good if we could get something out of a GOP senate, house and president.
“They didn’t build huge numbers and they have been using them as marksmen rifles for a long time.”
I suppose we could look up what number that was, but to my recall, they were manufactured and issued from 1957 to c. 1965. That had to be a lot as it was the “issue” rifle for all of those years. The Battle of Ia Drang Valley in November 1965 was fought using M-14s.
Just for historical perspective, when I got to Germany in 1966, my maintenance battalion had only recently been issued M-14s; before that they had been armed with M-1 Carbines. I never saw an M-16 the entire time I was in the service, except for one that I saw leaning against an Air Force M-151 (Jeep) parked near the U.S. military post office; the Air Force I believe was the first service to adopt the M-16. Vietnam of course was a different story.
“I suppose we could look up what number that was…”
I did.
1,376,031 M14 service rifles were produced from 1959 to 1964.
“The Battle of Ia Drang Valley in November 1965 was fought using M-14s.”
[citation needed]
Ryan and McConnell can’t even repeal Obamacare. My expectations for the Trump presidency are now nonexistent.
What would pique my interest would be if he tried to address any firearms issue at all via EO; given that he has no reservations about attempting almost anything via EO.
But I never did have any pro-gun expectations for Trumpakov’s administration. You’ve already heard my rap about how for most of his crowd, guns are just a decoy to win political support for the issues they really care about. But I can’t say it too often, because gun rights advocates mostly refuse to learn.
They should also allow these to be shipped directly like rifles, and subvert state handgun silliness.
Places like CA would undoubtedly prosecute recipients. If you are going to do this, you would also have to threaten prosecutions of state officials for denying civil rights under color of law.
For me they would be C&R. I know the CMP is the only FFL that has special permission to do NICS checks and ship firearms interstate directly to the buyer. Not sure how that would apply to handguns but certain states with rifles and the CMP require the guns to go to dealers in those states. Handguns would likely follow the same process in states that have beyond cash-and-carry handgun purchase requirements for non-licensees.
Maybe we should fix that.
I get the history of these, but do people really need another sloppy 1911 as much as they need the right to keep and bear it?
An excellent point. Too often we confuse (politically) gun issues, with gun rights issues, with issues (e.g.,”getting tough on crime,” “mandatory sentencing”) that have nothing to do with guns at all.
We should be cautious of those who seek to misdirect us in those ways (cough-cough-CrimeStrike-Exile)
I’m having a hard time getting jazzed about surplus 1911s.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get the congress to pass something that actually effects many gun owners, like concealed carry reciprocity?
“I’m having a hard time getting jazzed about surplus 1911s.”
Don’t it always seem to go,
that you don’t know what ya got ’til it’s gone…?”
;-)
How about Constitution Carry reciprocity? Wait, we already have that — the 2nd Amendment.
Just because something is law doesn’t mean the criminal politicians won’t ignore it…
“Just because something is law doesn’t mean the criminal politicians won’t ignore it…”
I have written here before, recently, that “Law is only eyewash for the masses.”
I arrived at that epiphany by experience, and have recently been resurrecting that aphorism.
An earlier corollary was “The constitution means what the cop on the beat says it means.”
Did you see the news in the past couple days where the cops were caught on their own body cams, planting evidence?
If the GOP wanted to pretend to be pro-gun more convincingly, they would pass suppressor deregulation. Where did that go?!?!