The Civilian Marksmanship Program, a federally chartered non-profit created to promote firearm training, announced that it received special authorization to sell more than 100,000 surplus M14 rifles.
Although Congress authorized CMP to sell surplus weapons — and has sold 1911 handguns and M1 Garands in the past — this is the first time it will sell the historic M14.
Jerry O’Keefe, CMP’s chairman and chief executive officer, explained that the challenge was that the rifles were originally serialized as fully automatic firearms.
Although civilians can legally own machine guns, federal law requires both buyers and sellers to adhere to strict regulatory policies.
“We’ve spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort thinking through every step in this process, working with our partners to get everybody in agreement,” O’Keefe said.
He explained that they worked closely with their federal partners and walked them “through every step in the conversion process” to show how they will make the M14s “permanently and irreversibly semi-automatic.”
The federal government created CMP in 1903 to promote marksmanship training among civilians, and in 1996, Congress privatized the organization and gave it authority to sell surplus military firearms.
According to a 2019 Government Accountability Office report, the Army has transferred more than 700,000 rifles and handguns to CMP, which has generated about $196.8 million in revenue from their sale.
While CMP initially announced that the M14s could be available as early as this year, O’Keefe clarified that the first sales will most likely occur in early 2027.
“We expected the demand for this to be extraordinary and frankly, the feedback on all the different forums and websites and YouTubes has even exceeded what we expected,” he said. “So we now know that we’re going to have to spend a few months building up a pretty large inventory of converted guns before we go to first sale.”
The M14 has a complicated military history but remains popular among firearms enthusiasts. Chambered in 7.62mm, it was developed from the M1 Garand and replaced the World War II-era rifle as the standard U.S. service rifle around 1957.
The M14 was intended to serve as an all-purpose infantry weapon. Its select-fire option was part of an effort to consolidate several weapons used by American troops into a single platform.
Ian McCollum, a firearms historian and host of the YouTube channel Forgotten Weapons, explained that the military wanted to combine the capabilities of the M1 carbine, M1 Garand, M3 Grease Gun and M1918A2 BAR into a single weapon.
That effort produced the M14 Infantry Rifle, as well as the M15 Light Machine Gun, which was essentially an M14 equipped with a bipod and pistol grip.
The M14, however, had a short service life. Springfield Armory — the historic military arsenal, not the current manufacturer that produces modernized M14s — designed the rifle but was not equipped for the kind of mass production the military ultimately demanded.
Once other manufacturers got involved, though, they made parts of inconsistent quality, which led to inconsistencies in the rifle’s overall performance.
The military ultimately bought about 1.38 million M14s before ending the program in 1964. The rifle entered combat during the Vietnam War, but its size and materials made it ill-suited for the dense jungle environment compared to the M16, which began replacing it in 1967.
“Tromping through a jungle, you are better off with something a little bit shorter than an M14, so ultimately, the M14 would end up being the U.S. service rifle with the shortest active service life of anything that the U.S. has ever issued,” McCollum said.
Many of the remaining M14s were subsequently destroyed, sold overseas or transferred to foreign militaries, according to McCollum. They also briefly made an appearance during the Global War on Terror. M14 variants were used in Afghanistan and Iraq, primarily as designated marksman and sniper rifles.
That makes CMP’s planned sale particularly notable for enthusiasts who have long viewed the M14 as an iconic American service rifle.
Brian C. Sheetz, the editor-in-chief of the American Rifleman, called it “one of the best general-purpose rifle choices for uncertain times” because it “offers a level of utility and capability — all in an understated package — not commonly encountered in many more modern firearms.”
When the surplus M14s finally go on sale, O’Keefe said they will cost around $2,000 apiece, and buyers should be able to purchase up to two rifles at a time.
Daniel Terrill is a contributor to Military Times. He’s been reporting on military issues, the gun industry, and the outdoors for nearly two decades. Although writing is his passion, he’s been a Marine, police officer, and, perhaps the most dangerous job of his career, a substitute teacher.
