If you've ever wondered why our government has trouble making ends meet...

... a lot of it has to do with political decisions made for stupid reasons, rather than sound economic decisions about the wise use of resources. I'm talking about the government's actions regarding the M14 rifle; specifically, the government has decided to destroy their stocks of this rifle rather than sell the rifles to collectors. Why is this outrageous?

The M14 rifles are fully-automatic, and the vast majority were manufactured before 1986. That makes them legal for civilian ownership, if the appropriate taxes are paid and approvals granted. Since machine guns manufactured after 1986 are no longer legal for civilian ownership, releasing the M14 rifles to civilians would increase the number of homeland defense rifles in civilian hands dramatically -- and they would bring a premium price to the government, because of the regulatory scarcity of fully-automatic weapons.
Even if converted to semi-auto (an operation which can be completed in under an hour by a relatively unskilled worker using existing parts), the government could still expect to receive between $400 and $650 per rifle on the civilian market.
If the rifles are destroyed, it will cost the government about half a million dollars.

So given a choice between a substantial profit from civilian sales, and paying a contractor to destroy the rifles, our current government has chosen to destroy the rifles. Seems silly, right? A lot of other people think so too, and there's a petition you can sign asking the government to offer the rifles for sale in the same manner as the M1 Garand rifle is offered. The sales would go through an existing program, so there's not a lot of overhead involved.

Hat tip to WeckUpToThees!

UPDATE: A commenter questions whether the ban on newly-manufactured machine guns for civilians would actually allow the full-auto versions of these rifles to be sold. While I agree that the current administration actually selling them without the semi-auto conversion is unlikely in the extreme, I think it would be legal. A few minutes of googling doesn't bring up the text of the Amendment, but does reveal the Thomas summary, which states: "An amendment to make it unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun except in the case of a machinegun that was lawfully possessed before the date of enactment."

Machineguns possessed by the military are still lawfully possessed even if not registered with the BATFE. So I think the case for registering them legally could be made with a straight face, even if the BATFE would inevitably laugh at it because of the politics involved.

But that all depends on the actual language of that particular law, not the summary. The petition linked to above is only requesting semi-auto versions be sold in any case.

UPDATE: Read the comments. Publicola thinks that it's not worth the effort and questions the facts, and Denise of The Ten Ring speaks authoritatively on the full-auto question. I will bow to superior knowledge of the CMP and the law, respectively.

Posted on 2005-08-19 09:40:01.0 by matthew@triggerfinger.org

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