In about six months, you’ll be about to buy an M14 through the Civilian Marksmanship Program. You fill out a few forms online, take a course (this requirement can be satisfied by having taken any state-level concealed carry or hunter’s ed course), mail in a check, and a few weeks later, the CMP will mail an M14 (converted to semi-auto) directly to your house.
How does that work?
In 1903, Congress was busy about the militia. The US was four years out of the Spanish-American War, America’s first major overseas war, and the government realized that if it wanted to field a worldwide military, it would need to level up its logistics and mobilization. In 1903, Congress created the modern National Guard structure, and it also authorized the War Department to set up the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice. The animating spirit behind that is captured in a 1903 report by Rep. Butler Ames, a member of the House Committee on the Militia (PDF):
The inception of the national board for the promotion of rifle practice and the idea of a national trophy and other prizes had its origin in the minds of some of our most distinguished rifle shots, who, with the honorable the Secretary of War, hoped thereby to awaken the interest of the civilian element of the country to the vital importance of some instruction in rifle practice. It is contemplated that this board will make general recommendations relative to rifle shooting between the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, National Guard, and civilian rifle clubs in various parts of the country; that it will endeavor to harmonize the practice of the National Guard with the Regular Army; that it will aid in making mutually beneficial the contemplated competitions between the Regular Army and the National Guard, and that it will stimulate the formation of civilian rifle clubs, and thus aid arresting the decadence of general shooting throughout the United States.
The following is an extract from the report of the Secretary of War on this subject:
Formerly, when our population was scattered and game abundant in all parts of the country, every house had its rifle or its shotgun and every boy learned to shoot them. Now it is probable that a majority of the young men in the thickly settled parts of the country have never fired a gun and would be quite harmless to an enemy until taught to shoot. The time to give that instruction is now.
The NBPRP started setting up rifle instruction and competitions, and selling some Army guns to the general public. In 1916, Director of Civilian Marksmanship became a new position overseeing the NBPRP.
The program ran like that for 80 years, and it was small but untouchable. In the same Gun Control Act of 1968 whose central focus was banning mail-order firearm sales, Congress specifically exempted the NBPRP, allowing the program to keep sending guns directly to buyers.
In May 1990, the Government Accountability Office, the government’s internal auditor, released a report titled “Military Preparedness: Army’s Civilian Marksmanship Program is of Limited Value”. The title says it all. The Army was spending $4.3 million annually on an Age of Steam program to sell (as of 1989) 6000 M1 Garands and about 1.6 million rounds of ammo. That’s the first thing you’re going to cut if you’re looking to streamline the Army. It was politically impossible to end the program altogether, but they wanted it off of the Army’s books.
So a streamlined six years later, in 1996, Congress privatized the program. It created the Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice and Firearms Safety, Inc., a private nonprofit organization colloquially known as the Civilian Marksmanship Program. It added a carveout to the Gun Control Act to allow the CMP to continue mailing guns to customers, a power no other private organization has. And it directed the military to continue to transfer old surplus guns to the CMP.
There are a few ongoing quirks:
You may recall that a few years ago, the CMP started selling 1911 pistols. That was specifically authorized by Congress in 2015. Previously, the law had only allowed the CMP to sell “caliber .22 rimfire and caliber .30 rifles”.
For 1911s, the CMP is not exempt from the ban on mail-order guns. You have to go to an FFL to pick up your CMP 1911.
In almost all cases, the ATF maintains that if a gun was once a machine gun, it is always a machine gun. The M14s that are going to be sold through the CMP were machine guns, but the CMP is modifying them to semi-auto only, and the ATF has been persuaded to let it slide in this case. Senator Cynthia Lummis appears to have worked behind the scenes to make that happen.
The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act added surplus pump-action shotguns to the list of guns the CMP can sell.
The guns are technically still owned by the military until the moment before the buyer receives them. So legally, the CMP is a government-authorized drop shipper of surplus guns.
The CMP is still the best way to buy an M1 Garand, and soon it’ll be the best way to buy an M14. Check them out.
This week’s links
Breakdown of the federal district court ruling striking down the NFA for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and AOWs
Good breakdown of the situation from T.Rex Arms.
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From their website: "ALL rifle shipments must be made to a Federal Licensed dealer. You must provide the FFL name and address on the request form. M1 Garand by CMP rifles will be shipped from CMP."
Maybe they *could* mail it to your house, but they won't.