What happens to previous military stockpiles once Brass chooses new standard issue

[TaxPhd]

Originally Posted by Dd714

The US government has several option - sell to other countries or sell to the civilian market or, because it's the military, just keep stored in some warehouse because they don't know what else to do with it. Many times our allies, usually 3rd world countries, get our slightly aged armament in weapons deals (it's not exclusive to the US, all countries with weapons stocks do this).

But the US government also has the quasi-US distributor called CMP (Civilian Marksmanship Program) to sell surplus military arms. I bought an M1 garand there several years ago. Now they are selling surplus .45's although they are hard to get. However I doubt he will see any modern weapons there, it would not be politically acceptable to put an m16, even modified to fire semi, on the marketplace...even with the .45's they were selling (at a very high cost almost limiting it to the collector market) they were extra careful with vetting it's purchases (in contrast, my M1 was shipped to my house). Up until a few years ago they were selling 19th century trapdoor rifles (all sold out regretfully).

So, they will find it to 3rd world countries or sit in a warehouse. Many of these 3rd world countries are corrupt or just lack proper security controls and thus, many of the cartels steal the weapons that they use from their countries armories, or buy them from the corrupt generals in these countries.

Not just unacceptable politically, but illegal (based on policy, not law).


BATF policy is "Once a machinegun, always a machinegun." Even if converted to semi-auto only, it will still be considered a machinegun, and no new machineguns can be added to the civilian registry. This has been challenged, but I'm not certain what the current state is of that challenge.