[chico20854]

In the 1990s, the US Government destroyed or otherwise disposed of the following small arms:

400,000 M1 Rifles
125,000 M2 Carbines
575,000 M14 Rifles
650,000 M16 Rifles
115,000 M4 Carbines
75,000 M1903 Rifles
100,000 M1911 Pistols
62,000 Browning Automatic Rifles
35,000 M3 Submachineguns
14,000 M177 Carbines
12,000 M2 Machine Guns
21,000 M1919 Machine Guns

This was the result of the post-Cold War drawdown, in which a policy decision was made to reduce the military small arms stockpile from "3 weapons for every member of the military" to "2 weapons for every member of the military". Such was the Cold War determination to avoid a repeat of the situation in 1940, when many US Army units went on exercises with broomsticks rather than rifles.

Given the rather modest increase in the size of the US military in the v1 1996 and 1997 and the very real spectre of nuclear war hanging over the heads of government authorities for almost a year before it actually happened, it is likely that a great number of these weapons (and hundreds of thousands of their civilian equivalents) were distributed to state guards, law enforcement bodies and FEMA stockpiles like the one detailed in Allegheny Uprising, along with attendant ammo stockpiles (last year the last of the US Army 30-06 ammo for Garands was sold off).

There should be plenty of relatively modern military small arms available for militia units. The issue in 2000-01 is going to be the ammo supply and, if for some reason the militia wasn't founded in 1997 or 1998, finding and standardizing on a few weapons types.

IMHO.