Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
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Great information, Chico. Thanks for doing the leg work. I feel obliged to point out that existing in a storage depot is not the same as widely available for use. Nevertheless, given the number of modern firearms available, I think one could easily make a case for any given organization having access to at least some kind of modern rifle--provided one is willing to trace the path of the weapons from storage to the hands of the owners. The list above includes two million rifles and carbines. This is a lot of hardware, but we should bear in mind that before the nukes fly there are 290 million (give or take) Americans. Setting aside stocks of weapons not destroyed because the Cold War didn't end, the above list is sufficient to provide roughly one American in every 149 or 150 with a modern rifle. Even if these rifles were evenly distributed across the nation, somebody is going to have to go without. Halving the population as of early 2001 doesn't solve the problem because this stockpile of weapons are going to suffer from its own types of attrition. Still, given the sheer numbers of rifles involved, I'd buy off on any well-considered explanation for how a militia gets hold of 1,000 modern rifles after the Exchange.
By the way, the numbers involved make it a lot easier for someone to claim that rifles were set aside during the July-November period in 1997. This is how Fort Huachuca gets most of its hardware. Surely Huachuca isn't the only place in the country where materiel was sent in the event that the worst occurred.
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