Over the weekend of July 25–26, 2026, the Civilian Marksmanship Program announced that it will sell surplus M14 battle rifles to the American public, modified before sale to be permanently and irreversibly semi-automatic. The story broke first among gun enthusiasts and collectors, and on its face it is a niche procurement announcement. It is not. It lands squarely inside the record the Supreme Court will consider in two consolidated cases, Viramontes v. Cook County, Illinois, No. 25-238, and Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566, which will decide whether the Second Amendment protects semi-automatic rifles, including the AR-15 platform, against bans by states, localities, and the federal government. The federal government, through its own conduct, has just supplied the strongest kind of evidence for our side: proof that it treats a converted-to-semi-automatic-only battle rifle as ordinary enough to hand over the counter to civilians.
What the CMP Actually Announced
The CMP’s statement is precise, and worth reading in full:
“By special authorization, the CMP is pleased to announce the future availability and sale of surplus M14 rifles. Prior to sale, the rifles will be modified to be permanently and irreversibly semi-automatic rifles. The modified semi-automatic M14s will be fully compliant with the CMP enabling legislation authorizing the transfer and sale of military surplus .30-caliber rifles.”
The M14 was officially adopted as the U.S. Army’s service rifle in 1957. It is chambered in 7.62mm and descends from the M1 Garand’s basic operating system, developed at Springfield Armory — John C. Garand himself designed the M1 Garand, not the M14, though the CMP’s own materials frame the M14 as part of that lineage. Roughly 1.38 million were manufactured between 1959 and 1964. Before conversion, it was a genuine select-fire weapon, capable of both semi-automatic and fully automatic fire, and it was succeeded in front-line U.S. service in the mid-to-late 1960s by the M16. The CMP, which requires Army and ATF sign-off to do this, anticipates first-order fulfillment in the late-2026-to-early-2027 window.
Why a Rifle Sale Moves the Needle
Viramontes and Grant present a single question at their core: are semi-automatic rifles “Arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment, protected under Heller’s common-use framework, District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)? Common use turns on how ordinary and widespread a weapon is among law-abiding citizens. Tens of millions of semi-automatic rifles are already lawfully owned in this country. No federal statute currently bans or meaningfully restricts them, and the one that once did, the 1994 federal Assault Weapons Ban, expired by its own terms in 2004. By my own count, restrictions at the state level exist in only about a dozen outlier jurisdictions. Against that backdrop, a federally chartered program converting a former U.S. Army battle rifle into a semi-automatic-only civilian arm and marketing it for lawful purchase is not incidental. It is the government itself certifying, through its own regulatory conduct, that a semi-automatic rifle sits comfortably within ordinary civilian use.
The “Not a Weapon of War” Argument
Heller carved out weapons “most useful in military service … M-16 rifles and the like” from Second Amendment protection. The Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc in Kolbe v. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114 (4th Cir. 2017), read that phrase to sweep in semi-automatic rifles resembling the M16, upholding Maryland’s ban. That “M-16 and the like” test is precisely what an amicus brief challenged before the Seventh Circuit in Barnett v. Raoul, Nos. 24-3060 & 24-3063 (7th Cir. July 9, 2026). Campbell Law School professor E. Gregory Wallace, filing on behalf of law-enforcement organizations in support of the Second Amendment challengers, argued that the military’s rejection of the AR-15 for lacking automatic-fire capability cuts against, not for, treating it as a military-style arm under Kolbe’s test — a semi-automatic-only rifle simply is not the specialized, select-fire weapon Heller meant to exclude. The Seventh Circuit panel, Judge Amy J. St. Eve writing, Judge Frank H. Easterbrook joining, and Chief Judge Michael B. Brennan dissenting, upheld Illinois’s ban 2-1 anyway. But the CMP’s own decision to strip select-fire capability from the M14 before selling it to civilians independently confirms Wallace’s distinction: what the military keeps is fully automatic and select-fire; what gets handed to the public is semi-automatic only. That is not a resemblance to a military weapon. It is the opposite.
History Backs the Same Conclusion
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), recounts how, after the Civil War, freedmen were sent home with their military-issue weapons to defend themselves and their schools against Klan violence — a founding-adjacent tradition of civilians possessing arms that trace directly to military service. Long guns generally, from fowling pieces and Brown Bess muskets to the Kentucky long rifle and the repeating Girardoni air rifle, were the common civilian arms of the founding generation. The CMP’s M14 program fits that same long American practice of surplus military arms passing into civilian hands for lawful purposes.
None of this means pressing for protection of fully automatic weapons; that fight is not winnable at the Supreme Court right now, and conflating it with the semi-automatic rifle cases would only hurt us. The CMP’s M14 sale is a narrower point, but a real one, and I expect it will find its way, favorably, into the briefing and quite possibly the opinion I anticipate the Court issuing by the close of its next Term.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.