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Under the 1986 amendment to the '68 GCA, the M-14 can't be sold to civilians because any full auto firearm not registered under NFA rules before that date can't be registered. But it is moronic for the gubbermint to scrap perfectly good parts that could be sold to gun manufacturers to offset some of the original cost of the rifles. There are large gun parts dealers who would buy the barrels and stocks, and probably many of the small parts that are not part of the recievers. Since the M-14 is basically just a modified M1, I'm pretty sure many of the parts could be used as replacement parts for the many tens of thousands of surplus M1s that were sold through the CMP.

The recievers are considered to be firearms so they couldn't be sold on the civilian market. But it still seems stupid to me to destroy finely machined recievers that could still be valuable to someone, or possibly sold on the international military arms market. Typical gubbermint mismanagement and waste of tax money.

I once worked with a WWII vet who was stationed at an airfield in China when the war ended. His unit was ordered to destroy any and all weapons on the base rather than fly them out. He said he almost cried watching crates of brand new .45 pistols and MI carbines dumped on concrete runways where they were run over and mangled by a bulldozer. They broke up tons of airplane parts and engines, and cut up hundreds of .50 caliber Browning MG barrels that were intended to replace shot out barrel on their bombers. They also parked an entire fleet of brand new REO dump trucks at the field to be burned by the last crew to leave.

Why would we destroy weapons and equipment that could easily have been given to the Nationalist Chinese to fight Mao's communist army? It almost makes one wonder which side the Democratic Truman administration was on. (Actually it doesn't make me wonder, I know whose side they were on and it wasn't the Nationalists)

The recievers are considered to be firearms so they couldn't be sold on the civilian market.

SURE THEY CAN!!!! NFA '34 IS NOT A LAW OF NATURE. THE DAMN THING CAN BE REPEALED, OR MODIFIED BY ACT OF CONGRESS. I know it's unlikely, but anti-gun legislation is a ratchet only if we let it be a ratchet.

And the M-14 is not "just a modified M1". The designs are similar, but the parts are not interchangeable. The USGI M-14 parts would work just fine on civilian M1-A receivers, though. Or better yet on genuine USGI receivers, after the stupid law gets changed.