Orders for surplus M1911 pistols outnumber supply

By Chris Eger

U.S. martial M1911s were in production until 1945 from companies as diverse as Remington-UMC, Singer, and US&S and some are filtering through the CMP. (Photo: National Archives)
The plan to transfer some of the Army’s stockpile of vintage M1911 pistols to the public via the Civilian Marksmanship Program has been met with a big response.
On Tuesday, the federally chartered non-profit corporation tasked with promoting firearms safety and practice announced that they had received and were processing 19,000 packets submitted for a chance to acquire one of the classic .45ACP handguns. That’s more than twice the number of guns in the CMP’s warehouse.
The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act approved by Congress outlined a two-year pilot program for moving some of the Army’s estimated 100,000 surplus GI longslides to the CMP. Limited to a maximum of 10,000 guns per year, just 8,000 were transferred to the organization last fall by the military from long-term storage at Anniston Army Depot. The solution to doll out 8,000 guns to 19,000 individuals looking to get one? A random number generator.
The CMP said that the numbers have been selected and they are assigning them to packets and are calling those lucky enough to have theirs picked, a

Source: Guns.com