M14 Rifle

The M14 is an American selective-fire rifle adopted by the United States military in 1959, developed as a refinement of the M1 Garand's basic action intended to replace not only the Garand itself but also the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle and the M3 submachine gun with a single standardized infantry weapon, chambered in the newly adopted 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge. Fed from a detachable twenty-round box magazine and capable of both semi-automatic and fully automatic fire, though its size and recoil made sustained automatic fire difficult to control from the shoulder, the M14 served as the US Army's standard rifle only briefly before being progressively replaced in the mid-1960s by the lighter, smaller-caliber M16 as American ground forces built up in the Vietnam War. Despite its short front-line career as the general-issue infantry rifle, accurized and modified M14 variants have remained in continuous American military use since, particularly as designated marksman and sniper rifles and in ceremonial and honor-guard roles.