 Greetings, friends! This is Survival Doc. Today, I'm going to talk about the greatest battle rifle ever invented. I'm talking, of course, about the Springfield M14, or in this case, the M1A, the civilian version of the M14. But first of all, a little history. The M14 is actually an improvement on the M1 Grand, its predecessor. And here I have my M1 Grand on the same rack up above. Officially designated as United States Rifle caliber 30 M1, it was affectionately known as the M1 Grand, so named after its inventor, John Grand, who was born in Canada but who worked for Springfield Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts, when he developed the M1 Grand. The M1 Grand was the first semi-automatic rifle to be generally issued to the infantry of any nation. General George S. Patton referred to it as the greatest battle implement ever devised. The Grand officially became the standard service rifle of the United States Armed Forces in 1936, and it maintained that designation for over 20 years until 1957 when it was replaced by the Springfield M14. However, the M1 Grand continued to be used in large numbers until 1963, and to a lesser degree until 1966, giving it a 30-year role in the American Armed Forces. The M1 Chambers 30-06 rounds. These are also known as 7.62 by 63 as the metric designation. The 30-06 was introduced to the United States Army in 1906 and was in use until the 1960s and early 1970s. It is still a popular hunting round widely used by civilians. The 30 refers to the diameter of the bullet and the 06 refers to the year of its adoption, 1906. So the M1 Grand was used extensively by U.S. forces in World War II, the Korean War, and to a limited extent the Vietnam War. My grand that you see in this video here was manufactured in May of 1943 according to the serial number, which means that it very likely played a role in both World War II and the Korean War and could have possibly been in Vietnam as well. M1 Grands, by the way, are available for American civilian ownership through the Civilian Marksmanship Program, which is where I bought mine. Visit their website, dcmp.org, for information on ordering one. Now, the M14 replaced the M1 Grand and it was a standard-issue U.S. rifle from 1959 to 1970 when it was replaced by the M16 rifle. And the M16, by the way, was the military designation of the AR-15. The M14 was a selective-fire automatic rifle that fires 7.62x51 NATO rounds. These are the same as .308. Here's a comparison of the .306 rounds of the M1 Grand and the .308 or .7.62x51 rounds of the M14. The M1 Grand rounds go in this in-block clip, which loads from the top of the rifle, whereas the M14 is a bottom-fed magazine, bottom-loaded magazine-fed rifle. This is a .20-round magazine. And that was one of the improvements on the M1 Grand. So there are some other differences, but the major difference you will notice when you compare the M14 with the M1 Grand is the M1 Grand vented the gas way up here toward the end of the barrel to operate the recharger. And one of the improvements that made with the M14 was they vented the gas back here. And what this did was this made the rifle lighter. The other thing I mentioned, of course, is the M1 Grand loads from the top with this in-block clip. And the M14 is a magazine-fed rifle loaded from the bottom. But the rifles internally are so similar that if you can work on one, you can also work on the other. And in fact, the American Gunsmithing Institute covers both of these with their armorers, of course, so DVD. The one on the M1 Grand rifles also covers the M14. And one thing I recommend that you do is I recommend that you learn how to work on all of your rifles. And this is one good place to get DVDs to teach you how to disassemble and reassemble and clean and work on your rifles. They have a DVD for almost every rifle out there, and that's the American Gunsmithing Institute. Now I'm going to just demonstrate how you load the M1 Grand with this eight-round in-block clip. You open it. Now one thing I'll mention here is there's a condition known as M1 thumb, or a lot of GIs got their thumbs smashed in here when they were loading their grins. And so they coined the term M1 thumb to refer to an injured thumb. And I can show you how you can load this thing without injuring your thumb. And the key is to put your finger or the edge of your hand right here on the charging handle so that if it does close, what it does is it pushes your hand out of the way. So this is the way you load it. You press it down, and there it is. And of course, as I mentioned, one of the improvements with the M14 was the magazine-fed rifle, which loads like this. Okay, I've mentioned a couple of the differences between the M1 and the M14. I mentioned the gas coming out here, and here on the M14, making the rifle lighter. I mentioned the improvement in the loading, doing away with the in-block clip and going with the magazine. One significant difference, I forgot to mention, is that the M14 was an automatic rifle, or it was switchable from a semi-automatic rifle to a fully automatic rifle. The M1 Grand, of course, was just a semi-automatic. The M14 was switchable. There was a switch right here where you could switch it from semi-auto to full auto. Now there was a problem with the M14 in full auto, and that is because the .308 is such a powerful round, it was really hard to control the semi-automatic firing. What happens with automatic firing is your first round goes on target, but then because the first round pushes the barrel up, your other rounds have a tendency to go up into the sky. So it's easier to control on a smaller caliber rifle, it's hard to control on a large caliber rifle like this. So the M14 never did really work out well for as an automatic rifle. And for that reason, they actually, at one point, the Army actually converted a lot of the M14s into semi-automatic only fire. And of course, the civilian version, the M1A, comes with the semi-automatic version only. Now as I mentioned, the M14 was used from 1959 to 1970 when it was replaced by the M16, which was the military designation of the AR-15. So an AR-15 and M16 are essentially equivalent rifles. Of course, the M16 is fully automatic, the AR-15 generally is semi-automatic. The M14 was referred to as America's last battle rifle. And what a battle rifle is, is a weapon that fires full power rifle ammunition. And the M14 remained the primary infantry weapon in Vietnam from 66 to 67 when it began to be replaced by the AR-15 or the M16. Now the large and heavy M14 was difficult to handle in the thick brush of Vietnam, although its heavy caliber did penetrate through leaves and branches better than the smaller caliber. The M16, of course, uses the 5.56x45 NATO rounds. But the M14 continued to be used, or variants of the M14, continued to be used as the standard issue sniper rifle up until about 1988. And then in 2009, in Afghanistan, a study conducted by the US Army claimed that half of the engagements in Afghanistan occurred beyond 300 meters. Alright, America's 5.56 NATO rounds or the M16s were ineffective at 300 meters. So they actually re-issued thousands of M14s in Afghanistan, because of course the 7.62x51 cartridge is effective out to a thousand yards and beyond. Now the first M1As, or the semi-automatic only civilian versions of the M14, were conversions from the M14s. But eventually Springfield began making the M1As outright. Okay, now let's take a closer look at my M1A, the way that I have mine set up. Of course, the first thing you'll observe is that I have put a scope on mine. Now the site that comes with the M1A, the M14, is the same site that comes on the M1 Grand, is the peep site right there, so very, very good site. But what happens as you get older is you find the peep sites don't work as well for you, and sometimes we need optics. Now I added a scope mount, of course this is the Springfield Armory scope mount. This one is more expensive than some aftermarket scope mounts you will find, but I recommend the Springfield Armory because it's the best one for the job, I believe. One thing I like about this mount is it still allows you to use the peep site. You can look underneath the scope mount. So if you have a close encounter and you want to use your peep site, you still have that option. Now when I installed the scope mount, I had to remove this part here which goes right here. This is the stripper clip guide, and the scope mount comes with this part right here which the scope mount screws into. Let me talk just a minute about the stripper clip guide that goes right here. As I mentioned, the M14 loads the bottom loading magazine, and what happens is when your magazine is empty, you have the option of loading with using stripper clips like this right here. Now you can't do that of course if you have a scope, but if you don't have a scope and you have this clip right here which comes standard on this rifle, you can, without removing your magazine, you can recharge your magazine by using stripper clips. And just to demonstrate how that works, here's a magazine. And this is another way to load the magazine right here is with this little stripper clip guide right here. You clip that on your magazine and then you can use your stripper clips to charge your magazine. Of course it helps if you have a magazine that's not already charged. And that brings me to another accessory that I recommend. This is the Lula magazine charger. It also works for unloading your magazines. And this thing works really well and I really recommend it. It clips on your magazine like this. Okay, let's take a closer look at that. This is the Lula magazine loader and unloader. Clips on your magazine like that. You can see how easy it is. It makes it easier on your hands and also easier on your magazines. And to unload it, this is a stripper clip. This is a 5-round stripper clip. You can also get 10-round stripper clips. And you have your cartridges on your stripper clips ready to go like this. Now when this is on your M14, you just insert the stripper clip like that and push the rounds right into your magazine. To show you how that works, this is an alternate magazine loader. This is a stripper clip guide. It clips on your magazine like this. And then allows you to load your magazines using stripper clips. It works really well. Work using it this way. Or also using it to load your magazines while they're in your rifle. Now, another accessory I've added to my rifle besides the scope mount, of course, is the scope itself. And what I have is a Vortex. It's a Vortex 4-16x50 Viper model. This is a very, very nice scope. It has the illuminated reticle. This knob right here is how you adjust the brightness of your illumination on your reticle. Now if your battery runs dead and you lose illumination, it still works like a regular scope. You can still see your reticle. It's just black instead of illuminated red. Over here we have, of course, the parallax adjuster and then, of course, the windage and the elevation knobs. It's a 50-millimeter scope, which means it sees very well in low-light situations. Another accessory I have for my rifle is this GI sling. I recommend the GI sling. If you use the sling properly, the sling greatly increases your accuracy of your rifle. And if you don't understand what I'm talking about or don't understand how to use the sling to increase your accuracy of your rifle, I recommend you come to an Apple Seed event. Apple Seed, check it out at appleseedinfo.org. You find a schedule of weekend sheets. All across the country, Saturday and Sunday sheets, where we will teach you correct marksmanship. And even though you may think that you shoot really well and you probably do and you probably never have any trouble getting your deer, still at Apple Seed we will make you a better shooter. We'll teach you how to shoot out 100 yards, 200, 300, 400 yards and beyond. Now when you add a scope to your rifle, a lot of times usually you have to raise the comb of your rifle so that you can get the proper cheek weld when you align your eye up with the scope. If you don't understand what I'm talking about with the cheek weld, then come to an Apple Seed event and we'll teach you these things. Now one thing I want to say to you preppers out there, make sure that you're carrying spare parts for all of your firearms. I recommend that you learn how to operate or learn how to work on your own firearms. When the communists take over and they ban your firearms, you're not going to be able to run down to your gunsmith and have your gun worked on if you do. You're likely to get confiscated and you'll probably be arrested as well. So you need to learn how to work on your own firearms. The DVDs I mentioned from American Gunsmith and Institute are great. They make them for almost every rifle and handgun out there. Make sure you get a DVD for your most critical firearms and learn how to work on your firearms. Learn what parts are most likely to be needed and stock up on all of those parts. These are the springs for the M1 Gran. The things that you're most likely to need are springs, pins and the firing pin. Here is the complete spring set for the M14 and this includes the ejector spring and the ejector spring assembly. Here are some more spare parts for the M14. One thing you want to make sure you have in your spare parts for all of your firearms is an extra firing pin. Now the M14 and the M1 Gran are extremely reliable firearms. Almost nothing ever happens to them and especially the M14, I mean it could last you a lifetime. But still you need to be prepared and have the spare parts. The part you're most likely to need for an M14 besides the firing pin would be the spring here. The recoil spring, the main recoil spring. Here is a bunch of parts for my other rifles. These are like 10-22's. I have 10-22's and I have almost every spare part I could possibly need for a 10-22. You also want to make sure you have plenty of spare magazines. When a rifle fails most likely the cause is a problem with the magazine. So you want to make sure you have plenty of extra magazines and also spare parts for your magazine. I do have spare springs for my M14 magazines. Another alternative is to have two of the same rifles. If you have two of the same rifles especially if you have used rifles. If you have two of the same rifles then if worse comes to worst you can always cannibalize one of the rifles to keep the other one going. If you have two rifles of the same type then you always have a complete set of spare parts for one of your rifles including the stock sometimes wooden stocks break. And for the M14 if you happen to have a wooden stock for the M14 one of the spare parts that you need to carry is you need to carry a synthetic stock for your M14. Make sure that you are prepared for the communist invasion of the United States. Rumors are they've completely taken over Washington D.C. They've landed in New York and California. They've parachuted into cities like Chicago and Detroit. And the communists are coming to your town. Will you bring enough gun? This is Survival Doc. Reminding you be prepared or be prepared to be pleased.