The federally chartered Civilian Marksmanship Program could be in hot water after an audit found nearly 100 pistols missing.
Formally established by federal law in 1996 as the Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice and Firearms Safety, Inc., but more commonly just known as the CMP, the organization receives surplus rifles and pistols from the Army, which it sells to the public through a long-standing program.
Since 2018, the program has been receiving upward of 10,000 vintage M1911 pistols a year from a cache of 100,000 guns long stored at the Anniston Army Depot. Now, that initiative could be in jeopardy, because at least 98 of the guns are listed as unaccounted for when compared to inventory reports – and may have vanished years ago.
"The Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division has been notified of a significant number of 1911A1 pistols reported missing from the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) located in Anniston, Alabama, between September 2019 to March 2022," CID spokesman Keith E. Smith told local news outlets in Alabama.
The news of the 98 missing M1911s was first covered by the ABC 33/40 outlet in Birmingham.
In 2015, an Army whitepaper, prompted by the Obama-era Department of Justice, questioned a plan to sell the surplus pistols to the public, calling them "popular crime guns." It is not hard to imagine that anti-gun lawmakers will seize on the case of the missing guns to move to suspend or halt further transfers or potentially introduce legislation to revoke the CMP's charter altogether. The CMP only exists in its current form because the Clinton administration moved in 1996 to dissolve the old Army-run National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice, which was formed in 1903 by Teddy Roosevelt.
The Army is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the missing firearms and/or information leading to the arrest and conviction of any suspects.
Meanwhile, CID is also offering a separate $5,000 reward in the case of another 31 SIG Sauer M17 Pistols reported missing from the Crescenz Consolidated Equipment Pool located at Fort Moore, Georgia between March and May 2024.
