WORK IN PROGRESS
In Fiction[]
The M14 is a battle rifle at the Seishou Academy in the Upotte!! anime and manga series.
Appearance[]
M14 is a true American beauty with her long blonde hair, fair skin and blue eyes (and pretty large bazookas). Being a battle rifle, M14 is also one of the tallest characters in the series. When she first transferred to Seishou, M14 would dress like a delinquent girl (permed hair, flashy earrings, chains and lots of make-up) to intimidate L1A1. She dropped the 'sukeban' act when L1A1 told her that her natural look is the prettiest.
Personality[]
M14 is an outgoing and easy-going girl. She is also quite a slacker, jundging by her rather average performance at school. What most students do not seem to remember is that M14 used to be fiercely competitive when she first arrived to Seishou as a transfer student. In an attempt to prove her worth as a rifle, M14 became hell-bent on surpassing L1A1, whom she considered to be the school queen. Her zeal was later defused by L1A1, who disarmed the inferiority-complex-driven side of her personality by simply becoming her friend. However, M14 still reveals her competitive nature from time to time, expecially when pitched against M16. This is probably because M14 was replaced by M16 as the standard-issue rifle of the US army in the 1960s.
It should also be noted that M14 loves her friends and familiy very much, particularly M16, whom she trats as her little sister, and L1A1, whom she seems to admire.
Another characteristic trait of M14 is her love for all kinds of puns and dad jokes, which she tells whenever a suitable opporunity appears and much to the dismay of whoever is in the 'punsplosion' range. Spending time with M14 means regular barrages of puns coming seemingly out of nowhere like guerillas in Vietnam.
Trivia[]
The Author actually bought a "deactivated" M14 for himself.
In Real Life[]
History[]
The M14 rifle was designed in 1954 as an attempt to give one soldier the capability of performing more than one role on the battlefield using just one weapon, as well as giving him more firepower in a (relatively) compact frame. It became the US service rifle in 1959, but was discontinued from production in 1964, making it the shortest lived service rifle in US history, replaced by the infamous M16.
Users[]
The M14, its variants, and licensed copies appear in a plethora of countries.
The main user of the M14 rifle and its variants now are the United States, particularly the Navy. The M14 DMR is a popular marskman weapon.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines uses the M14 as a squad battle rifle along with the authors hated EBR(lol), Philippine government issues M14 rifles, as well as M1 carbines, M1 rifles and M16 rifles, to their civilian defense forces and to various cadet corps in their service academies
Performance[]
Without optics, the M14 rifle is effective on ranges up to around 500 yards (460 m). It uses the 7.62x51mm cartridge, which makes the weapon difficult to control when using full automatic fire. The M14A1 is an improvized pistolgrip wooden stock that is used by specal forces in Vietnam as a Squad automatic weapon that is BAR level.
The maintenance and stripping the weapon isn't problematic, even for the unexperienced operators.
Cost[]
In America? Expensive. A civilian M14(M1A) manufactured by Springfield Armory costs about $1500 US.
If you live in Frosty Moe Land (Canada) or Middle Earth (New Zealand) however, you can get a Norinco M14(M305) at the same (or more depending on who you ask) quality for about $500 CAD/$550 NZD.
Why? A while ago SA realized that Norinco M305s had the more desirable forged receivers over the cast recievers that SA M1As had, not to mention that they were only a third of the price. So after this, SA got the US government to ban Norinco imports to protect their own market.