Thread: Went shooting yesterday....

Originally Posted by Bowzer

When did I ever mention civilian in my post?

You came into a thread in which Anonymous D was showing pictures of the civilian sporting weapons he and his friends took to the range. You complained that there were too many ARs and AKs, and said that you would "never waste your money" on an AR. When you talk about what weapons YOU would buy with YOUR OWN money, the implication is that you are talking about weapons that are available to civilians, since those are obviously the only type of weapons that you are going to purchasing with your own money (if you do ever get your hands on an G36 or an XM8 or a L85, you sure won't have bought it for yourself). And when you criticize someone else's choice in civilian sporting arms, the implication is that the weapons you would recommend instead are also civilian sporting arms, rather than weapons that are unavailable to civilians. It doesn't make sense otherwise, does it?

Are you now trying to claim that, this whole time, you have been talking about what weapons you would choose if you were in charge of deciding what rifle will be issued to a group of soldiers? You certainly didn't say anything to that effect until now.

Originally Posted by Bowzer

Last I checked a few years ago, it was around 1500 for a decent one.

ARs have never been $1500 for a "decent one". $1500 for a high-end one, maybe, but never for a standard model from one of the major manufacturers like RRA, Stag, Bushmaster, and so on. When buying an AR from one of those manufacturers, you would have to pick a model with lots of extra bells and whistles (rail systems, match barrels, etc.) to push the price up to $1500. Again, $1000 is more like it for a standard model from a major manufacturer. Look around, you will see.

Originally Posted by Bowzer

Burst setting is quite possibly one of the dumbest things ever devised. It was most likely created by some bureaucrat with a pen who thought it would save ammo and money. The point of auto is to lay down some serious scunion towards the enemy so they keep their head down. Suppression fire is vital for every soldier to have available so they can support a flanking assault if need be. Burst fire only hinders that.

The ammunition wastage that occurred due to the M16A1's full-auto option was very well-documented by the US Army during Vietnam. It's not just some bureaucrat's idle supposition. Arguably the problem had a lot to do with training, but nevertheless, the decision to take full-auto away from the troops wasn't just based on bureaucratic stupidity. There were hard facts justifying it.

Originally Posted by Bowzer

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/Vie...Item=123673525

Wow, and only $9000! Great find, definitely a better buy than one of those stupid overpriced ARs. Why would anyone waste their money on an AR when they could get one of these for only nine times as much money? The fact that it has no advantage over an AR except for a somewhat more reliable gas system (as well as having several disadvantages compared to an AR) definitely justifies the extra $8000 on the price tag. Especially since we all know how much time civilian rifle shooters spend in harsh, sandy combat environments!

Give me a break. Yeah, I suppose it's not technically "impossible" for a civilian to get a semi-auto G36, because there are a small number of ultra-expensive NFA-regulated SL8 conversions floating around the market. I think I can still stand by my claim that a semi-auto G36 is not a reasonable alternative to the AR15, and is not available to the average civilian shooter (both because of price, and because of the very small number of these conversions that exist).

Also, this doesn't change the fact that some of the other weapons you listed--such as the XM8--really are completely unavailable to civilians (the XM8 isn't available to ANYONE, actually--the program was cancelled). So I say again: It doesn't make a lot of sense to tell a civilian sport shooter than the AR is a bad choice, and then say that a better choice would be a rifle that's completely unavailable to civilians.

Originally Posted by Bowzer

Wastage? I can give you hard facts of thousands of lives that were saved due to FIRE SUPERIORITY in Vietnam.

Well yeah, we can all agree that "fire superiority" in general saves lives. That's obvious. The real question is whether the M16A1's full-auto setting, in and of itself, provided enough of a fire superiority advantage to offset the unfortunate fact that troops using it tended to rip through their entire magazine in a second and a half without hitting anything. If you have facts proving that the M16A1's full auto provided such a fire superiority advantage, then please, show them to me. Personally, I doubt such facts exist--because the Army reached exactly the opposite conclusion when it reviewed the lessons learned from Vietnam--but if you have these facts, then let's see them.

EDIT: Just out of curiosity, do you have any objections to the AR platform other than it's gas system? Because if not, you can easily get a gas-piston AR for a lot cheaper than a $2500 SCAR or a $9000 SL8 modification, or even a $2000 AUG sporter clone. And of course it will have much better aftermarket support in terms of parts, accessories, etc.

Originally Posted by Syme

The real question is whether the M16A1's full-auto setting, in and of itself, provided enough fire superiority to save "thousands of lives" despite the fact that troops using it tended to rip through their entire magazine in a second and a half without hitting anything. If you have facts proving that the M16A1's full auto setting saved all these lives, then please, show them to me.

Suppression fire saves lives. The point of fire superiority and suppression fire is not necessarily to hit the enemy, but to deter them from aggression all together. A great deal of military doctrine is based upon this principal.

Originally Posted by Syme

EDIT: Just out of curiosity, do you have any objections to the AR platform other than it's gas system?

The feeding sucks and it jams all the time. I have frequently been failed during peak moments and firefights in training missions no matter how well my M16 was maintained. The worst part about is that there are much better weapons on the market using the same round and that would require little retraining for our military.


EDIT:
For further reading: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/1...sttest_071217/

Originally Posted by Bowzer

Suppression fire saves lives. The point of fire superiority and suppression fire is not necessarily to hit the enemy, but to deter them from aggression all together. A great deal of military doctrine is based upon this principal.

Yeah, I know. Again: The question isn't whether fire superiority provides an advantage in a firefight. Obviously it does. The question is whether the fire-superiority advantage provided by giving every soldier a full-auto assault rifle is enough to offset the fact that it tends to result in them burning through their ammunition very quickly and wastefully. Getting the absolute greatest volume of suppressive fire out of each infantry squad is not the only imperative that drives infantry equipment design. There are countervailing factors to be considered too. You are over-simplifying the issue if you just say "Well the more suppressive fire the better, and suppressive fire comes from full-auto weapons, so every infantryman should have a full-auto weapon".

It's instructive to note that today, even armies that do issue their troops with full-auto-capable rifles (such as the Brits) generally train them only to use that setting only when clearing rooms and trenches; suppressive fire is generally left to the machine-gunners, because if every infantryman uses his rifle to provide full-auto suppressive fire, they go through ammunition very quickly. This is stated by the guy in the Yahoo Answers page that you yourself linked to earlier, btw.

Originally Posted by Bowzer

The feeding sucks and it jams all the time. I have frequently been failed during peak moments and firefights in training missions no matter how well my M16 was maintained. The worst part about is that there are much better weapons on the market using the same round and that would require little retraining for our military.

EDIT:
For further reading: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/1...sttest_071217/

Most of the feed problems in military service are the fault of the STANAG magazines, not the rifle itself. As civilian AR shooters who use good magazines can tell you, the AR can feed extremely reliably when not used with shitty STANAG mags. As for jamming, what kind of jams are you talking about? Most of them would probably be addressed by a gas-piston AR design, so again, it makes no sense to condemn the AR and say we need a new rifle when all we really need to address your criticisms are gas-piston uppers for existing ARs. And again, you seem to be flip-flopping back and forth between talking about the AR15 as a civilian sporting rifle, and talking about the M16 as a military assault rifle.

I do know about the dust tests. Notice that at the end of the article, it mentions that surveys of troops in the field reveal that they are satisfied with the M4s performance.