The L1A1 was a good weapon, one of the downsides of the new L85 is that it has a plastic butt, which is relevant to this:
During one of the numerous riots that happened in Northern Ireland in around 1982 my father was involved in a bit of defending, well... during said riot he got a hurling (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurling ) stick though this plexi-glass riot helmet shield, left him with a good cut above his left eye.
Now, being sensible the army sent him to hospital to get patched up, except someone forgot to remove his ammo, so under SOP, no anaesthetic, which meant my father had 5 stitches with no pain relief.
So when he got discharged some bright spark passed him a new helmet and told him to get back to the fight.
To the day my father died, he was sure he got the bloke back, by swinging the rifle round and picking this bloke off the ground by usage of his groin region, my father is sure of this as 1) The gentlemen was wearing black balaclava, black bomber jacket, cammo trousers and 2) carrying a hurling stick.
Only problem he had, was he broke the wooden butt of the SLR, and hated the new plastic one because you could not "slightly alter" the butt to fit your shoulder properly, with a simple bit of wood carving
But I will say this, if ya want to stop a raging bull, and your marksman just put 10 rounds in its head with his SLR, make sure the Gimpy is loaded.