Poll - Favorite Battle Rifle

[.45cultist]

Originally Posted by CDAT

I went with the M-14 as it is the only one I have any experience with.


I would say some place between none and zero, I know it is the cool thing with the games (both rpg/table top and video type) to have full auto, but in real life it would be almost useless on most of these. Short of using it as a replacement for the LMG/SAW, most people would not be able to hit anything with it on full auto.


I hear things like this all the time from fans of the AK, but my first hand experience with them in Iraq, does not back up most of this. Yes it will get hot enough to burn you, it can do it within one magazine on semi-auto if fired quickly enough (not a selling point to me), most of the ones that I got to deal with the accuracy went from OK (for the best of them) to shooting patterns out of a bench rest. We also had several that had to be chopped up as they would nor work due to lack of maintenance, we had more of the AK's go down due to lack of maintenance than AR's. So my experience with them is they are not something I would trust my life to, unlike the AR.

After action reports indicated poor repair of Ak's as a major factor in the poor performance of various insurgence actions. Yes its rugged but it needs PM too. Od Soviet policy was to loan out older weapons when new stuff was issued, so one wants to take care of it. An M14 with a synthetic stock and a scope is a handy thing to have. I went with an AR10 variant since 60% of the parts are AR15/M16.