Real rifles

[tombogan03884]

Another thought Warhawke, ( I have alot of them , I think its cuz I live alone. Thank god no quotes in this one )
  At  Parris Island we had intense training in how to shoot the AR. Now Reread that, Isaid we had intense training in how to shoot THE AR. A course with some one like Erik SPECIFICLY GEARED TOWARD SHOOTING THE AR, may not change your PREFERANCE, but will PROBABLY give you more respect for the AR. That said ,I still the for military purposes the .223 FMJ stinks.

[tombogan03884]

Also , Hope the hand heals up OK. That would not bother MY typing as I have ONE finger on my other hand as well
   You started this thread with an out rageuos statement and then defended it based on you experience , minus the personal stuff it has been an interesting read.

[warhawke]

  At  Parris Island we had intense training in how to shoot the AR. Now Reread that, Isaid we had intense training in how to shoot THE AR. A course with some one like Erik SPECIFICLY GEARED TOWARD SHOOTING THE AR, may not change your PREFERANCE, but will PROBABLY give you more respect for the AR. That said ,I still the for military purposes the .223 FMJ stinks.

My father was a drill Sargent (as was my uncle, in fact I served with both of them in my brief stint in the USAR), he also served in Panama CZ in 1963 (IIRC) when they tested the XM-15 there. He reported that they loved it, right up till they took it into the field and they stopped working due to corrosion and dirt and debris. Later when he went back in the reserves he used the M-16A1 and then the A2. I remember that I used to argue with him about the M-16, because I listened to guys who told me "Keep it clean and it is fine". It took me years of using them to discover just how useless they are, and even longer to admit that the old man was right.

My friends and I are survivalists and we used to train ourselves to operate without support. No gunsmiths (except as a last resort), we repaired and cleaned these things ourselves. We took our weapons out in the boonies and used them, not carrying them in nice cases to clean well kept ranges and then home to clean them in our clean well kept homes. Our weapons got cleaned and maintained in the field, they got used in the field, and rarely did we fire less than a case of ammo each in a weekend. The guys with AK's, SKS's, H&K-91's and such had few problems out there while the AR guys were constantly maintaining them, cleaning them, losing parts, breaking parts and often winding up lugging non-functioning weapons until we got home.

We tried all kinds of things, Rhino gas systems and special springs and you name it, if somebody had a trick doodad in the shotgun news or the back of Soldier of Fortune we tried it. Finally it dawned that there was no widget that was going to turn that sows-ear into the silk purse we wanted and we all bought M-1A's and H&K's or whatever, and guess what? We could fire a case of ammo without breaking them down 2 or 3 times, and we didn't need to spend money on trick parts and replacement parts and such. Heck, swabbing down my M-1A took twenty minutes with my cleaning kit and not and hour-and-a-half with dental picks, 3 foot pipe cleaners and special liquids culled from a witches cauldron. I never lost a single part in the grass either.

As for the 5.56 round, I don't like it much because it doesn't deliver the power to take the target down most of the time. Once again, I am a survivalist, if the world goes to hell (as it has been trying to do for years) I want to be able to take my target down with the least number of rounds, be it a human or an animal and the 5.56 just doesn't do that often enough. Read about the Miami FBI shoot out, read "Blackhawk Down", read the books and stories from Viet Nam to present, talk to the guys down at the VFW and you will see and hear about guys not hitting the target because their rounds broke up on grass and twigs, or targets not going down because the round didn't do the job. Animals? If you want to try to take down a Bear or a Moose in rut with a .223, be my guest, maybe you can sell the story to a magazine after you get out of the hospital (assuming you survive). That being said, there are reasons for having and using assault rifle style weapons, as long as you work within their limits, but those limits don't stretch very far. My wife can use an AK-74 much better than my FN and it is a dandy little pest controller, but when the pest is 6' 6", 300lbs and carrying an Glock, bigger medicine is called for.

Once again I have succumbed to temptation and refused to let this thread die quietly. Oh, and my hand is much better now.

[tombogan03884]

In six years of Service , three as unit armorer , the only part I saw broken was a stock,and that was during manual of arms. The DI said he wanted to hear our hands HITTING the stock, (I think it was "port arms" to "shoulder arms")
 He offered $20 to anyone who hit thier stock hard enough to break it. This big Ole Boy from Georgia collected
 As for jams the only ones I saw  or experienced were when shooting blanks, 3 or 4 magazines and you had a club, I understand that suppressors have a similar effect, One other time I had a jam was after low crawling through a puddle of S.C. clay mud the inside of the lowwer was packed with slime. I sloshed it through a deeper (less muddy )
puddle and kept on going AND FIRING. Cleaning THAT  was a horror but it worked.
  Whats that Weight loss disclaimer "Your results may vary"   I wish some other folks would give thier own experiences pro and con,just cuz gun stories are fun to read !
   But I do agree that Varmint calibers with crappy bullets have no place in a fight. I've read "Blackhawk Down" 3 times and what those guy's were complaining about was .223 FMJ not the AR platform also in the Miami shoot out one of the robbers  used a Ruger AC556, the FBI agents were using pistols.
 For some perverse reason, I haven't let this thread die iether but my typing still su#ks.