Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Dust up over the M4 at the battle of Wanat

Slasher, for the purpose that you have outlined, an AR-15 rifle is not a bad choice at all. Look man, I got to Vietnam in 1969. The M-16/M16A1 had been general issue for only 2 years. We had guys in my Platoon who had the old "C-Rat opener" rifles. Early types. Keep in mind that these rifles were ONLY 2 years old, yet looked like they had been in the field for 50 years. I seriously doubt that your girl would be putting those kinds of demands on ANY rifle she has at hand. I also highly doubt that she would be putting out a volumne of sustained fire anything like what an Infantryman in a battle does (and that ain't neccesarily a good thing)time after time.

I don't doubt that comparing the early guns/ammo to current ones is not a great thing, IE there have been changes for the better.

And I"m not trying to argue... but still to this day I'm in fairly close contact with troops that both shoot competitively and are more accurate than most folks, and see combat in the sand.. I have not heard of one that has complained of the current platform. Of course you generally hear the negative things real quick like how MREs suck(and I have lived off them for a month and while not a ribeye they aren't bad enough for me to complain) and the complaint I"ve heard is along the lines of give me more 77 grain ammo... they say that stuff is markedly different in the performance when you hit someone. IE if the well trained folks are complaining, its not wanting any more 62 grain stuff....but instead give em loads of 77 bthps...

Jeff

Fits the news template and psych strategy of linking Afghanistan to Vietnam with a story reliving the same complaints about the M-16. Look for the re-use of words like "quagmire", "body bags", etc.

At her college, it's quite common for many of the rich kids, especially fraternity boys, and a few middle class, too, to go to the local range with their AR 15's. This was years before anybody had ever heard of Obama so they've been popular with youth now, too, for awhile.

I'm not thinking hundreds of rounds fired off rapidly either. People say if you need to get off that many rounds in America, then there have been riots so deadly, you can walk around and pick up extra mags from the dead. Truthfully, some people are buying AR's because of Obama fearing a ban, but some are buying them considering a short term or even long term societal breakdown, possibility if stuff continues, some years off into the future. If Obama were to be assassinated, God forbid, it would be worse than Rwanda short term and random hate killings for years to come. I think she will be getting a Mini 14 and an AR from me.

Myself and folks like here buy them because we are rifle nuts. I really have gotten interested as the magazines and others have shown a dramatically increased interest in the last 5 years. It seems they are here to stay commercially for civilians.

She's a natural born killer like me, and a deadeye to boot.

In every last test (with the exception of the Alaska test early on that was found to be rigged), where the M16 was compared to the M14, it has always come out the winner in the reliability department (mean time between failures)

The Mini 14 has been tested by the US military and doesn�t even come close to the M16 in the reliability department. The Mini 14 has been used by a few different law enforcement agencies, and some scattered militaries on a very small scale. But make no mistakes; the Mini 14 is a military inspired SPORTING rifle. It is not military grade.

I recently bought one of the new 58x series mini-14. It is a world better than the old 18x guns. Mine is a solid 2 MOA rifle with just about any ammo you stuff into it, with the best groups ranging 1-1.5 MOA - There's usually at least one flyer.

There's still some vertical stringing when the barrel heats up, but it's also better. But I'm not sure the rifle would stand up to sustained firing any better than the AR.

The Mini-14 finally looks like it is exactly what it was meant to be - a light and reasonably accurate carbine.

Nice set of kids you have there. Them 16" .308's make a lot of noise.

It's funny, yes the mini14 or AC556 was tested by the MIL and flunked, yet people are so quick to say they are reliable.

When quality AR's and parts are discussed, people with cheap bargain AR's chime in that theirs has been 100% reliable.

But we can't get past the M4 or M16 getting "white hot" and puking so it must be un-reliable...

Gotta love the internet.

Years ago, more than ten, I went to Thunder Ranch's Urban Rifle course. I called and told them I have an AR or two and a Mini-14. What to bring? He said that if I bring the Mini-14, bring three, becasue that's how many parts I'll need to keep it running during his class.

Every mini-14 I handled in that period broke while firing.

Whoa! I 'm going to get both. I doubt either will be fired enough to hopefully cause either to fail. I'm somewhat surprised about the Mini v AR's reliability testing. I wouldn't have thought or should I have thought that military spec grade was the difference. There's always the Marlin 38/357 you noted which I have always thought, too, is a good idea for a lot of shooters of all sizes for a typcial break in. I've had two home invasions and there was only one man in each case.

No gun is any good if it's not available and ready to go. My last home invasion, the hyped out addict was in the dang room where my guns were and I was not. He took a nice SLR and an expensive camcorder, ignoring the long guns, wife screaming, and I assume he wanted to just to get something he could carry easily and run. He stole my sense of peace for about a year, I had small kids, prayed he would come back, but it was going to be a ball bat on his head and various extremities plus a gun. When I finally got in the room after he left, my wife was yelling for me to start firing in the direction he left, pitch black, to scare the bejeez out of him. Houses close by in the neighborhood, not wise to do such.

The Mini-14 is not a military rifle, it�s a sporting rifle with a military heritage. It has never been developed through military service, so there has been very little de-bugging of the design and (often most importantly), the manufacturing materials and techniques. I happen to really like the mini-14, but it is not a combat rifle. If you like the Mini-14 as a combat rifle, do yourself a favor and buy a M1 Carbine.

Well, I'm going to get all 3, carry all 3, be shooting one, and after it seizes, unsling another and keep going Would hope I didn't get my mags confused Forgot I have M1 Carbine, now. Actually, it sounds like the military spec M4 has won for a knock down drag out fight, which civilians I hope never see in this country

The last post up on the main Campfire on the M4 from the soldier with so much combat Iraq Afgh on the reliability of the M4 and the ammo says it all for this decade and there. It works for him all the time and kills. Kevin, why come you know so much about all this? Are you as we say "involved?"

People are wasting my hearing time to talk about the M16 in 1967, and part of 68.

"This is a bad war. We can't kill enough of 'em fast enough"

I guess you could say in my younger years I was involved. But the main reason I�m �in the know� is just my interest from the standpoint of being a writer, gunsmith and somewhat of a half baked historian. My first gunsmithing job was working at a class 3 armory, where I was exposed to most every class 3 weapon available to mankind in the year 1985-86. This even included some limited exposure to Soviet equipment (mostly the older stuff, PPSh�s, Degtyarev�s, etc) but a few AK�s, RPK�s and RPD�s. I had the opportunity to field strip and fire just about every infantry rifle in the world at that time, including the FAMAS and L85, SAR 80 (all were pretty darned new back then), all the way back to the MP-44 of WWII.

I managed to get even more experience with SMG�s, which is a subject I consider myself equipped to talk about.

So, I�ve carried a couple of assault rifles in harms way, and I�ve worked on and shot most of them. Over time, I�ve generated some opinions on the subject matter.

Wouldn't it have been great if they could have foreseen, this, like 9/11? Which was to test the M16 with a batallion size group, some would argue smaller, and do a time and piece type study, as in manufacturing, in a triple canopy 30 or 40 degree mountains, too, definitely MONSOON !!! season, too and have off and on mock firefights, for months on end, varying rates of fire, varying cleaning times, etc.?

Keep it out there 2 or 3 weeks at a time, never dry, in the mud, and watch it cough.

Thrown in exhausted men with dysentery, hanging on to limbs to avoid falling off a mountain, and such #&%* and M16's getting dunked in streams, too, kind of like it was for some units.

I know the rifle worked better in steriles, rear areas, even fire bases not like above, although some of those were misery, too.

That was probably the failure. The AK seemed to handle that, then.

Never been to Panama. I don't think it would have duplicated that?

I've been to Panama...whoa, humidity...but the locals make great tortilla's and Panama brand beer is my absolute favorite.

The US military has done a whole bunch of studdies with the M16 and a bunch of other weapons in every climate you could possibly imagine. Believe it or not, they DO know what they're doing.

When I was in Panama, I carried an M16A1 or a Chinese under-folder AK. For what I was doing, I really appreciated the compactness of the AK.

Just wondering if you knew if they did such a test in the types of continuous monsoon and mud for like months a typical exhausted grunt in triple canopy firefight might have experienced? Always wet, mud, pounding brains out rain as over there. That's where it happened. Very common-very.

I worked for the fed. No, they don't know what they are doing. But that's my experience at many levels working for them and dealing with them in the private sector. It's a bureacracy even in the military, still govt. I think ya'll have convinced me it's a great rifle now and probably for decades.

Well I'd say Vietnam was probably the best extended jungle test they did on the M16. And Fort Sherman in Panama was where jungle warfare was taught for decades afterward, so the M16 is very tested under the conditions you mention. In fact, the M16 has been adequately tested in every imaginable environmental condition, and the two environs that give it the most problems are very wet jungle and Middle Eastern sand (very unique sand).

Still, the M16 performs quite well, it's just not as reliable as the competition and never will be.

Thanks.

Ah yes, white hot M4. When they turn white hot they are less prone to jams because the brass is liquified and blows out the muzzle behind the bullet. And they don't need a trigger to work because the heat cooks the rounds right off.

Doesn't steel turn to liquid at some point before it gets white hot?