Actually, there's only one kind of condition or state of 'dead,' and that's being dead  -  as in un-alive. You can't be deader than 'dead.'

What you meant was:  "Less recoil means faster shooting, which means bad guys are made dead quicker," which we can all agree is a really good thing to see on the 2-way firing ranges of the real world. .

Kids now a days.....also think that an M1 Garand is heavy.  Could they even imagine storming Tarawa or Omaha Beach with one?

Yup.......Grandpa was one tough ^%$#@*.

Then.....it might just be that kids now a days have this in mind, when we older folks speak of the M14/M1a.  Note: Where's the wood?



LOL.  While we older folks think of this.



Aloha, Mark

Aloha, Mark

I had a Colt A2 in the rack at work a while ago, (Several months) next to a M4ish ,

couple young guys, both in the service, were pawing over the M4ish and looked at the A2,

'wow,  they got an antique up there....'

hahaha

That's funny.. I guess my 17 year old in 2015 did boot in Benning is an antique than.. he was issued an a2..some of the other shorter people were issued the m4.

Until this past year his NYANG unit had the a2/a4 before they deployed to the sand box this year.  They were issued new in the bag FN m4a1's half got the acog the other half including him got the aimpoint.

So that's why it was put back into service in the sandbox as the EBR.....

My oldest daughter got out of the army in ‘13 and was issued an A2 the entire time she was in as a Chaplain’s Assistant. She complained that in Iraq it was a bitch to climb in and out of Humvees with it, but her ‘musket’, as it was known by her fellow soldiers, was good for embarrassing her CO at the range with his M4.

and it sucked.  So yeah.

I've mostly heard old guys complain about the weight. Actually I've had THREE old guys at LGS's tell me I'm crazy for hunting with one bc it's "just so heavy." The gun weighs 9 fucking pounds. Gilian Michaels curls more during her workout videos. Young shooters are starting off with 8 or 9 lb AR's these days, not 7lb pencil barrel AR's.

Virtually all criticism of the M14 is nonsense and 180 degrees opposed to the truth.  So it's not surprising that someone would be making up BS about how heavy it supposedly is.

My favorite is that "it was never designed to be scoped."  Seems untrue given that it's had the provision for installation of a scope mount since its inception.

How do you figure?

He retired in 1946 and died in 1950. The first prototype AR-10 was created in 1956. Guess he did all this from the grave.

Maybe he means LeMay.

“Kids” these days are scaling mountains in Afghanistan carrying double (or more) the weight WWII soldiers were carrying when they stormed the beaches at Normandy.

So yeah, I’m guessing not too hard to imagine that aspect of it.

When you’re trying to deliver a larger volume of fire more accurately, every little bit of recoil reduction counts, otherwise, you wouldn’t have comp guns running LW everything with adjustable gas tuned to the absolute ragged edge of reliability using underpowered loads.

I don’t think anyone here is claiming that the rifles being discussed are so recoil heavy that they are physically incapable of managing them.  They’re saying that they’d rather deal with less weight and recoil because the trade offs aren’t worth the marginal positives these rifles bring with them.

On top of that, lessening recoil on even light recoiling guns doesn’t come with any negatives other than people claiming you’re not “man enough” to shoot them as-is.

That’s why I’ve never understood the whole “I survived shooting these heavy recoiling guns, quit being a bitch” mindset.  If we could completely remove all recoil from all firearms, I’d imagine most would be on board.  Talk about using something with less recoil or attempt to do something to mitigate some recoil, though, and all of sudden, you’re a giant pussy.  It makes no sense.

lol... meanwhile I got into .308 ARs in 2016 because 5.56 had no visceral satisfaction in shooting for me anymore and .308 did.

I'm fine with recoil. What blows my skirt up is muzzle rise. Recoil is fine as long as it's more or less straight back.

IDK, I'm 34. My M1 weighs half of the SAW I carried. That's not even counting ammo.

An M4 with optic IR laser, light and ammo probably weighs more than an M1 too. Attached File


Attached File

Yea, I have M1As and ARs, and I'll take the AR every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I would take an AK before I took an M1A. Might even take an M1 Garand since my experience with M1As hasn't been all that positive, and from what I've heard the real M14s are just as bad if not worse.

That was a case of the old lady who swallowed the fly. It's the end (hopefully) of a long history of people trying to keep the M1 in service. The M14 was supposed to make the M1 modern enough to compete with assault rifles, and the EBR was supposed to fix the M14. It did an okay job, but for the price and all things being equal it would have been far better to just get new rifles.

The EBR started out as a slightly modified GI fiberglass stock with a Sage 870 stock retrofitted to it. Some SEALs that specialized in arctic warfare had requested an M14 with a collapsible stock so they could use it while on skis, so that's what Crane came up with. After making 300 of them, Sage told Crane that they wouldn't make them anymore because machining the GI fiberglass stocks was too laborious. They didn't plan on making enough of them to justify investing in injection molds, so they just milled some chassis out of aluminum billets.

This naturally improved accuracy, and that's when other branches started eyeing them. In some ways it made some sense, because for around 700 dollars they could actually make their M14s work, and due to the bureaucracy they knew they weren't getting new rifles.

People just assume that because the EBR was used that that somehow means the M14 is this great battle rifle. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It's adequate at best. In the Sage chassis it's pretty good, but it's also heavy and unwieldy, and of course the reliability problems inherent to the M14 are also suffered by the EBR. All the EBR solves is the accuracy problem and it allows for mounting stuff.

In other words it's just a case of people doing what they had to. They had M14s forced on them. It was either use them and make the most of them or go without a thirty cal rifle. So make the most of them they did.

No one ever claimed the M14 could compete with assault rifles.

Army Ordnance failed to embrace the assault rifle concept after WWII, and this didn’t change until the adoption of the AR-15.

They said the M14 would replace several weapons, and several different roles, but “assault rifle” was never one of them.

They did make claims about the 20 round magazine “increasing firepower,” which it did. The full auto too, but that was generally a waste of ammo in real life.

The M14 was viewed as being an improved M1, the rifle which won WWII. This was flawed logic, certainly, but it wasn’t insane. They simply failed to account for the assault rifle concept.

The EBR stock wasn’t created to “fix” the M14. You got the origin right further down in your post. The stock was collapsible, and the rails exist to allow mounting modern accessories such as lights and lasers. That’s a “fix” any plain battle rifle from the 50’s needed, but that doesn’t mean it was incapable for the form of warfighting which existed at its debut.

It makes perfect sense, for exactly the reasons you stated.

Later when they allowed spending SCAR 17 money, that was a superior solution.

The M14 was a great battle rifle long before anyone dreamed up an improved stock.

It’s great at being a battle rifle, nothing more. It certainly could not perform all the roles envisioned for it by Army Ordnance, but it was among the finest battle rifles fielded at the time. (Only the AR-10 was better IMHO).

The MK14 EBR is certainly heavy and unwieldy, but I don’t know what reliability problems you’re referring to.

The M14 never had any reliability problems. There were none “inherent” to its design. It solved all the reliability problems found in the M1 rifle.

Whether they came right out and said it or not, the M14 was an attempt at modernizing the M1 so it could serve as an assault rifle. Select fire, detachable magazine, meant to replace SMGs, carbines, and rifles...sounds awfully familiar. It was basically a case of army ordnance trying to justify their continued existence, with the help of regressionist thinking brass. They saw what was going on in other countries and in the private sector in the US and knew they were about to be out of a job. So we got the M14, it sucked, it got replaced with the M16, and they shelved it. But since it was their only thirty caliber rifle they were forced to bring them out of storage every time something got kicked up. They should have just sold them to some poor banana republic and replaced with them with AR10s, but that would have been the rational thing to do and the military has an aversion to rationality. So fifty years later we're still having to pull those blasted things out of storage every time there's a war and we get the EBR.

Once the arctic stock transitioned to the full on EBR, Crane took that opportunity to address the problems inherent to the M14, mainly the lack of anything resembling precision. The Navy's M14s in their original fiberglass stocks were doing 4 MOA and worse, and I'm pretty sure that was with M118LR if memory serves me correctly. Their engineers put quite a bit of effort into figuring out a way to make the things repeatable under combat conditions. That's why you have to remove the optics and eleven machine screws for basic cleaning. Because that's what it takes to make the M14 combat accurate is two pounds of aluminum and steel and a handful of machine screws. Mind you, this brought the stock M14 down to 2 MOA with M118LR and around 2.5 MOA with M80. So we're not talking anything spectacular here. The SOB weighs about the same as a PSG1 and groups no better than an FAL.

And it's still an M14 at the end of the day. The feasibility reports stacked it up against other battle rifles of the day, namely the FAL, and basically found it to be the most costly, inaccurate, unreliable battle rifle ever made. Mindbogglingly, it was actually found to be inferior to the M1. For craps and giggles apparently, they also stacked it up against assault rifles and found it inferior to everything, including the AK. So no, the M14 was never a great battle rifle. It wasn't even an okay battle rifle.

Saying the M14 "sucked" is as asinine as saying the BM59 and Garand sucked.
If you really feel an accurate, reliable and hard hitting rifle sucks you have more issues than the rifles.

No one I know thinks ANY one rifle is the best choice for every application or situation, YMMV.

Did you even read my post? Real world accuracy for an off the rack M14 is 4 MOA if you're lucky (as reported by Crane), and accurizing them is extremely difficult, unpredictable, and delicate. Add two pounds of aluminum and you can squeeze that down to 2-3 MOA. Basically all of the Mk14s were 2 MOA guns, with the exception of the Mod 2 and Mod 0 SEI, which both had heavier precision barrels and did 1.5 MOA with M118LR. If memory serves me correctly, the Mod 2 without optics weighs roughly the same as a PSG1 with optics. Despite being half MOA capable, the PSG1 is famous for failing because of its ridiculous weight, just for reference. Note that the SSRs from which the Mod 2s were made were also 1.5 MOA guns, and we're talking full heavy barrels, glass bedded match stocks, the works.

I really don't know anything about the BM59, but my understanding is that it's closer to being an M1 than an M14. The M14 was found to be inferior to the M1 in testing (think that was the Hitch report, but don't quote me on that). The M1 wasn't without its problems either. All the M1 family suffers from being overly sensitive to debris due to its wide open action and the design of the trigger group. You have a trigger design that's sensitive to debris sitting under a huge gap where sand and crap can just fly in there. Then you have the chamber almost fully exposed while it's cycling. Maybe it was the best option at the time, but it wasn't a very good design, and there were WAY better rifles available by the time the M14 came around.

You are so full of shit I hope you have brown eyes.

The builders used drop in M14 receivers and barrels and shipped EBR's that were MOA.
Want to keep guessing or buy a vowel ?

http://www.gunsandammo.com/editorial/how-the-u-s-army-builds-the-m14-ebr-ri/247604#

Saying the PSG-1 was failed removes any doubt you are a door knob.

Nope, baby blues.

You should be aware that you're quoting an article that has a picture of a SOCOM 16 labeled as an EBR-RI. Just sayin'. That picture has been up for six months, and no one has caught it yet. Every time I see that page pop up it floors me that they haven't changed the picture yet.

TACOM evaluated the EBR-RIs using three shot groups, and even then I have to believe there was some fudging going on. Crane basically did the same exact thing and got 2 MOA with the same ammo, but shooting 5 shot groups.
It was wildly successful in the sense that it was very accurate, but due to its weight it never saw widespread success. It was just too danged heavy. Basically it was limited to being fixed in an overwatch position.

You're also totally missing the point.

No matter how much you modernize any battle rifle, it's still a battle rifle.
The SCAR 17, FAL, G3, BM-59, and M14 are all battle rifles. People who make the mistake of calling them assault rifles obviously don't know how to classify small arms.

You and I know what an assault rifle is. Army Ordnance acted like they weren't interested in one, but you're correct that would've better met most of their requirements (along with a carbine and LMG variant). That isn't what they spec'd however. They specified a battle rifle (and later some LMG accessories, since the M15 was cancelled) and that's exactly what they got.

I agree they should've considered the AR10 family instead, but they didn't.
There was even a belt-fed variant with a QD barrel, which might've been a better choice than the flawed M60.

I think you're missing the point. We got the EBR because there were still M14 rifles available in storage. (At least that's why Sage scored such massive contracts from all the service branches anyway).
There were already newer/better rifles available (KAC MK11, M110, SCAR 17) but the SEALs were the first adopters of the EBR stock, and they had no shortage of the "superior" 7.62 weapons, so they must've thought the M14 still had merits to warrant its use. Maybe it's not so unreliable and inaccurate after all.

No, they took the opportunity to create an aluminum chassis which replaced any need for bedding. That's how precision M14 rifles used to be converted. It was a job for an actual gunsmith or highly skilled armorer, whereas the Sage EBR stock can be installed by anyone with the right screwdriver.

Plenty of precision M14 rifles existed prior to the EBR. The M21 sniper rifle enjoyed a relatively successful career, and the M25 was still in use by SOCOM at the time. The USMC had adopted their first M14 DMR around 2001 (NSN established Sept. 1998) and it utilized a McMillan stock.

5.5 MOA is the worst any service-accepted M14 was allowed to shoot (per the original 1959 contract specs) but most of them held around 4 MOA. That's the original iron sight service rifle.
The sniper rifle and DMR variants all held 2 MOA or less. I have one I built that'll do 0.75 MOA with hand loaded 168gr. Match Kings, and I'm no magician.

Acceptable accuracy for a MILSPEC M16 is 4.5 MOA. We're talking about mass-issued service rifles (which are capable of being accurized for sniper use).

Show me any FAL that'll print 2 MOA or less consistently. I'll wait.
You think M14 rifles are difficult to maintain precision accuracy with? The FAL bolt carrier has to be built up with weld and fitted just to obtain anything close to that, and is a nightmare to maintain. You cannot make your FAL more precise simply by bolting it into a heavy aluminum stock.

What report are you referring to?

The only US report I've ever heard of which compared the T44 (M14) to the T48 (FAL) concluded both were equally acceptable as battle rifles for US service.
At least we got the one which could be accurized into a sniper/DMR variant. FALs suck at that.

That's awesome.

I know several guys who hunt deer with their M1s, as do a few 'Mini-G' owners (Shuff's 16" M1s).

What are all of the M-14 reliability problems?

Here we go with more internet bullshit....

any M14s that were used in GWOT were 40+ years old.  Few people in the field knew how to maintain them or do basic mods to accurize them.  The M14 is actually a very accurate rifle. But when springs are worn out, barrels are worn out at the throat and muzzle, wooden stocks are crushed where the trigger guard presses into it, castle nuts are loose, gas systems are rattling about, etc., that can make ANY rifle inaccurate.

Bitching about used-up M14s being inaccurate is like bitching about M16s being inaccurate because the barrel nut was loose, the flash suppressor was loose, and the barrel had 7000 rounds thru it.  The problems with the GWOT M14s were maintenance and age  issues, not design problems.

An new-condition M14 in a tight-fitting USGI fiberglass stock, with the gas system shimmed, and the flat oprod spring guide replaced with a round National Match one, is easily 2MOA with surplus ammo.  I've put a LOT of rounds thru standard M1As with those 3 mods and that ammo.

The M14s all underwent major overhauls in the 1980's. They took the good ones and rebarreled them and just generally went through and got rid of all the lemons. For all intents and purposes, the M14s that have been deployed since then have been brand new.

There are no basic mods to accurize an M14. That's why the EBR chassis exists in the first place.

Not true.

Peen the slots on the barrel where the gas system rails slide over it so the gas system doesn't slide back and forth.
Shim the gas system with a $3 set of shims so the front band doesn't rattle.
Replace the oprod spring guide with a National Match one for $45.
Replace wooden stock with a USGI fiberglass stock.

those basic mods can tighten the M14 up quite well.

I'm quite amused that the first trick involves taking a hammer to the barrel.

yeah, well, it was a different era.

I'm not arguing the M14 should never have been replaced, or is better than the AR, I'm merely addressing this nonsense that they are not capable of being less than 4MOA without a Sage stock.

Like I said, they overhauled all the $#!* guns back in the 80's. Pretty much all the stuff identified in the Hitch report they fixed and weeded out the lemons. These guns were good to go.

Well sure, but getting them there and keeping them there in the field for any length of time is damn near impossible. A fiberglass stock is not the solution. Plenty of them had fiberglass stocks and still shot 4 MOA. You have to bed, and that's an artform. Plus it doesn't last for very long, it's inconsistent to begin with, and it can take a dump on you at a moment's notice.

This thread has almost read like a GD thread.

OP... The m1a is an out dated clunky overweight icon of a bygone era. I love it too. I have 4 of them and am going to go pick up my 5th one in a few hours from the dealer. 2 scouts in vltor stocks, 1 stainless loaded, and a m14s in a MCS chassis. I'll be picking up a socom16 today. For being a clunky old rifle, it's still getting tweaked and played with because it's a great rifle. It's not designed for MOA. It's designed for battlefield conditions pushing a round with nearly 3x the mass of a 5.56 at a nice hefty velocity.

My scout, supressed, amount 2x with 50rd drum is a heavy pig. The recoil is negligible. It's grin factor is amazing and all of them except the M14s have been 100% reliable. The m14s should be fine now (yes. The chamber is within spec for 7.62x51) just had a shitty oem extractor that was dull as hell.

We use what we are comfortable with. Bump in the night... I'm grabbing my m1a scout or my 870aow, or maybe my Beretta 96.

If you’re worried about the very marginal velocity gain and subsequent minor trajectory improvement in a few inches of barrel beyond 20” then 308 isn’t the cartridge for you.

That seems like a bit of a reach.

Some .308 loads will do more damage than any of the 5.56 loads.  NO?  Like the 155 Amax for example.  There are probably more.  I just don't think any of the 5.56 loads will compete with the best .308 loads.  Now, whether or not the extra performance is necessary probably depends on your target....  Or maybe not.  But one can argue the merits on either side.

I carried a Garand one of the last hunting seasons I went.  I was about 30 years old and in pretty good shape.  I got into a swamp that had snow up to my thighs and even though the gun wasn't the hardest part about that trudge, it wouldv'e been an easier walk, and less fatiguing with my Marlin lever.

To me, there are always upsides and downsides to all choices.  I think the upside to a battle rifle is you will gain some performance.  Otherwise 5.56 would be considered good enough for Elk.  That is simply ridiculous.   But there's not doubt that less recoil will give you quicker follow up shots and in a lighter gun to boot.  And allow you to carry more ammo.  That can be a good thing too.

I don't know what Steve is really talking about though.  If you're comparing his Army experience, most of the M4's dudes carry around in the service now are about the same weight with light and optic and whatever else they might have on there.

Heck, even my AR's are kind of heavy to me.  LOL.  But I'm a messed up dude with Lyme Disease, so.....    Personally, I would love a gun that weighs as much as an M-1 Carbine but hits like a .308 and has the recoil of a .22.  hehehehehehe

I have an m1a and I have a handful of AR’s. If things go south, I’m grabbing an AR. The m1a is a good rifle, but it isn’t the AR. The only reason the military resurrected the m14’s was due to the extended engagement distances encountered in Afghanistan. Yes the 308 goes further and hits harder but that comes at a cost. And I would challenge anyone to show me an m1a that is as accurate as some of the AR’s I’ve seen. I’ve never seen an m1a shoot sub 0.75 minute consistently.

I wonder if there would've been as many complaints in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan if they all had the Smith Crazy Horse builds.  To say an M14 has no way to mod it for accuracy I don't think is completely true.

I personally don't get the hate for the M14.  But I've never had to carry one in harms way.  But there have been guys that have carried them that liked them.  If you read the conquests of Carlos Hathcock, his spotter, John Burke, seemed to always be carrying an M14.   And those guys put a lot of hurt on people.

I'm sure it's not the perfect rifle.  But what is?  I know of two members on this site that have used them in harms way and didn't have the disdain for them that I hear from so many people on here.  Which to me sometimes just feels like.....   maybe not the whole truth.   One of the members has talked about it on here in the past and they one they used was in an EBR chassis.  The other guy that used one, it was in one of those OD pistol gripped type stocks that you see some of the marines had.....

They might have hated it if they had to deal with Ron Smith. No dealings with him myself, but his reputation precedes him enough that I kind of don't want to...

The thing is, they just didn't have any other options. If they could have chosen between that and an FN or HK there wouldn't have been any contest.

Again, it's not that the M14 can't be accurized. It's just that bedding is difficult, time consuming, expensive, inconsistent, and not durable enough in the field. Thus the EBR chassis' success. It's heavy, but it's the only solution that allows for unit level maintenance in the field. Plus it's durable enough for actual use. A bedding job can be ruined by simply picking it up wrong. Most importantly, the EBRs are consistent, and they don't just take a dump for no apparent reason. With bedding, you don't know what you're going to get, and you never know how long it's going to last.

Yeah, that may be.  But I would think the trigger pullers might not have to deal with Ron himself????  Possibly???  Maybe the armorers?

Who knows..

I don't want to misrepresent what any of the people I'm thinking of think about the M14.  So I'll link what Steve-Oh said about it.  He definitely said there were better choices but on the other hand he said the EBR they used work.  Just that there are better choices now.  And loading that way is not great under stress.  Not to take away anything from him but that's all relative.   If I had to choose between an M14 and a Garand I think I'd take the M14 because that seems like it would be easier to deal with ammo issues than a Garand.  I like Garands, but rocking a 20 round mag in compared to slapping an 8 round en bloc clip in would probably be less time in the long run.  Even though the enbloc clip might be faster.  But you have to do it twice to one mag.  And 5 times per two mags...  You get the picture.  Plus topping off is really not something you can do in stressful situations.  You CAN actually do it with a Garand, but it's not really an easy thing to do.

Now compared to an AR or some other modern rifles, loading an M14 is probably slower than most.

https://www.ar15.com/forums/armory/Is_the_M1A_obsolete_/2-451490/?page=4

Sir:
The M14 was fielded about 15yrs ago to fill the shortages of the M110.  It was a stop-gap, better than nothing fill in.
The Services have long since shelved the M14 and moved on to other rifles.

Carlos Hathcock carried a Winchester model 70, not an M14.