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The '14 is and was a fine weapon and it became particularly valuable when the early M16s began to fail. It was a miserable experience for our Marines when the M16s began to jam up very often and fatal if you were in the wrong end of a firefight. The '14 was long, weighty and a bear to handle in full-A - but it was very accurate, powerful, and very lethal.

Firing full auto from the standing position is the province of the submachinegun. Since they weigh the same as the regular battle rifle and only fire a pistol caliber, they are controllable from the standing. Sort of: you still have to lean forward a bit to offset recoil. The AK and the StG-44 before it started the used of "intermediate" rifle calibers meant to blend submachineguns and rifles and therefore higher rates of fire from walking troops. Most of us who have faced the AK in combat know that unless the first shot hits you, you're golden because the rest will sail above you to threaten treetops. We did the same thing with the M16 but the Mousegun had the advantage of a much lower recoil impulse and therefore greater controllability from the offhand. I have fired the M16 a lot since Vietnam and the full automatic versions were very controllable - but not necessarily very lethal or effective against protected targets.

The army pushed towards a concept called "walking fire" in the '80s that somewhat amusingly, included the M60 machine gun. The last version of the M60 - the M60E3 - had a little thin wispy barrel and a vertical foregrip so you could stand and chunk away with it. The problem was, as anyone with half a brain already knew, machine gun barrels get hot - really hot - and the M60E3 barrels melted. Literally. I had a desk full of S-shaped M60E3 barrels with bullet holes through the side of them. That's why the Corps went to the M240 to replace the M60 and nobody proposed "walking fire" anymore (mainly because standing around in a firefight more or less guarantees death).

I am a bit of fossil now but if my country called me to serve with a rifle, I'd still lean towards the M14 because it, like me, is an antique - but a really effective antique!