Female Kent State Graduate Carries AR-10 on Campus

breitbart.com ^ | 5/16/2018 | AWR Hawkins

[schurmann]

“...back in my USAF days in the ‘60s, I never got to fire an M-16 ... AF did most of its annual qualifications using the ancient M-1 carbine, a firearm that I never found to be very accurate. One year, I did get to qualify on the M-2 carbine including full auto training ...(...every Hollywood director gets it completely wrong.) [Seaplaner, post 52]

Thanks.

Forum members are encouraged to do their own research in the historical record and form their own conclusions.

Much of US issue rifle development history in the post-WW2 period is quite controversial, and few authors can resist putting their own slant on it. Gunwriters included. Much official documentation hasn’t been released; it’s not classified, but US Army authorities maintain tight control (I tried several times to gain access, but was always refused).

Field testing of entrants in the “Light Rifle” competition (which ultimately resulted in the adoption of the M14) was done so poorly that the rest of DoD lost confidence in US Army Ordnance as a lead agency for small arms. When M14 production ran into serious problems, then-SecDef McNamara used the sum total of the difficulties as leverage to shut down Springfield Armory and completely reorganize the Ordnance establishment. It wasn’t mere personal picque being acted out by a high-level bureaucrat: a few years later, when the Joint Services Small Arms Assessment Program was set up to select a replacement for the M1911 pistol, program authority was handed to USAF, and the Weapons Lab at Eglin ran the entire show.

When I entered USAFA in 1971, USAF required cadets to undergo rifle qualification using the M16. No field training at all: simple on-range work, semi only (any Basic Cadet who somehow contrived to fire full auto was in for a very bad time at the hands of upperclassmen). Didn’t fire any full auto myself until a special history-class field trip to Ft Carson in winter 1973: each of us got to fire one burst of five rounds from the M16A1s then issued in the US Army.

Taking things back yet further, at the time USAFA issued M1 Garands to the lower three classes: fully functional, but all we did was drill & parades, and shoot blanks through them during field training. Almost two years later, we cadets discovered that everyone’s firing pin had been removed. Six months after that, we cadets discovered that the firing-pin holes in all bolts had been filled with weld. Less than six months later, we found steel rods had been welded into the chambers of every cadet’s M1. No official word was ever released by the leadership, on why our rifles had been altered (we always turned our rifles in to the Cadet Armory before going on leave, so all of the work had to have been done during leave for Christmas, spring break, or summer {always 1/3 leave, 2/3 specialized training}).

In retrospect, I can only blame it on the general anti-military feelings of the time (1971-75 in my case), helicopter parents (just starting to make themselves felt), and anti-gun attitudes then spreading farther among academics and government officials. Two cadet suicides by gun happened while I was a cadet, but neither involved an issue weapon, and the modifications to our stand of M1s had already gotten under way before the two unfortunates shot themselves. Cadet lore & legend had it that a couple cadets did do themselves in, one or two years before our class entered, with their issue M1s (firing a blank at your body at point blank range kills you just as dead as a bullet will), but I know of no official corroboration of those incidents.

After our class graduated, thee M1s were traded for rubber-moulded replicas of the M16, weighted with real barrels (worn, one assumed) and sling swivels: drill dummies.

In 2005 or thereabouts, the Air Force announced that USAFA was again going to issue “real” rifles: this time it was to be M14s. An article appeared in the magazine published by the Association of Graduates: haphazardly researched, written by someone with zero experience with firearms, and edited by someone completely ignorant - not only about guns but about weapon systems and military procedures. The source of the M14s wasn’t mentioned, only that a sufficient quantity had been “found” and that USAF had obtained custody of them. More column inches were spent on describing how the rifles were being “modified” - deWATed - to render them permanently incapable of firing live rounds or blanks, and thus they would not be “hurting” anyone.

I’d have resigned from the AOG right then, had I not already paid for a life membership. But then I was virtually alone during my cadet career, as an individual insistent on treating my issue rifle as the weapon I knew it to be. Saw the same thing throughout an active duty career that eventually totaled over 24-1/2 years. Still don’t agree with service groupthink on that score.

My experience with M1 Carbines has been just the same as yours: inaccurate. Held true through all the early replicas, including the IMI ones, or so I heard. The more recent ones by Kahr and the new Inland Mfg company are said to be better.

I’m betting that even the original GI Carbines fired smaller groups than any open-bolt submachine gun.