Back in ’61, when I was about 12, an Armalite sales rep staged a demonstration for our county sheriff’s department at the local police range. Since my father was the state Hi-Power expert, he was invited to observe, and I got to go along.
The AR-15 was employed on a cinder wall, and blew it apart. I got to shoot it because the sales rep was trying to sell it on the fact that it had light recoil, as compared to the M-1. One trick he used was to place the butt against his chin and fire single shots.
The sheriff was underwhelmed. These were the days when police departments still cared what the citizens thought of them, and EVERYONE was a combat vet. A series of the 5.56mm rounds, impacting on a soft target, at ranges of 100 yards or less, tends to separate the target into large, soggy pieces. Blowing a felon apart in the middle of downtown was considered bad form, back then.
The Air Force, however, under Curtis LeMay, were the first to adopt the Armalite, for the SAC Air Police, during the early part of the JFK love affair with the Green Beanies. LeMay was hot to get funding, was jealous of what he considered undue attention being paid to what he considered a bunch of muddy, smelly snake eaters, and loved the latest Buck Rodgers toys. He wanted to show that zoomies could crawl thru the weeds with the best of them.
The Army adopted the Mattie Mattel because attempts to teach doggies how to shoot, without actually spending time snapping in, and further time living, eating and worshiping the great God, Rifle, were a failure. The current issue weapon, the M-14, required that the rifleman be comfortable with shooting. Instead, with the M-16, there was the “quickshoot” training, where the troopies were taught to replace aimed shot placement with “suppressing fires”, (spraying the area in hopes of a hit, witness the duplex round as another such attempt) by walking down a path and blasting away on full auto at pop-up targets.
The ARVNs got them next, when even the Five-Sided Square finally determined that the average dink was too small to handle a surplus M-1, and that the M-1 carbine can’t kill very well.
Well into Da'Nam, The Corps liked the idea of being able to shoot thru a palm tree and kill the man behind it.
The polite, Democratic, fiction that the ’16 was meant to wound and not kill, thus occupying 3 more caring individuals and burdening the logistics, is just that, fiction. An M-16 will rip a man to bits with one burst, at 75 meters. At 750 meters, you're just going to piss him off. Any wounded the VC, and later the NVA cared for, were most often injured by shell fragments. Care of the wounded is contingent on access to prompt medical treatment. Too often, mercy to the wounded is a bullet in the head. A man who has been gutted like a fish can live a surprisingly long time, and will scream every second of the rest of his life. Tactics indicate that whoever goes after him will get shot. Traumatic injuries often will not allow the injured man to politely bleed to death, and shock is not always a reliable anesthetic. When you add to the equation that if the Other side gets hold of him, they will see how long They can prolong his suffering, like sticking his wedding tackle on a twig several feet away, or peeling him like a banana, a bullet now is not such a bad offer.
The M-14 can be fired dry. This is not such a bad thing in the desert. The '14 is, however, too large for your average half-starved "freedom fighter."
Until the Geneva Convention is ignored, and frangible bullets are allowed, the 9mm will remain a joke. I watched a Spook who decided to bring his 9mm Swedish "K" gun on a snoop and poop in the Weeds. Events were that he emptied a full mag into a really P.O.d dink, who was about ready to gut the spook with a knife when a 12 Ga. loaded with dimes removed a big piece of meat and Mr. Charles went down...
If you have to let a bad guy, who you have seen approaching for the last week get within 100 meters to be able to put him away, there is something wrong with your weapon.
Criminal Number 18F