The M14 can't legally be sold to the public because it has a selective fire receiver. Now, a 7.62mm rifle is useless in full-auto fire, but that's the law -- no auto weapons for the general public since 1986.
3rd World countries don't want M14s. They're poor, not foolish. The FAL is a better weapon in the M14 class, as is the G3, and armies today want a more compact weapon anyway, which sends them to M16s if they are close to the USA and AKs if they aren't (AKs are dirt cheap. 40 million built, and Chinese slave labour is working three shifts making more. Supply has crushed demand...).
A friend of mine carried an M14 in Afghanistan. Specifically, because of its range. In his hands, it was very effective from one side of the valley to another, where the M4 was basically out of accuracy beyond 500 yards. I liked the M4A1. (I think the rails system needs work, though). One of the few pictures I have of me from there, I'm holding his M14, which is kind of funny because I think it's the only time I picked it up!
The 77 grain bullet mentioned was developed by Black Hills for the ill fated (ill-conceived) SPR. From the M4 it is more effective than the horrible M855 greentip round, which overpenetrates humans and other animals. The Marines wanted to penetrate a steel helmet at 800 yards, which is why that round is the way it is.
Many of the problems with reliability are due to crappy, lowest-bidder, minority-set-aside-contractor magazines. Most of us have hoarded old mags.
When I first learnt to clear buildings, it was done with pistols. Nowadays it is done with rifles... much more effectively. While the M4 is very short, the M16 is only 39 inches (1 metre) long. I can't imagine anyone downing an M16 to clear buildings with an AK-47... the 16 points a lot more naturally. And yeah, I've fired a lot of rounds through both of them.
I suspect the guys carrying AKs were just trying to look, what's the Marine term, "salty?" In the Army we'd say, "Hollywood!"
A 9mm pistol will disable a motivated man with any hit that a .45 will. And will fail to disable him with any other hit. Bullet placement is the alpha and the omega (hopefully, the omega for the other guy). I like the idea that somebody had, about making handguns a private purchase item (some police departments do this already). Unfortunately, the Army is overrun with Clintonistas. They are especially prevalent in the MP Branch and Army policy enforces a gun ban regime that would do Adolf himself proud.
I do think that John Browning was an almost supernatural designer. His M2HB still rocks. The .45 is a very fine weapon (that's what I was clearing buildings with, Back In The Day) but the M9 is also an excellent weapon. With decent mags it's 100% dependable. Unfortunately, it had to follow Browning's .45. Like, who remembers who was the second guy on the Moon, the pope who came after Saint Peter, or the first Vice-President of the United States?
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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.