[dcwusmc]

Nope. I would love to have a 20 or 30 round mag for my Garand. I know the shortcomings of it... but the ideal battle rifle to me would be the Garand with a detachable magazine. The 30-06 is an excellent military round for most purposes. It can reach out as far as you would normally require, it is not deflected by twigs and stuff and it has enough power when it hits to take down your enemy... Yes, it's heavy, yes, the ammo is heavier than .223, but it is far more dependable, IMHO, than anything since. The M-14 was kinda, sorta OK, the M-16 was an unmitigated disaster when the Army got done with it... took a lot of lives and numerous years before they got it fixed...

BUT it's not the number of rounds you carry in the weapon, only how well you put them downrange into the bad guys. Massive firepower is great but they typical Vietnam grunt carried a 100 pound pack already and when you added in mortar baseplates, rounds, M-60 belts, etcetera, you realize the limits of what you can take with you in terms of ammo... so accuracy counts for much!!!

[Shooter 2.5]

Well you just spewed a bunch of urban legends.
I guess you didn't know that even a .50 BMG round is deflected by one inch twigs.
Once the powder was changed, the chamber chromed, the M-16 became as reliable as ever and it didn't take years and years to do it.
A Garand with a box magazine is called Italy's Beretta BM59, created over 40 years ago and no longer used.
30-06 is not more dependable than anything else. One day an engineer noticed the powder didn't fill a 30-06 case and in wishing to speed the cyclic rate, they introduced the .308.

[Travis McGee]

The Army did make a Garand with a detachable box mag: they called it the M-14.

I still don't get your devotion to the nice (for 1945) 8 shot Garand.