Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Don't criticize if you are ignorant

In comments to my recent test of firearms, a conversation began where I said this:

Selective fire means, under Federal law, machine gun. Having a variant that is a machine gun is not the same thing as being a machine gun. You are also incorrect, in that ALL of the weapons above have a select fire variant.
Pretty much every weapon (or its variants) were designed for military use, and that includes knives. My statement stands: Only two of the above weapons were never issued to a military for use by soldiers. Calling an AR-15 an M-16 is misleading at best.

In response, an anonymous poster said this:

The M1 Garand was NEVER produced for issue in a selective fire variant. The "selective fire M-1" was ether the BM-59 or the M14. Nether one is an M-1. The AR-15 IS NOT an M-16. 99% of all the firearms ever designed were made for civilian-not military- use. You really don't know very much about firearms , do you?
1. I apparently know more than you. For starters, the M1 Garand had at least one select fire version:

U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30 T20E2
Operation: Gas, select-fire
Automatic operation: 700 rounds per minute
Rifle Weight: unloaded, without accessories: 9.63 pounds
20-round magazine weight: empty: .55 pounds; loaded: 1.69 pounds
Grenade launcher: .47 pounds
M1 Bayonet: 1.0 pound
Overall length: 44.88 inches
Barrel length: 23.7 inches,
Rifling: 4-grooves, right hand twist, 1:10

The testing and evaluation at the Aberdeen proving ground was completed, and the US ordered 100,000 of them for the invasion of the Japanese mainland, but the war ended before they went into production and the order was cancelled. The design was modified into what later became the M14 rifle.

2. I still stand behind the statement that pretty much every weapon (or its variants) were made for military use.

3. i never called the AR15 an M16, but other than the fire control group and bolt carrier, they are the same weapon. Due to restrictions on full auto fire control group parts, it is not easy to convert the AR15 into its full auto cousin, but there is a lot of parts commonality.

Name ten firearms that were designed from the ground up exclusively for civilian and not military use, and are not just a variant of a military design.

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