M-14 Rifle - Test of New Mags

we dont use a 30'6 round anymore...

no, if your soldiers are trained not to do a mag dump every time they see one guy....

That is what the M16 was designed to do though. The round was chosen so the rifle could be fired accurately with long burst of automatic fire.

yea, but the only reason they changed it was so that dumb ass's wont run out of ammo with in the first 30 seconds of the firefight, and to give the barrel time to cool down

Still the main function of the M16 is to provide accurate long range full automatic fire. If they wanted long range semi auto and short range full auto performance they would have stuck with the M14.

Note true. It was so the solider could carry more ammo. Thats why the selecter goes safe, semi, full. In fact the military was getting away from full auto on them cause of the waste of ammo. Thats where the 3 rd burst comes in. No gun is dead on at long ranges in full auto it recoils no matter what the caliber. A little barrel rise only get worse the farther out the target gets. The AK is meant for full auto. So young untrained men could shoot it if need be. Spray & Pray.

The AR10 was never adopted by the military unless I am missing something.

Pretty much ALL bullets, regardless of caliber and grain are going to suffer a significant amount of bullet drop at farther distances, but it's easily compensated for by a trained marksman with a high quality scope who knows how to accurately judge distance, calculate bullet drop, and windage to make adjustments to his scope. Some high power rounds, like the .50 BMG or the Barret .416 have an extremely flat trajectory at similar distances, but still drop noticeably forcing you to compensate.

Basically right, but the Armalite rifles produced for the military were always select fire. They've all had a semi-auto position on the selector between safe and auto. The differences in fire control between the different variants was a difference in the type of auto. Some were full auto and some had a burst cam and would only fire 3 rounds per trigger pull, but all had a semi-auto function. You are basically right, in the respect that they switched from full auto to burst to save ammo.

Yeah, no problem. That's the short and sweet explanation, anyhow. That's based off of what I've read about the two firearms, and my practical experience with the two I own. I have an M1 Garand who's serial number places it as a 1942 year of production, but it was refurbished after the war and has a newer 1950 barrel. I also have an M1A (M14 clone), and both of them are a blast to shoot. I always wanted a "real" M14, but I don't think that will happen for legal and financial reasons.