The Annoyed Man wrote:If you review a lot of the combat footage from Iraq/Afghanistan, you’ll see that what seems like most of the time, soldiers/marines in combat are either firing their weapons in semiautomatic mode, or 2-3 round bursts in automatic mode. Even guys on the SAW or M240 are not hosing the target down with long drawn out 50 round bursts. The reason for this is simple: semiautomatic fire is more controlled, and therefore usually more effective. I am mindful of the fact that US troops armed with semiautomatic Garands got an awful lot of good work done in WW2 - some of it in the face of German troops armed with the first ever intermediate caliber select-fire assault weapons, the MP42 and MP44. Automatic fire has its purpose, but it seems to me that semiauto is a lot more effective in most situations - because aimed fire is more effective than spray and pray, and it is very difficult to aim a weapon in full-auto mode as accurately as one can with semiauto.
That right there, more than anything else, is the reason that I never bought a bump stock. I don’t think they should be illegal, but I don’t think they are that necessary. And one of the things that that Charles Cotton has pointed out before is the optics of the whole thing. In other words, in a political climate in which gun advocates and gun controllers both are wigging out over school shootings, is a device which will increase your rate of fire from maybe 150 rounds per minute to 800 rounds per minute really the issue on which you want to stake out your ground? Passage of National reciprocity is an important issue, and it should pass. It is MORE important to the free exercise of the 2nd Amendment than are bumpstocks. Passage of the Hearing Protection Act is a really important issue for the reasons that it is a matter of hearing health, and a matter of decreasing the power of the ATF to control our affairs. It’s not that bumpstocks should be illegal, but you have to be blind to the optics of the thing to not see that (A) defending it at this time in this climate is a losing proposition, and (B) making a stand on bump stocks will drag down Reciprocity and the HPA along with it. The intelligent response is to cut your losses and try to make gains where you can. In that kind of environment, it seems to me that the best course of action, if need be, is to throw bump stocks to the wolves so that we can possibly still salvage the HPA and national reciprocity.....both of which are more important to the free exercise than the bump stock is.
Full-auto with an M-16 will put a BIG smile on your face, but it's practical use is really limited to that few seconds when you are about to be overrun by enemy forces. The 3-round burst is sometimes useful to increase hit probability at shorter (<100 yds) range against a fast moving enemy.
Point to ponder: US Military rifle qualifications are done in semi-auto. Some of our European allies do compete with 3-round burst, but the ones I've seen were shooter-controlled bursts with a full-auto rifle.