Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease!

Geek with a .45 is reporting that the M-16 rifle may be seeing it's last days.

Oh Frabjus day! Oh radient light from heaven! Oh cleansing firepower!

Now, just to clear things up a bit, it's not that I don't like the M-16. No, I loath that rifle.

I've been polite around people who like it. I mean hey, it can be fun to shoot, it's a great varmint rifle, low arc, decent velocity, yada yada yada. But as a battle rifle? I'd rather have a slingshot. The 5.56 round is pathetic when it comes to any decent kind of damage on a man-sized target. Time and time again, reports would come back about enemy combatants who had been shot with an M-16 AND KEPT ON COMING! BAD JUJU! BAD! BAD! Why in g-d's name would you give your troops a round with the same diameter as a freakin' .22? I enjoy plinking as much as the next guy, but not when my life depends on it! If the round doesn't knock a guy flat on his ass when he's hit with it, then it damn well better do enough damage so that he doesn't want to keep fighting! In this regard, the 5.56 FAILS!

And then lets look at the chamber of the gun... have any of you ever seen the chamber of an M-16? It's a mess, with eight different lugs that have to be manuvered around just to clean the damn thing. And it's tempermental, man. One speck of dirt in the wrong place and the gun will jam, or the round won't seat, or the bolt will slow down and double-feed rounds. It flat out sucks. Tempermental battle rifles ARE NOT GOOD THINGS!

And to top it all off, the gun is designed in such a way that it gets dirty quick. It's gas-operated, meaning the gas from a fired round is forced back into the bolt to push the bolt back and cycle another round into the chamber. You can't clean the damn gas tube out with anything other than string and CLP, because if you try to clean it with a Q-Tip the swab breaks off and gets stuck, and pipe cleaners do the same thing if they don't just clog it up, so you pretty much have to soak the damn tube to get all the crap out of it. And all the carbon and CRAP that is contained in the gasses are shot RIGHT BACK INTO THE CHAMBER OF THE GUN! THIS GUN SHITS WHERE IT EATS, AND IT'S A TEMPERMENTAL BITCH TO BEGIN WITH! DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE THE PROBLEM HERE?

When my unit at Ft. Riley handed me a S.A.W. instead of the M-16, I was tapdancing for a week. I handed the 16 back to the armorer and said "Here, you can keep this for the rest of my life!" with a frigging SMILE! Whoever decided that the M-16 should be adopted needs a good swift kick in the nads. Why not just send your troops out with big pointy sticks? They're just about as effective and look scarier!

So while there is no confirmation yet, if word comes down that the Geek has the right news, it's going to be happy days at the Raging Dave household. I'll burn an M-16 effigy. I'll bar-be-que up some burgers, pound a few beers, and celebrate!

Good-bye, M-16. I knew you too well.