Youtube feature on the FN FAL

Love it.
I 'm rather fond of the M-14, tho.

The US went with the M14 for cultural reasons i.e. it was a slight mod from the M1 and was therefore easiest to deal with. Germany went with the HK because Belgians refused to sell FALs to them. I've never heard anybody say a kind word about an HK. Everybody else went with the FAL.

Well, shifting the focus from battle rifles
to submachineguns: how do u like the H & K MP5?

Ahhh!!! Fabrique Nationale SLR...so many memories ! Together with the M-60 and the F-1, and an "up-and-under"...what more could an Inf Sect need.
An enjoyabale film, gunga.
The SLR... the weapon I was trained on ...but that seems an eternity ago.....was 50% to 100% more penetrating then the M-16. But by God it was a heavy sucker. We used to do PT with it at arms length. The styer is a toy by standards of weight and stopping power, but probably far easier to use from the point of view of training and accuracy. Some commanders had us doing route marches without a sling so we would be more able to patrol with it.
Iron sights...I think I still might be able to win the odd competition with it...though optics where you can aim with both eyes open are clearly superior.

One difference between the FAL and the M14, the FAL can easily adjust for heavier ammo, 170-gr bullets and 1000 meter ranges. The M14 cannot to my knowledge.

My knowledge of light machineguns is vanishingly near zero.

One thing I've seen on several cop movies, in any sort of an open setting, you are ALWAYS better off with aimed shots than trying to 'spray and pray'. Only if you anticipate seeing some sort of an adversary from ten feet away should a weapon ever be set on full auto.

I dont think 1,000 m ranges are good for anything but area fire and that is possible with standard ammo anyway. Heat haze, and the need to aim up which places the barrel over the view of the target make anything over 600 m very difficult.

At 1,000 m ranges, the WWII bren gun was actually so tight it could be used for sniping in the desert of a night time. There was also an instance where an Australian won the Victoria Cross by taking out several machine gun bunkers. He simply aimed and fired and every round went into the slit killing all the crew inside.

This accuracy made it less useful as an area weapon, the main point of having it so it was re-equipped to have more windage which in turn made it less accurate but more able to suppress the enemy.