Quote of the Day
While the M16A2 wasn’t a perfect firearm, its controversial features paved the way for positive changes in modern weaponry. Many understand the sacrifice made by those who used the original M16 variations and contributed to improving the rifle.
Jacob
Widener’s Reloading & Shooting Supply
July 9, 2025
Colt M16A2: Battle Rifle Evolution – Wideners Shooting, Hunting & Gun Blog
The M16/AR-15 variants have been around for 60 years now and seem to be more popular than ever. That is rather remarkable. The 1911 style handgun is 114 years old now and still has variants available, but I have to think M16/AR-15 has it beat for peak usage. As of 2017 there were about 8.2 million AR-15s made. Add in another 8 million M16 and that is a hard number to beat.
I find the history and technology of the M16/AR-15 fascinating. It was the first rifle of recognizable name I heard about. My cousin Dennis learned to use an M16 in basic training and told me how cool they were. I didn’t even know the name of the manufacturer of Dad’s bolt-action rifle at the time.
Glocks have been around since 1982 and have sold about 20 million. They are still going strong too. But that is a different story.
I still hate the firearm and the cartridge it spawned. The .223 Remington (and the 5.56 that imitated it) was originally designed as a varmint round, not as a military round. They should have stayed with the 7.62 (.308) cartridge and the AR-10.
I’ve heard all of the nonsense arguments about how, “The soldier can carry half-again as many rounds” of the poodle-shooter, but since it takes five times as many rounds to put down a human-size critter, that’s more than just a little moot. Lots of people are going to chime in here saying that “modern ammunition makes it an effective combat weapon”, but they’re simply kidding themselves. Listen to anybody who came back from the sandbox tell you about how many times they had to shoot the jihadis with that stupid round to get them to lay down and be good Tangoes, and how many of them (with solid CoM body hits) simply took cover and kept on shooting back.
To quote somebody, “It was a terrible day when the US military changed to a round designed to piss off our enemies rather than kill them.”
The Russian 7.62×39 round is about the same weight per cartridge but being a thirty caliber rather than a .22 is a much more combat-effective round. Heck, in most states it’s not even legal to hunt deer (usually about human-size) with the varmint round, and for good reason. The 7.62×39 is accurate from a GOOD firearm (my wife punched a clover-leaf at 100 yards with her bolt-action CZ using Wolf HP ammo), and while it doesn’t have the accuracy at anything over 200 yards of the poodle-shooter, most close combat encounters are at even shorter ranges.
In the ME, when engagements are longer than a couple of hundred yards, they fall back on the tried-and-true .308 from modified M14’s. What’s that tell us? The AR-15’s current popularity is simply because it’s still the semi-auto version of the standard US-mil long-arm (now in the form of the even worse short-barrelled M4) and because it’s so easily modified, not because it shoots a decent round.
It is a great gun for shooting lots of exploding targets in a short amount of time at 25 yards.
Can confirm. I have a load of Idaho mud splatters on the inside of my soft long-gun case to prove it.
To quote somebody, “It was a terrible day when the US military changed to a round designed to piss off our enemies rather than kill them.”
Are you saying that the next step is to equip American soldiers with .25 ACP? To quote the late, great and lamented Colonel Jeff Cooper, “If you shoot someone with the .25 ACP and he finds out about it he will be wrathfully annoyed at you.”
7.62x39mm is about 50% per round heavier than 5.56x45mm. 0.036 lb. per round vs 0.027 lb.
The designed to wound myth comes from stories Drill Sargents told “we don’t wanna study war no more” draftees. 5.56 kills. It’s been doing so for more than 60 years.
If it was utterly ineffective, the Soviets would not have copied it and issued the AK-74 in 5.45x39mm. They had access to something we didn’t from Vietnam; the data about casualties.
“Many understand the sacrifice made by those who used the original M16 variations and contributed to improving the rifle.”
And most of those problems can be brought right back to the powder being used. The original design/ideas of the firearm are excellent. Or they would have died faster than the M14 as a battle rifle.
Also the reason it was so easily improved upon into what we shoot today.
The 55gr./3200FPS loading from a 20″ barrel is a killer of human size targets. And in close range jungle warfare it proved a very effective combination. As ammo wins wars. The more you have, the better.
As it stands today, we still only argue over ammo, not the platform.
That, and the fact that the M12 system is one of the militaries top killers is a true testament.
Its ability to close up fairly tight makes it workable in almost any weather conditions. As well as being modifiable to fit circumstance.
In the canon of firearms manufacturing. Eugene Stoner is sainted right next to St.Moses Browning and Sam Colt.
AR’s are a game changer. Just ask any gun-grabber.
If it’s such an ineffective caliber, what is the reason the Totalitarians have it as such a hated target? Is it only the fact that it’s a “Scawy Looking Wifle”, or is it just the result of decades of slander?
When I get the money together, I’m building a California-compliant AR. It will be as ugly as sin with a Thordsen stock, but if it’s ugly and it works, it’s not ugly.
Remember, the left will use any rhetorical point to push their view, even if they contradict it in the next sentence. Anything for The Cause [of the moment]. I think what get’s their tits in a twist is that it’s “military” and they demand a monopoly on legal violence; it terrifies them, even from leadership positions, that someone might be able to shoot back, that there will be consequences for their tyranny.
It’s a psychological projection / hang-up; they hold hunters in contempt, so they dismiss country rubes with hunting rifles, but are terrified of bubba with an AR because “military-grade hardware will make them brave,” because they know it would make THEM more brave.
And at this point we can thank the gods that the gun-banners are mostly lying idiots. If you ever show them a side-by-side photograph of the 5.56 round standing next to a standard .30-06 round, they’ll utterly freak out about the “ultra-high-power sniper rifles” (scoped bolt-actions) that are sitting in my gun safe.
This is why we can’t let the Fudds run the civil rights movement for the 2nd Amendment.
Now imagine that you threw in a .50 BMG round with that picture…
The “bad” powder is the current powder and the rifles are functioning correctly.
The powder got the blame but there were a number of things wrong in production that got addressed about the same time that H&R and Hydramatic got a copy of the TDP.
There were a series of incremental changes from the original XM16E1 to early M16A1 to the final M16A1 that allowed it to use the “bad” powder. New buffer, extractor spring and chrome chambers and bores are the significant changes.
A theory that doesn’t get enough exploration is the UAW was also having one of its periodic spats with Colt during Vietnam and, effectively, sabotaging production with parts that should not have been accepted. Many too-tight and rough chambers were observed in the field. Almost as if a worn chamber reamer was used past replacement time… A problem that disappears when chrome chambers are specified and new tooling to account for the chrome thickness and new chamber QC implemented to make sure the chrome was applied correctly.
Troop maintenance is another contributing factor, along with the tropical environment.
If it were just ONE thing… But it was lots of things.
Despite the horrible service it has given, the US military cannot seem to find anything to replace the M-16. They have been trying for how long now? The Garand was the ‘Greatest battle implement’ of WWII and it had a service life of twenty years. Pretty sure the anemic .22 has done a bit better.
It’s adaptable and pretty much like Legos. Maybe one day, we’ll replace it.
How’s that new 6.8×51 working out?
“How’s that new 6.8×51 working out?”
It’s total crap.
It’s another pentagon retirement program for generals.
It might help drive some innovations, but not much else.
I’m having a lot of trouble finding any information that says 6.8x51mm does anything that 7.62x51mm cannot; except do it from a 13″ barrel.
And the advantages of the short barrel are flushed down the toilet by putting a 6″ long suppressor on it.
Re: “Despite the horrible service it has given, the US military cannot seem to find anything to replace the M-16. They have been trying for how long now? ”
The backstory to keeping the M-16/M-4 family of weapons that no one wants to discuss, at least not when the mics are hot and for attribution, is the phenomenon of “small stature soldiers,” a.k.a. females in uniform. Almost all woman are comfortable using an M-4 carbine when taught properly; few are comfortable shooting rifles chambered in .308 or anything heavier. Due to a stiffer recoil impulse, heavier rifle and heavier ammo.
Big Green (the U.S. Army) isn’t going to move away from the AR platform rifles until something else suitable for female personnel comes along. And whatever its other virtues may be, the Sig Spear MCX isn’t it.