Thursday, April 1, 2010

Myth Busting

I was visiting my parents' house last night and MythBusters was on tv. I kind of like the show. The dude in the hat built a soda can cannon. What's not to like?

Then they decided to find out if you can bullet proof a car with telephone books. There was a cute, spunky girl shooting at a car covered in phone books, with a M1 Garand. Life was good. Until the announcer called it an M14.

I know the m14 is the direct descendant of the M1. I know that, other than the box mag and the caliber, they're pretty much the same thing. Maybe I need to relax, but this stuff bothers me.

For what it's worth, the chick eventually took out the engine block and stopped the car with a .50 BMG.

3 comments:

  1. MAS 49/56 is closer to being the ancestor of the M-14 than the Garand from a technical standpoint to me and is also a predecessor of the Stoner pattern M rifles, as it was a tilting bolt but direct impingement design. Even if the M-14 vaguely evolved from the Garand I think the M-14 designers looked pretty closely at the MAS rifles too. FWIW, people who fought with both of them in often say the MAS was a better Combat arm than the M-14.

    You never know though, the girl could have had one of the Many M-14s that were converted to semi-only while in military service and somewhat modified and was wearing some M1A1 parts. M-14s were lousy bullet hoses and a lot of them were re-arsenaled into essntially being M1A1s. The parts are essentially the same, outside of the civilian version being modified a bit to make it harder to modify one to run FA, which nobody does or wants anyway.

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  2. I should have looked into it before I mouthed off. The only M14 I have ever handled was one of those re-arsenaled semi automatics issued to an Oklahoma game warden. That and a few paragraphs toward the end of some Garand books is the extent of my actual knowledge. I thought the M14 was an attempt to move into the future by the Springfield Arsenal. They got John Garand involved, just not enough.

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  3. You should snag a well done MAS 7.62 conversion at the gun shows if you can find one. Direct impingement but on the bolt face so it doesn't crap where it eats and it's handier than a Emma and I like Emmas :-) People about give 'em away cos they're Frog guns but they were one of the Frog's better efforts...Better than an Emma, perhaps.

    No worries. I've said a lot of off stuff or things where I thought I was informed and wasn't, I'm sure somebody out there has a file of it. I believe I'll meet him after I die, right?

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