Combat vs self-defense rifles?
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Art Eatman
Staff in Memoriam
Only the color of the stock and the imagination of the user.
Realistically, a better label for what is available to the civilian market is "para-military", meaning semi-automatic look-alikes which are not selective fire with full-auto capability.
The AR15 is one such example. The HK 91 is another.
(Realize that the Garand was never selective-fire, but it was indeed a battle rifle.)
Realistically, a better label for what is available to the civilian market is "para-military", meaning semi-automatic look-alikes which are not selective fire with full-auto capability.
The AR15 is one such example. The HK 91 is another.
(Realize that the Garand was never selective-fire, but it was indeed a battle rifle.)
thesheepdog
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.223 Would be more in the Assault Rifle Category.
.308 would better as a Battle Rifle.
"The man with one rifle should be feared".
Some don't realize that all the "tacticool" of gun accesories only make that "one rifle" better, rather than making the shooter better.
Get good with any rifle and you will be able to defend yourself. And you may come to the point with that rifle that you think there is some sort of barrier that could result in you causing more harm than good in a defensive situation with it; and to remedy that, you can probably look at purchasing a new weapon.
If you have mastered (you can shoot, care-for, and load it like no other) a rifle, and still feel that it doesn't fit the bill for a self defense situation, then please, get something that will be more practical for defensive purposes.
.308 would better as a Battle Rifle.
"The man with one rifle should be feared".
Some don't realize that all the "tacticool" of gun accesories only make that "one rifle" better, rather than making the shooter better.
Get good with any rifle and you will be able to defend yourself. And you may come to the point with that rifle that you think there is some sort of barrier that could result in you causing more harm than good in a defensive situation with it; and to remedy that, you can probably look at purchasing a new weapon.
If you have mastered (you can shoot, care-for, and load it like no other) a rifle, and still feel that it doesn't fit the bill for a self defense situation, then please, get something that will be more practical for defensive purposes.
bailey bud
New member
In the case of a .223 semi-auto - I have a hard time differentiate between combat and defense.
Generally speaking - I think of a .223 repeater primarily as a combat tool. In my book, a .223 repeater would be a poor defense tool (a handgun and/or shotgun with buckshot are my tools of choice for home defense).
Footnote:
Regardless of the semantics - owning firearms is a right - so please don't imagine that I have the slightest sympathy with the idea of people in Washington trying to legislate away my rights in Colorado.
Generally speaking - I think of a .223 repeater primarily as a combat tool. In my book, a .223 repeater would be a poor defense tool (a handgun and/or shotgun with buckshot are my tools of choice for home defense).
Footnote:
Regardless of the semantics - owning firearms is a right - so please don't imagine that I have the slightest sympathy with the idea of people in Washington trying to legislate away my rights in Colorado.
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Technosavant
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If you're defending yourself with anything, be it a rifle, shotgun, handgun, knife, baseball bat, or your fists and pure cussed determination, you're in combat.
IMO, the differences between a combat rifle, defensive rifle, battle rifle, etc. are all overblown and artificial.
The weapon that matters is the one you know and can use effectively. Most of us can always use more practice to that end. Right now, I'd likely be way better off grabbing a shotgun for defense than any of my rifles, despite my larger collection of rifles. It's because I've been doing way more shotgun shooting, and I'm more current with that tool.
So I didn't really answer your question as per the .223 and .308, but here's my tl;dr version: there isn't one, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Labels are only labels. What matters is the usage and your capabilities with it.
IMO, the differences between a combat rifle, defensive rifle, battle rifle, etc. are all overblown and artificial.
The weapon that matters is the one you know and can use effectively. Most of us can always use more practice to that end. Right now, I'd likely be way better off grabbing a shotgun for defense than any of my rifles, despite my larger collection of rifles. It's because I've been doing way more shotgun shooting, and I'm more current with that tool.
So I didn't really answer your question as per the .223 and .308, but here's my tl;dr version: there isn't one, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Labels are only labels. What matters is the usage and your capabilities with it.
"Battle Rifle" indicates a full power load (link to the wiki). The .308 (7.62x54) is a full power round. "Combat Rifle" doesn't indicate anything specifically, although I think what you were indicating was "Assault Rifle," whose meaning changes depending on who you are talking to. A greenie will tell you that any rifle with a pistol grip and a bayonet mount is an assault rifle (assault rifle wiki). In military terms, though, an assault rifle is a selective fire (semi-automatic, fully automatic, and safe) rifle that shoots an intermediate round.
A self defense rifle would be any rifle used in self defense. If you are attacked and happen to have a bolt action rem 700, that becomes your self defense gun.
as for a full time self defense rifle, there isnt anything specific, but i think you will find that people are usually referring to the civillian version of an assault rifle, such as an ar-15 or an ak variant.
i think you mean semantics. Semitic has come to mean "Jewish," although, anthropologically speaking, it actually represents the majority of the Arabian peninsula north up to Turkey.
A self defense rifle would be any rifle used in self defense. If you are attacked and happen to have a bolt action rem 700, that becomes your self defense gun.
as for a full time self defense rifle, there isnt anything specific, but i think you will find that people are usually referring to the civillian version of an assault rifle, such as an ar-15 or an ak variant.
i think you mean semantics. Semitic has come to mean "Jewish," although, anthropologically speaking, it actually represents the majority of the Arabian peninsula north up to Turkey.
Art Eatman
Staff in Memoriam
The reason I differentiate between "combat" and "self-defense" is that the word "combat" includes attacking in a search-and-destroy military sense.
Self-defense for a civilian basically does not; it's purely a response to a threat.
When folks get sloppy enough in the usage of words and language, it gets hard to tell just what's meant, what's really being talked about. It shouldn't be all that painful to actually think about dictionary definitions and what words mean.
Self-defense for a civilian basically does not; it's purely a response to a threat.
When folks get sloppy enough in the usage of words and language, it gets hard to tell just what's meant, what's really being talked about. It shouldn't be all that painful to actually think about dictionary definitions and what words mean.
Tikirocker
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Intent ...
Tiki.
Tiki.
Stevie-Ray
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You're right, Art, I've been pushing this for years, but it just doesn't seem to catch on.
Technosavant
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Says who? Even the wiki you linked has no citation to any historical usage of the term. An assault rifle does have a historical usage- intermediate caliber rifle capable of fully automatic fire.
I've asked this question before about the origin of the term battle rifle. Near as I can tell, it came from some guy's own pontifications when we wrote under a pseudonym. If there's a historical usage, I'm eager to hear it, but the way people usually mean battle rifle only refers to a VERY short period of history- from the advent of the M1 Garand up until the mid 60s when assault rifles pretty well took over the militaries of the world.
"Full power rifle cartridge in a rifle capable of semiautomatic fire" may be a holy grail for some shooters, but the fact is that history doesn't really back them up. Most combatant armies in WWII were still using bolt actions. Nobody really felt the need to distinguish the new M1 Garand by coining a new term. So in the absence of any authority beyond Boston's Gun Bible for the term "battle rifle," I will continue to claim it is a nonsense term. A battle rifle is pretty much whatever rifle the users take into battle, be it a 7.62x51, a 5.56x45, or an older 1903 Springfield in 30.06.
I do like the term "paramilitary" for reference to semiauto rifles based on the pattern of actual full auto military issue rifles, whether or not it is an intermediate or full power cartridge being fired.
if you shoot a burglar with a handgun 9mm- good
if you shoot a burglar with a pump shotgun 12ga- good
if you shoot a burglar with a saiga 12g- you are a terrorist
if you shoot a burglar with a ar 15- you are a terrorist
if you shoot a burglar with a ak 47- you are a terroist
if you shoot a burglar with a bolt action no scope- good
if you shoot a burglar with a bolt action with scope- you are a terrorist
thats just the way it goes
if you shoot a burglar with a pump shotgun 12ga- good
if you shoot a burglar with a saiga 12g- you are a terrorist
if you shoot a burglar with a ar 15- you are a terrorist
if you shoot a burglar with a ak 47- you are a terroist
if you shoot a burglar with a bolt action no scope- good
if you shoot a burglar with a bolt action with scope- you are a terrorist
thats just the way it goes
@Technosavant
Combat rifle could mean whatever you want it to mean, and I would agree that it is any rifle taken into combat.
Battle rifle and Assault rifle, on the other hand, are clearly distinguished, hence the Designated Marksmen position in infantry squads. the DM's job is to engage targets between 300 and 700 meters. this distance requires a more powerful round, which is one reason the 7.62x51NATO is still in use- its too powerful for automatic fire, but fills the role of the DM- semi-auto fire for longer range positions. The 5.56x45, as in intermediate cartridge, does not have the power to engage targets at 700 meters, or even 350 meters (accuracy yes, but at that distance it will no longer penetrate body armor), but its decreased power comes with decreased recoil, meaning that sustained fully automatic fire is both possible and realistic, making the round a smart and better choice for storming, that is, assaulting, positions.
To put it simply, full power loads in semi-automatic rifles are clearly not in the assault rifle class. So what, then, are they called?
Battle rifles.
And to say that battle rifles have not been in use since the 60's is simply uninformed. There is the SR-25, the M14, the MK14, the SVD, HK 417, HK G3SG, Galatz, M39, M76 and the list goes on. Most of those use the 7.62 NATO, but a few are different- the SVD is 7.62x54R, and the M76 is 8x57IS. All of those rifles are currently in common use for the DM position for various countries.
Combat rifle could mean whatever you want it to mean, and I would agree that it is any rifle taken into combat.
Battle rifle and Assault rifle, on the other hand, are clearly distinguished, hence the Designated Marksmen position in infantry squads. the DM's job is to engage targets between 300 and 700 meters. this distance requires a more powerful round, which is one reason the 7.62x51NATO is still in use- its too powerful for automatic fire, but fills the role of the DM- semi-auto fire for longer range positions. The 5.56x45, as in intermediate cartridge, does not have the power to engage targets at 700 meters, or even 350 meters (accuracy yes, but at that distance it will no longer penetrate body armor), but its decreased power comes with decreased recoil, meaning that sustained fully automatic fire is both possible and realistic, making the round a smart and better choice for storming, that is, assaulting, positions.
To put it simply, full power loads in semi-automatic rifles are clearly not in the assault rifle class. So what, then, are they called?
Battle rifles.
And to say that battle rifles have not been in use since the 60's is simply uninformed. There is the SR-25, the M14, the MK14, the SVD, HK 417, HK G3SG, Galatz, M39, M76 and the list goes on. Most of those use the 7.62 NATO, but a few are different- the SVD is 7.62x54R, and the M76 is 8x57IS. All of those rifles are currently in common use for the DM position for various countries.
HorseSoldier
New member
Not really. A lot of guys doing DM duty over across the water have done it with M16-based rifles with ACOGs or other optics and shooting Mk 262 (or even just shooting green tip). (See, for instance, SAM-R, SDM-R, SPR.)
"Battle rifle" as a term is an artifact of the clown shoe wearing crew who inflicted 7.62x51 on NATO and the US. Service rifles were making the obvious adaptive jump to intermediate cartridges based on the StG-44 and other research going back to WW1. The morons making decisions for the US military tried to church up their advocacy of non-adaptive, obsolete ideas by pretending that their round/rifle combinations were general purpose "battle rifles" versus the new fangled (and allegedly overly specialized) "assault rifles."
Pretending the term has any real validity just validates the underlying dishonesty they shafted a generation or so of US soldiers and our allies with.
Boston T Party is a buffoon, so that's a pretty good line of thinking, I agree.
Technosavant
New member
If any of the nations using those actually called them "battle rifles," you might have a point. But they don't. Nobody ever did.
That list of rifles gave way fairly quickly to the smaller and lighter assault rifles firing lighter intermediate cartridges. The span of years between the general issue of bolt action rifles and fully automatic capable assault rifles is fairly short by comparison. Twenty-five to thirty years and the major players moved over (the Soviets never really issued a semi- or full-automatic full power cartridge rifle as general issue for all troops; they went from the Mosin to the SKS to the AK). The US had the Garand and M14, but that gave way in the 60s to the M16 family. The FAL, G3, CETME, etc., all had been developed in the 40s and 50s, then began transitioning to the smaller, easier to shoot rifles. And for that matter, precious few of those were only semiauto; full auto was hard to manage, but it was there most of the time.
Sure, the DM rifles are making a return as we get used to the needs of a battlefield that isn't a jungle or European forest. But then again, nobody in actual military authority refers to the M14 or Mk17 SCAR as a battle rifle. Neither are these rifles general issue for all troops. But then, I'm not sure why I'm spending so much time on this point; it isn't my main point.
I'm not indicting the use of such a rifle on the battlefield, I'm not saying nobody ever used them. I'm saying the term "battle rifle" as referring to them is not really correct. With the exception of its use is maybe one arcane government document, none of the rifles we're talking about were ever discussed as being battle rifles. Semi and full automatic intermediate cartridge rifles were dubbed assault rifles from the get-go. These other rifles never had that "battle rifle" name applied to them in any significant way, and that usage seems to originate primarily with some guy who wrote under a pseudonym and had a grudge against the intermediate cartridges.
If "battle rifle" has a more significant usage over the span of years they existed, I'm open to being corrected. But I just have yet to see anybody defend that term as being applied to them over the last 70 years in which those rifles have existed.
Art Eatman
Staff in Memoriam
Talk about picking fly-poop out of pepper!
Look: The Trapdoor Springfield was a battle rifle, as were the Krag, Springfield, Enfield and Garand. (The M14 was a triumph of optimism over reality, but for the box magazine concept.)
Then along came the M16. With its variations it is USED as our main battle rifle, is it not? Opinions about the platform or the cartridge are irrelevant: Reality is what is, no matter what Clinton said.
And absent a really fat billfold, you ain't gonna have an M16 at home. Average fella's gonna have a para-military AR of some style for his home defense--and he ain't gonna be in a squad assaulting an enemy position...
Look: The Trapdoor Springfield was a battle rifle, as were the Krag, Springfield, Enfield and Garand. (The M14 was a triumph of optimism over reality, but for the box magazine concept.)
Then along came the M16. With its variations it is USED as our main battle rifle, is it not? Opinions about the platform or the cartridge are irrelevant: Reality is what is, no matter what Clinton said.
And absent a really fat billfold, you ain't gonna have an M16 at home. Average fella's gonna have a para-military AR of some style for his home defense--and he ain't gonna be in a squad assaulting an enemy position...
Technosavant
New member
Depends on if those Girl Scouts ever deliver my cookie order or not.
"...the Assault Rifle Category..." There's no such thing as a .223/5.56 assault rifle. An assualt rifle is defined as a select fire rifle using the same calibre as the PBI rifle, but with a smaller cartridge.
"...to say that battle rifles have not been in use since the 60's is..." Nonsense. Of all the currently issued military rifles, anywhere, only the AK-47 is an assault rifle. Everything else is a battle rifle.
"...the clown shoe wearing crew who..." That'd be Eisenhower's bunch. MacNamara jammed the 5.56 down NATO's throat.
"...to say that battle rifles have not been in use since the 60's is..." Nonsense. Of all the currently issued military rifles, anywhere, only the AK-47 is an assault rifle. Everything else is a battle rifle.
"...the clown shoe wearing crew who..." That'd be Eisenhower's bunch. MacNamara jammed the 5.56 down NATO's throat.
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