I am sometimes asked why we have not given more thought to the concept of a self-loading Scout rifle. The fact is that up `til now no self-loading action has been produced which is light, simple, and compact enough to meet the weight requirements of the piece. A second point is that semi-automatic fire is of little concern to a man acting alone unless he is in danger of being overwhelmed by a hoard of iron-age types armed with edged weapons. I would never be opposed to the concept of a self-loading Scout, however, if I thought I could get it without drawbacks.
—Jeff Cooper, Commentaries, 1993
Interesting that the sub-title of Brian Sheetz' article is "
Worth its Weight," since that's the only specific objection to an autoloading Scout that Cooper articulated in 1993. The other caustic (or attempt at humor?) comment about being overrun by an iron-age hoarde of sword- or knife-wielders is, like many things he said in his Commentaries over the decades, a creative throwaway line that's hard to take seriously.
Weight - and in the case of a
full-size Garand, length - is still the only serious objection to a semi-auto 'Scout' built using the base action of an M1. And except possibly for the diminutive .30 Carbine, or a suitably customized Mini-30, I can't think of another reliable semi-auto action that would end up making Cooper's weight specs when you were done building it and ready for the final weigh-in ... which, again, was unloaded but with a scope mounted and sling attached.
On the Carbine and the Mini-30, I can almost hear Cooper objecting to the chambering even if every other measurable attribute on them met Scout specs.
That's why I found the author's sub-title very telling. From the git-go, he concedes he's will to accept the trade-off of
not making weight for the benefits an autoloading Scout would provide: a scoped .308/7.62 weapon closer in specs to, say, an 18" 'Tanker' Garand, or a 16" Mini-G, or S.A.'s 18" Scout or 16" SOCOM models (for fans of a box mag-fed Scout).
Back in 1993, any commercially-built Tanker M1s were hit-or-miss specimens until Fulton Armory and, much later, the CMP, figured out how to make an 18" Garand run. As far as I can recall, no S.A. scouts or SOCOM M1A models were around yet.
Think about it ... Back then nobody was really experimenting with shortening, re-barreling, and tuning the M1 Garand from a full-size battle rifle to a 16.1" .308 carbine. As far as I know, the Schuster Mfg. adjustable gas plug hadn't been invented yet, nor had similar devices; nor was the Ultimak forward rail-mount available (at least for Garands); ... and Tim Shufflin, the inventor of the Mini-G (Shuff's Parkerizing), was still in high school.
But as they say: that was then, this is now.
Times change, and so does the technology available to re-purpose and adapt older technology to another form. Not to mention the human element: the creativity and insight required to figure it all out and make it work.
Yeah, my .308 Mini-G 'Scout' doesn't make weight - unloaded, scoped and slung - but it does provide every other discernible benefit you'd want in a 'self-loading' Scout that's reliable and durable under real-world field conditions, ... with maybe the exception of being magazine-fed, although Shuff does offer that option too: a mag-fed Mini variant that runs on M1A mags.
