I wouldn't doubt that some of you heard the, "designed to wound" story in boot camp and believe it with all your heart and soul.

I'm a Navy vet so I won't pretend to be some Infantry killer. But I have been interested in rifles and shooting my entire life. My father was a life member of the Army Ordnance Society, my oldest brother has the patent on the key feature of the first successful 105MM Discarding Sabot Anti-tank round that won his company that contract.

Having said that all weapons have design requirements and involve trade-offs. The AR-15/16 has inferior lethality to the weapons it replaced. This was accepted primarily for two reasons.

The M-14 rifle, and basically every battle rifle back to the civil war, injures the soldier who fires it. In an extended fight a soldier will come out of it with a severely painful and bruised soldier. Once the soldier is in that condition he will be unable to properly place the stock of the weapon against his shoulder reducing his accuracy. The smaller you are the worse you'll be hurt.

In comparison the AR-15/16 rifle can be fired until all ammunition is expended without injuring the shooter. The other benefit of this obviously is that you can carry more ammunition.

I think it is laughable (IMHO) from the standpoint of an infantry soldier that it is preferable to wound rather than kill an enemy. Personally speaking, I would like the guy to disintegrate after being hit in the little finger.

I would also prefer to kill all three people who were going to help him from the battle field and each of the three that were going to help those three. If you kill enough of them the rest will surrender. Then there will be nobody except EPWS and dead guys. Fact.