Comment Re:I had one for a while. (Score 1) 334
Sure, but that also made it unpopular for its "excessive" wounding effects. That's one reason it was changed. (Even though you aren't signatories to the relevant conventions, you still profess to follow them).
I don't think this was ever a concern, actually. The position of most major powers (in particular, both US and USSR back in the day) was that it restricts intentionally designing projectiles that expand or flatten (or, well, fragment), but if that happens to be an artifact of the bullet design that is otherwise dictated by other reasons, then that's perfectly okay. For example, it's why US presently authorizes the use of 77gr OTM bullets (Mk262), even though an open tip is basically a hollow point by another name, and the extreme length of the bullet causes it to fragment even better than the original M193 - it's because the bullet is ostensibly designed for accuracy, which necessitates open tip construction, and length is there to maximize the ballistic coefficient; and any increased wounding effects are, well, entirely coincidental. Soviets used the same argument for their hollow tip 5.45 bullets.
But this is getting off topic.
Yes, as far as Lee-Enfield goes, there's nothing particularly magical about it. In particular, the claim that "rifleman with a Lee-Enfield can achieve higher firing rates than the operator of a machine gun" is pure BS - I would dare anyone do even 500 RPM with a bolt action, and that is where machine gun fire rates usually start (since we're looking at this in WW2 context, Bren was 500 RPM, DP-28 was 550 RPM, MG 34 was 800 RPM, and MG 42 was 1200+ RPM). Sure, out of all bolt rifles of that war, it was probably the best one from the perspective of its wielder, thanks to larger mag and slightly faster firing rate, but in overall context that still doesn't matter all that much.
For this use case, though, Enfield is plenty good. These guys don't really need a military weapon so much so as a brush gun (and I use "brush" liberally here, because the landscape is often quite widely open), mostly to hunt and defend themselves from predators. Should they ever find themselves in a military role, again, they are not really operating as units, but each ranger for himself, in a remote territory with basically no supply chain. So as far as firearms go, they need something really simple to maintain, something that handles lack of cleaning (say, because of lack of supplies for said cleaning) for a long time, can survive rough weather including extreme cold, and has a round that, while being "military legal" (i.e. not soft or hollow point), can still take care of large dangerous animals as well as humans, and that doesn't consume ammo fast. I'd say that a bolt action rifle in a full sized rifle round fits the bill pretty well. The only semi-auto that I can think of that would fit the bill would be some semi-auto AK variant chambered in
Also, their role is not taking the enemy heads on, but serving as an early detection system in those remote regions, and then possibly reporting on enemy movements. Basically, they're pure scouts, not infantry. So they don't really need a soldier's weapon.