NonCredibleDefense

The M14 program was a misguided, expensive mistake where the flaws in the supposed "cost savings" that ended up being more expensive and time consuming to fix should have been obvious. The concept of the M14 as a do all family in a full power cartridge was misguided, and even more annoying as some grogs in procurement at the time pretended 7.62x51mm was an "intermediate" caliber because it wasn't as hot as .30-06.

The fact that it continues to scrape by as a DMR is not a win for something primarily meant to be a service rifle with branching other uses. Much of it's use as a DMR rather than something else is based on sunk cost. Once a weapon is in inventory it sticks around like a dug in tick and gets pushed into alternate uses. It wasn't uncommon for GWOT M14s used as DMRs to actually just be M14s that were in storage with scopes slapped on instead of M21s. That's not meant to be interpreted as stock M14s being good DMRs. That's a stopgap move that only happened because it's what happened to be in storage. The Mk14 is slapping a bunch of erector set crap on an M14 and pretending it isn't mogged by any military AR-10 setup. The SR-25 and M110 SASS blow any M14 based platform out of the water.

Speaking of AR-10s, even back in the 1950s testing they were better than M14s in service rifle testing. M14s won because one (1) AR-10 with a previously untested composition barrel had the barrel banana. That one malfunction was apparently enough to take the AR-10 out of the running and gave us the problematic M14 program that couldn't even get reliable or "accurate" (M14 service rifle accuracy acceptance standards were pathetic and most rifles still didn't pass) rifles produced on schedule.

As DMR it is a rifle that has to be properly rebedded every single time to take it apart for cleaning. I hope you don't mess it up! Meanwhile the FAL, G3, and AR-10 all don't have to worry about that. People defended the M14's rebedding issue as "oh but it's meant to be a service rifle so a small shift doesn't matter" but now that it's primarily a DMR this is embarrassing.

Notice how countries that adopted FALs as their service rifles kept them as service rifles for way longer? Because the FAL while not up to amazing modularity and recoil control as an AR-10 at least has something resembling a modern (post-1920s design) mindset. It has a pistol grip as standard look at that!

Oh but M14s are still in on sale for the private market that means they are good right? Yeah sure, you can pair it with your Hi-Point and BSD VSS, WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

All the M14 is best at is being a fancy polished wood turd that ROTC weirdos can throw around while doing rifle spinning tricks that have absolutely no practical application.

The best thing the M14 ever did was suck so bad that it fast tracked the adoption of intermediate rifles for the U.S.