Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-36393004-20181027034711/@comment-9041013-20181027120314

DrBobSmith wrote: Bloody Spaghetti,

An ordinary AR-15 shooting 5.56x45 is the most likely rifle for a militia in the USA to standardize on. It's the USA civilian version of a M-16. They are only 3 kilos or so. They don't kick much and are amazingly easy to shoot. You'll feel some recoil, but not much.

The next most likely is probably going to be clones of the former Soviet block weapons. AKM clones in 7.62x39, also fairly light recoiling. After that, we step down in kick to AKM-74 clones in 5.5x39.

Lots of teen-agers and pre-teens in the USA and Canada use deer rifles in powerful full rifle cartridges for hunting deer, bear, wild hogs, etc. every year. Some rounds would be painful. Heck, there are many rounds like .50 BMG that I as a full size adult won't touch. However, using civilian weapons has a big disadvantage. They aren't standardized. The bolt carrier group from one AR-15 will fit another made by a different manufacturer. Almost all are made in 5.56x45. There are a gazillion hunting rifle designs and rounds, vastly compounding your logistics issues.

Child soldiers are VERY common around the world. That is a reality. Kids younger than Tony are inducted.

https://www.hrw.org/news/1999/04/18/more-120000-child-soldiers-fighting-africa

https://accord.org.za/conflict-trends/understanding-recruitment-child-soldiers-africa/

https://www.child-soldiers.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_military I'm aware of that, still, it's meat for the meatgrinder. Never came across an "elite" child soldier unit. Koni became irrelevant because he simply couldn't get numbers after he lost most of his troops. It's just for that the grinder.

Also, I just thought of something, where does ammunition comes from? I mean, from my memory, our my last training session lasted for a week during which 80 or so soldiers shot a few thousand bullets. No government, no ammo production. Interesting.