...must... resist... side-tracking...
FAIL
I think I haven't stated my grounds for my opinion. How can you know I have missed your point?
Mars' entire point was that it was a significant and noteworthy rifle, specifically among WWII rifles, not that it literally saved Europe's ass.
You said that you don't share that viewpoint. You either took that literally, in which case you did indeed miss the point, or you're denying the fact that it was a noteworthy rifle, which is about as subjective as the fact that June 6, 1944 was a significant day in the war.
What it comes to naming weapons, it would be ridiculously easy to mention something about US people not recognising the European weapons that aided in the US independence. Or some other non-US weapons used in WWII that had a significant impact on the outcome of the war - of which I recognise only a few. But I don't go there since it would be silly, you could not possibly know those things since you haven't used them yourselves.
Just because you didn't know the Garand existed doesn't mean it's insignificant, which it looks like you analogously support in your post, so I needn't have mentioned it.
Same applies to Garand. That thing belongs to museum, in the "Weapons of the Past" -department. Not that I want to belittle it or people who did something with it, but it doesn't hold such value for me as it did to US grandfathers. And the continuation question here would be why should it?
EDIT: Besides, I automatically assumed it was a shotgun since I thought it had been better choice on that situation.
Mika
It's not really sentimental value people are getting at, or at least I'm getting at, it's the fact that it was a technologically and militarily a good rifle by reasonable standards. That itself makes it a significant rifle, and moreso when you look at the scale in which it was deployed.
I'd ask for a split, but I've made my point as clear as it's going to get and I'll stop now.
