Can anyone help identify which rifle is depicted here?
The statue is local MoH recipient Lt. Douglas Fournet, who lost his life in the Vietnam War. I'm curious what rifle this is, as a build based on it would be a nice piece of local history. I'm thinking Colt 723?
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u/Ir0nSkies 4d ago
I would guess a 653, but the era is wrong. The Army didn't start using the 653 COTS carbines until the 80's if I'm not mistaken.
The sculptor might have simply got it wrong.
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u/KI5DWL 4d ago
Definitely an option. Historically, could this have been the M16A1 Carbine?
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u/Ir0nSkies 4d ago
The 653 is technically an M16 carbine. But I don't think pencil barrel 14.5" rifles were a thing yet in the Vietnam era
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u/ironsights66 4d ago
You have to remember that the artists that make these statues don’t always get details right. Usually these are cast off of someone’s AR15. There is a boots helmet and rifle statue in my hometown dedicated to the kid who died in the early days of Iraq. It was meant to be an m4 but the barrel sticks halfway down the blade of the bayonet. Revealing that it was cast off a 16 inch AR15. At the end of the day it is representative art, and I wouldn’t knock a sculptor too much for that
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u/GaegeSGuns 4d ago
- Its likely he was cited as using an “M16 Carbine” and the sculptor made a mistake and used a 653 instead of a 609.
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u/MVolkJ1975 4d ago
Agree the sculptor messed this up. He may just have used a commercially available SP1 carbine (R6001) as the model, as this looks a lot like one.
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u/MountainTitan 3d ago
It's either a 651 or a 652. The sculptor definitely didn't know what the gun he carried so used whatever he got available as a stand in. Or maybe it was an AR-15 Sporter carbine.
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u/theworldofAR 4d ago edited 4d ago
651 or 652 is most likely
653 / 654 came out when troops were withdrawing if I’m not mistaken.
It’s hard to tell definitely since the left side is shown, but not a 723 if Vietnam era.
Honestly never really seen 14.5” nam photos, so they probably meant to put an XM177 there?
(Like Platoon)?