A Couple Of Things

From Weer'ds talking on the FAL and AK...

In normal operation AR the only time you should be using the charging handle is to open the action to to load that first round or to clear it once you're done shooting.  Then you use the bolt stop to chamber a round.  If nothing goes wrong you keep using the bolt stop; if something does go wrong, then you shouldn't have the thing up in a firing position because you now have to fix what went wrong and it's almost never cured by racking the charging handle blindly.

If you're using the thing for magazine changes, what idiot taught you that?

On the FAL, however, there's a known problem with the foot of the bolt stop popping off when you push down on it to release the bolt.  Some are pressed onto their shaft and repeated use slowly pushes it off; so with the FAL, use the charging handle when changing magazines.

The reciprocating bolt handle is on the SCAR because of literally decades of people writing for magazines and defense journals bitching about the charging handle's lack of movement.  It's rather ironic that they change that and new complaints began immediately.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

I'm going to have to drag Willard, kicking and screaming, into this general discussion about fighting with your rifle because he's done so much more of it, but I don't think he'll agree that beating the shit out of your magazine to gain at most 1/4 second on reloads is worth it because such gems of time just don't matter in real fights where the appropriate weapon is a rifle.

There's a shit ton of pistol gaming infecting the proper use of a battle rifle that's frankly detrimental to the employment of said rifle.  The reason things like this matter with pistols is the likelihood that someone can knife you by the time you get the task done.

Some of the fast reloading techniques I've seen advocated for rifles has me asking again and again, "Why the fuck are you standing there in the fucking open doing your reload under fire?"  The first step of reloading is COVER!