Originally Posted by
kirkland
I think there's something that a lot of people in this thread are missing. By the way Rittenhouse described his malfunction, it sounded to me like a round had been stripped from the magazine but not fully chambered, bolt went forward but stopped short of being in battery, the extractor would not have been in control of the cartridge. A tap rack would most likely have caused a double feed, which would have led to a very bad outcome for Kyle. Let's look at the forward assist for what it really is, a way to move the bolt forward, that's all. It's no different than pushing forward on a fixed bolt handle. Now I do agree that a tap rack is the right thing to do in most situations, but in this situation there's no denying that hitting the forward assist kept him in the fight and saved him from being killed, maimed, beat up by the mob, or whatever. In a high stress situation, racking the charging handle is not foolproof either, you can short shuck it, you can fail to grab it properly, your fingers can slip off. Hitting the forward assist on the other hand is foolproff, it's a big huge button that you can't miss, and it works when your rifle is in a certain condition, like the one Rittenhouse described. Additionally, if you watch the video, he had very little time to fix the malfunction with Grosskreutz bearing down on him with Glock in hand. Hitting the forward assist is faster than a tap rack, and like I said before it's a foolproof action. You can't really **** up hitting the forward assist. Kyle had a malfunction, assessed the condition of his firearm, fixed the problem, and dealt with the attacker, all within the span of a few milliseconds. The FA is not useless, we have proof on video.
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