I love FG42s. You can really see how the mechanism, muzzle break and buffered stock reduce the recoil compared to the M14, G3, FAL etc. Ian sure makes it sound like this is absolutely the superior weapon There is one major flaw that puts it in a disadvantage to those rifles. The single shot accuracy of the FG42 will always lag behind those other rifles because of the design of the bolt/action.. Even though the rifle fires from closed bolt in semi-auto when you pull the trigger and release the sear the bolt carrier still jolts forward with considerable mass bringing the firing pin to strike the primer. This abrupt movement is enough to to make long range shots difficult and definitely decrease inherent accuracy compared to hammer fired rifles like those mentioned above. Something I wouldn’t have known until I fired the FG. I guess it’s a consequence of using a machine gun design (Lewis gun) at its core.