Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-211.26.90.25-20130827133032/@comment-3258762-20131215225253

147.41.128.8 wrote: OK, I'll concede the point about Captain Titus, I don't go in for the Ultrasmurfs fandom thing.

However, if an unmodified human could fire a heavy bolter unaided, and thus a bolter, why don't all the Imperial Guard have bolters? The production facilities aside, if all the plants that make the cheap and on it's own, ineffective lasgun were turned towards making bolt weapons, then why don't they? The IG would decimate everything they came across if every man had a heavy bolter. As for your reply about commisars firing bolt pistols (I believe it was) unaided, as most Commisars have an augmentic implant of some form, most commonly to use the bolt pistol at full efficiency. Thus, they are not unmodified humans. There is a reason that IG use bolters as a tank-mounted weapon. Well, you have to remember that bolters are extremely rare, especially normal bolters (More rare than heavy bolters) but not because of the guns themselves, but the bolts. Each bolt is blessed thrice-fold. If you make that for a million Astartes and a select few normal mortals, as well as some tanks using storm bolters, than that's fine, you can make that by basically having a few hundred forge world work 24/7 on that.

If you, however, had to bless, say, 5 clips of bolts for every Imperial Guardsman, Guardsmen so far outnumbering all known Tyranids and all known Orks, then you would need a lot more forge worlds that would have to work on that instead of actually making things necessary, like engines for ships, refineries for planets etc.

The reason Guardsmen have a lasgun is because you don't need training to use it. It has no recoil and you only need 2 clips, because you can re-charge them by holding them to the sun. With a Bolter, that's not the case. It kicks in your grip, it weighs more, you need more reserve ammunition. It's simply not prudent to give it to conscripts who have absolutely no training and are likely to shoot down a Valkyrie when trying to fire it.