I have to say that when the butt trap butt plates came in that I and several other shooters amongst the troopers in my infantry unit tried to hold on to the rubber butted stocks. They did not slide around on the shoulder as much as the hard plastic trap door stocks and were just more comfortable. We also noted that rifles dropped ( it happens) onto conctrete with the rubber plated butts tended to bounce while the butt trap models did not. The butt trap model broke more often when dropped as well. Big thing though.......rubber butt rifles tended to not load them selves, though they tried, while the hard butted trap doors, when dropped from window height, would let the BCG go back enough to strip a round from a magazine (18 in a 20) and fully load. This could cause interesting happenings at the clearing barrel when guys that KNEW they had never chambered a round simply dropped a mag, attempted to put the rifle on safe and then take it off, point into sand and pull trigger.......and explain to everyone in the world why they had an ND in the bucket.
Yeah I know ND stupid, but in the real world people carry for days and not a few hours on the range and in nasty conditions and places. It happens......and once such a bounce resulted in a long hospital stay and 80 percent disability retirement for one of our guys.
BTW I was one of the field troops interviewed about desired changes to the M-16A1 back in the early 1970s (and the first thing they told us was that going back to the M-14 was an in appropriate response as we all in my group did so immediately) and I did ask for a longer butt stock for a longer length of pull. We seldom wore armor on the range or off a static site though. Now that infantry do routinely wear heavy body armor I would bet more than a few wish they had those shorty stocks back.
-kBob
