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“Back in those days the civilian had better arms than the military.
Army-—smooth bore musket. Civilian—super accurate rifle.
Army adopts a muzzle loading rifle-—civilians had breachloaders.
Army adopts a breach loading single shot rifle—civilians had tube fed cartridge rifles, some holding up to 32 rounds.
Army adopts a 5 shot bolt action rifle,-—Civilians had lever actions, pump actions, early semi-auto rifles, and were experimenting with full auto rifles.
Army adopts a semi-auto rifle,—citizens banned from full auto rifles due to taxing. ...”

Mostly nonsense. Much of which has been handed down as Holy Writ, perpetuated in editions of Small Arms of the World predating Nr 10.

At the time of the American War of Independence, rifles were far too expensive for general use. Each was custom-made, and calibers were not standardized enough to permit use of uniform-size ammunition; each rifleman had to have a bullet mould custom-reamed to fit his rifle with him, to cast bullets over the campfire. No rifle of the period 1775-1783 mounted a bayonet; once rifle-armed troops discharged their pieces, they were helpless if a nearby enemy force mounted a bayonet attack.

Breechloaders were mostly a curiosity and a rich man’s plaything until metallic cartridges were developed in the 1850s. Even then, the cartridges were not reliable and were of inferior power to any muzzle loader. Moreover, breechloaders were more expensive than muzzle loaders, fragile, and more demanding of careful maintenance. Repairs - when possible - were far more problematic. These considerations ruled them out as military arms, at a time when a penny-pinching Congress and a shortsighted, mulish, complacent citizenry demanded low military expenditures.

Repeaters were even more problematic. Their chief limitation was the burden of the powerful cartridge used by the military. The Henry rifle fired what was no more than a pistol round, and was very fragile. Early centerfire lever actions like the Winchester 1873 were very large and heavy, and the newer cartridges were not that much better than the rimfire round for the Henry. Not until Winchester introduced the M1886 was there a reliable, strong, durable rifle that could handle the military 45-70 round. Super-capacity rifles like the Evans (34-shot) fired very small rounds inferior to some revolver rounds. A tube-fed breech-loader, fully loaded with full-power rounds, could be a weighty proposition indeed: far more than any average soldier would be inclined to carry.

Every military organization that adopted a bolt-action repeater used internal magazines of no more than six shots (except the British: their first Lee rifles held eight shots, later ones held ten). Detachable box magazines were terribly fragile and unreliable - a problem that wasn’t really solved until the 1950s. Tube magazines were not widely used - the new sharp-pointed jacketed bullets would set off primers in a chain-fire.

No lever action chambered a cartridge as powerful as the new bottleneck rounds loaded with smokeless powder. The sole exception was Winchester’s M1895. Slide-action rifles were never a factor: Remington was the only company to make any. And their rifles faced the same power limits as did lever actions. Slide actions did see success as shotguns.

Semi-auto (self-loading) rifles were foreseen as greatly superior in a tactical sense before 1900, but ran into problems of reliability and durability - especially feed reliability. Rough field conditions - muddy trenches etc - made the most severe demands on autoloading guns. Machine guns were perfected earlier because their parts could be made larger and heavier. Individual rifles faced severe constraints of size and weight; the most careful manufacture and heat-treatments had to be employed, to create a successful military rifle. The US 30-06 military cartridge made the design situation that much more difficult: it was the longest military rifle round of its day and was extremely powerful.

The US Army has been obsessed with full-auto arms for individual issue for decades. Field commanders begged and pleaded for select-fire Garands during WWII. Army Ordnance was convinced it could build a rifle weighing no more than an M1 Garand, capable of full auto fire, that was fully controllable, firing a “full power” round equivalent to 30-06; they failed. The M14 - adopted in 1957, not 1956 - was never controllable. And it was plagued with production problems ... as late as 1961, M1s were still in the hands of troops in key spots. You can see them slung on the shoulders of US troops in Germany, in newsreel footage of the construction of the Berlin Wall.

Full-auto fire is believed to be essential to modern infantry tactics, but is of less utility to any civilian shooter operating alone, with constraints on transport and resupply that implies. Volume fire, in concert with many other fires from crew-served weapons fielded by all service branches, is central to infantry action. No lone operator can duplicate it - even if that person did have the funds to obtain the ammunition, they could never carry enough to make it tell.

And hand-held full-auto fire is of greatly inferior effective range. According to many ground-force officers, no more than 75 yards.