Should the saying "every Marine a rifleman" be changed?

My brother was a career Marine who served in Korea. He was a proud expert rifleman, and at the time a Gunny with a personnel MOS. When the Chicom army crossed the Yalu River, he was among the many POGs pressed into action as infantry.
He had a twisted right pinky finger, where he caught a fragment while in a firefight. He pulled it out with his teeth and resumed firing his M-1.
He considered that "wound" too slight for a Purple Heart. I leave to your imagination his reaction to Sen. Kerry and his "three Purple Hearts" without so much as a light duty chit for his "wounds".

Agreed just because they are up on their marksmanship does not mean they can be put in Infantry positions in which they had a small amount of training at some time in the past does not make them qualified.
In fact I think that would make things more of a security risk.
I am sure you all remember hand to hand combat training in basic.
Then there was always at least one dumbass that thought that made them a expert in fighting.
The same results you know just enough to get there ass handed to them.
The Army used to say train like you fight, Not bring in the troops that do not know how to fight.
Just my thoughts.

In a one way I agree with your statement. All Marines are trained to be sharp shooters! They all must be qualified with a rifle. The combat support troops will never be as good as infantry, because they don’t train like infantry. However when in need they have the basics to supplement the Infantry. Which has worked well when these support personnel during the Korean and Vietnam. Many of our brother or sister services do not qualify their personnel to support themselves in a defensive position.

Every member of DOD should be proficient in the use of weapons, sadly that isn't reality. I personally would have like to been allowed to go to the firing range a lot more often than once a year, and ended up going to the civilian ranges to do just that. I never saw more than a handful of military people on the range and when it was time for combat I saw even fewer that knew one end of a rifle from the other.

I was in the Air Force and when it came time to shoot at an enemy and I ended up surprising a lot of Marines. What I observed was Marine "spray and pray" resulting in very few enemy casualties, where I put down an enemy uniform with every shot. In my view a rifleman hits the target so who says every Marine is a rifleman?

I am not a marine. Never was a marine. But I did serve on tin cans in the usn. Do to normal crewing standards in the US and when I was aboard. There were times when all hands were required to do things. Floating groceries aboard literally would have a 30 to hand working party. The ship's basic load of ammo was all hands unless you were wearing khaki! One of the funniest things in the world was to watch Andy Sixx have to go work for any three or four! They would spend 10 minutes arguing seniority over which E6 was in charge and then he for who would actually called where the working party would walk by and say I don't care go put on a pair of slick sleeves, no stripes, and come back and let's get to work! The manual labor equivalent of every Marine is a Rifleman...

Dont change it

As an 0193 Admin Chief (Remington Raider), I took pride in my being able to go to the Range and shoot Expert (6th Award) during my 20 year career. And that includes 2 tours at HQMC and 2 years at MarDet, USDB, Ft Leavenworth, KS. That's 10 yrs no Rifle Range. And if I couldn't hit the target with my rifle I could always fall back on my secondary MOS of 0353 (ONTOS Crewman) and throw 106 rounds at them! Semper Fi. GySgt USMC (RET) '65-'85.

NO,IT SHOULDN'T!!!!

Oh hell yes. Even in the Air Force basic training we had to learn how to use an M16 back in the day. I believe this rule should be applied to every service if it isn't already including the Coast Guard

HELL NO!