Really any problem with the rifles at total warfare scale is inherent in the total warfare/tech manual rules rather than the guns themselves. You'd actually have to go back and rework how infantry works in the first place to really "balance" things, and get away from the whole "one attack at one range with damage solely based on how many people in the platoon are still standing" motif that we've had since the eighties.
That sounds critical, and in a sense it is, but I want to be clear that I also understand how we got to this place, and why the powers that be wouldn't feel any immediate pressing need to fix it. I'm actually quite fond of how the current regime seems to be focusing on the core of the game rather than pulling itself in several different directions trying to cover each aspect of what is kinda a sprawling mess of a system.
Though I do hope that once the core game has a nice firm foundation, maybe another look can be taken at some of these things.