DPS is an irrelevant stat in a FPS. You are never working with a high enough HP base to justify greater damage spread over time. Burst is the only relevant factor.

The only exception are when killing HAV's. For rifles, frontload burst and accuracy are the only factors that mean anything.

Because of this, the scrambler rifle is the best rifle. Everything else is ****.

People are going to be shocked when they realize the the rail rifle is not the best solution for close range. In close combat, you usually don't hold the trigger down the whole time. Rather, you sort of "feather" it. For the rail rifle, every time you have to press the trigger again that is 0.2 seconds before anything happens. In 0.2 seconds and AR can fire two shots with a little time to spare. Two shots from even an unmodded GEK is over 70 damage. So every time a RR user has to let go of the trigger and pull it again, that's a potential 70-some damage inflicted on him while he does nothing. Then consider the fact that the RR only has 42 shots per clip compared to 60 from an AR.