Some rifle variants have higher firerate and that's it, it depends mostly from the factions weapons

They aren't bolties

For bolt action rifles there are 2 main reasons. 1st is the RoF and 2nd is the sight. For exp: German Kar98k has decent RoF and good sight and it's BR1 weapon so you don't have too much reason to use any higher BR bolt action rifle. Of course there are good BR2 bolt action like Mannlicher 1895 which has fast RoF but the sight isn't easy to use as Kar98k and doesn't have bayonet. Beside Kar98k with grenade launcher exist in BR3.
The rifles with 12 dmg aren't bolt action rifles they are semi auto rifles

I liked the Gewehr, for the possibility of chaining shots, although it does less damage, it still hurts a lot and the magazine also changes life... Now I have the FG42 II and I can't do without it, semi-auto or full auto with a crazy rate of fire and OP precision. However, the USA has their T20 just as bad so... It is really useful to switch to semi-auto rather than bolt action.

Historically if you play germans get the first mg as fast as possible since their units are focused around them.
As Allies get all of the smgs but mg is not that big of a priority.
Soviets understood very well that massive amount of automatics is better while germans never really considered it in the beginning

Try the weapons, see which one suits you best without worrying about stats and play with it ;)
I play BR V and still use weapons from BR II. (and not only for bolt rifle)

Originally posted by Trickst3r83:

Some rifle variants have higher firerate and that's it, it depends mostly from the factions weapons

there is a small base fire rate on the rifle but the soldier perks actually make you notice the reload rate. also some rifles will have more damage at longer ranges and there is a perk which cost 16 points that give a soldier more life. so that higher damage will come into use but you are talking about end game stuff at that point.