re: Category: Rifle rounds you can buy at Walmart more powerful than a .223

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NC made his comment which was factual but skated into a sensitive area for some supporters of the 2nd Amendment.

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Not really.

60 minutes does the anti-gun thing, "AR-15 wounds are the...WORST...WOUNDS...EVA..." - which is ludicrous.

Someone posted, quite factually, that such wounds are not different than any other (which should have been clarified to mean rifle wounds, but still, that's beginning to parse words something awful). Certainly to counter the implication by the media to the otherwise, that's generally true.

NC - then doubles down on 60 Minutes, saying "very different" and is taken aback by the reaction.

Like others with relatively unsupportable statements (AR-15 round designed to wound - nonsense, it was primarily about weight. Weight of the platform AND weight of the ammunition to allow individual soldiers to carry more with the same weight allowance), the thread then devolved into a classic poliboard pissing match.

NC doesn't have clean hands here because it is very reasonable to assume he deliberately provoked the reaction. The only other possible conclusion - that he's too dumb for the poliboard - is simply unreasonable. He's an educated man of science, for Pete's sake.

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He was simply pointing out how absurd that original comment was.

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He would have been better served by initially calling out 60 Minutes, THEN making distinctions. He didn't do that, he used his "extensive" experience with gunshot wounds to double down and reinforce the insanity of the media, rather than a perhaps broad statement (but far more accurate) that AR-15 wounds are generally consistent with other wounds and not some Hollywood, zombie-exploding menace.

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Most deer hunters do not use a 223 for deer hunting.

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True.

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The reason being, that they want a quick kill where the deer does not run off and die later.

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Meh. Most folks learn how to hunt on a bolt action .30-06 or .270. You're also going to get a more sure kill at longer ranges (although folks talk about this all the time, most whitetail are taken within 100 yards - elk on the other hand, are more commonly taken at longer ranges and you would want something a little bigger than .223 - but in reality, .223 with proper shot placement would be fine for 90% of whitetail deer taken in the Southeastern United States.)

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It doesn't matter if it was designed to wound or not. That is what it does more often then almost any other centerfire rifle cartridge.

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These discussions get sillier and sillier. Shot placement is everything. A poor shot will cause suffering. A good shot will result in an instant (or near instant) incapacitation or death.

Military rounds are generally restricted to FMJ as opposed to JHP due to various international conventions. FMJ is more likely to wound than kill, which is sort of ironic in the grand scheme of things.

It is the reason the .45 retains such a following among pistol owners, because in a military context, if you HAVE to use FMJ, you use the heaviest, largest-diameter bullet you can.

Talking about yourself in third person.....

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Shot placement is everything. A poor shot will cause suffering. A good shot will result in an instant (or near instant) incapacitation or death.

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While I agree shot placement rules all, you do have to admit that with better terminal ballistics you get a bigger lethal target than with lesser ones. In other words a weaker round requires more precise shot placement. The .223 is a weaker round than most hunting rifles for big game. I've dropped deer in their tracks with a 30-06 125gr nosler ballistic tip clocking 3250 ft per second that were not in the 'kill zone' by a pretty sizable distance. Had I been using a .223 those would have just been slow death wounds where I would not have recovered the animal.

The myth of the .223's 'killing power' is just that. A myth told by people who are either lying intentionally or are just ignorant of the subject in order to sway other ignorant people to a political position.

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The reason the 5.56 was adopted wasn’t this inconsistent wounding mechanism, designed to wwound not kill; it was because the 5.56 is light weight, compact, cheap, and has very little recoil.

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LINK


The 5.56 was used because it was cheap, lightweight and the ballistics were falsely believed to be better than they were. The findings were that a 3500 FPS round could be smaller, and thus cheaper, and do the damage of larger more expensive rounds. The problem was the round never reached that speed once the army made cost cutting decisions that lessened the original sought after velocities.

The 5.56 was pumped up by those that had skin in the game and had a financial reason to promote the 5.56. The round is not the end-all in technology and is not the ultimate man killer. It’s a varmint round that got caught up in the “high velocity hooplas “ of the 1950’s.

I'm actually a good shot. It was when I was a kid and the deer was moving. Hit too far back. And you are correct, that round did clip an artery. It also pulverized and split open the liver without hitting it and most of the rest of the organs as well as slicing open the diaphragm and lungs and heart. Because it is doing over 3000fps and clipped a rib and went off like a bomb decelerating. That's the point. (it retained 85% of it's weight and was recovered under the opposite side skin). Had I hit that same spot with a 223 it probably would have died slow.

Thus better terminal ballistics increases the kill zone which is what you always hear ignorant people talk about with the .223. When people actually believe you can get your heart exploded by a .223 hitting you in the arm, we're not talking about reality here. It's a myth.

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The myth of the .223's 'killing power' is just that. A myth told by people who are either lying intentionally or are just ignorant of the subject in order to sway other ignorant people to a political position.

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I know a lot of military guys that dropped folks in the Iraq and Afghanistan with M855. Your argument is as stupid as those that claimed 9mm was "weak and ineffective" though it has killed more people on this planet than .45 ACP ever will. The entire concept of "killing" or "stopping" power is a myth that is extolled by the ignorant. Your .30-06 with light weight bullets is taking advantage of the exact same remote wounding effects as .223 because by using 125gr bullets you are peeling off about 100 - 200 ft-lbf. Your moving the goal posts with the "big game" argument since: A) Humans are not big game by any means and B) even .30-06 is low on the totem pole as far as choices go for big game these days compared to .300 Win Mag, the .338 mags, 7mm Rem Mag and a number of others better suited.

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A .223/5.56 is a very high velocity round which *can* tumble and fragment upon impact.

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That all depends on the type of bullet used, not the round itself.

A shitty ballistic tip bullet will fragment after impact while a solid copper bullet or similar can zip right through a body with no problem. It all depends on the actual bullet.

Without identifying myself, suffice to say, I know what I'm talking about.

You and I are actually not arguing too far apart from what I can see. I have no doubt that will be enough for you to explain to me how wrong I am about that so I'll just let you then we'll discuss tomorrow.

Just go back and read what I actually wrote. THEN spazz out whatever you'd prefer to argue about.

I'm definitely not a .45 guy in the ever raging war against the .9mm. Pistols are for poking holes. Accuracy is more important than ever at these velocities. But rifles going faster than 3000fps are not just poking holes. There's all kinds of things happening there. And any round that can do that with bullets in a weight range so they aren't just flying through the target are expanding the lethal zone to hit. I just gave you an example of it.

I also know a lot of guys that have killed people with .223s, .308's, .50 etc. Nowhere did I say it can't kill you. I was using the deer as a real world example. WHile they are tougher than us after hit, their bones and meat a close enough to simulate a human. I've examined deer killed with 223. You have to hit it exactly right. If you do it dies every time. There are MUCH better rounds for that. Which doesn't preclude you using 223 on a deer. Hell I killed one with a .38 snubnose with +P's in it. You can kill them with anything. But some things are better than others, and the 223 is not very high on that list versus almost any other normal deer rifle.

I didn't see the 60 Minutes episode, and only followed the caliber thread from a distance.

I think people are tired of the gun-grabbers constantly maneuvering to limit people, as 99%+ of gun owners are law-abiding citizens who want to be left alone. We all know that the criminals and crazies who shoot people, would stab or bludgeon if that was their only option to kill or assault.

I do think, objectively, that yeah, trauma surgeons who deal with GSW, are dealing with a different issue. If you had predominantly seen people with pistol wounds, and now those people have .556 wounds, it's going to be worse. I don't think that's justification for banning anything, because the criminal will find another way to maim.