May 3, 2013

Thoughts...

First, you do realize Glasers come in .223 too, right? If you're that attached to the concept. They're redundant, but they sell 'em.

But your information is about twenty years out of date; the fact that .223 JHP penetrates less than pistol JHP and shotgun buckshot has been known since the early 1990s. For a primer (from 15 years ago, no less), I'd suggest Roberts G.K., "Law Enforcement General Purpose Shoulder Fired Weapons: the Wounding Effects of 5.56mm/.223 Carbines Compared with 12 ga. Shotguns and Pistol Caliber Weapons Using 10% Ordnance Gelatin as a Tissue Simulant", Police Marksman, Jul/Aug 1998, pp. 38-45. Or if you need something a little less academic, look at the pics here.

To quote the Roberts article, "When used with effective ammunition, the 5.56mm/.223 carbine simultaneously offers both greater effective range and less potential downrange hazard to bystanders than a 12 ga. shotgun, handgun, pistol caliber carbine, or SMG" (emphasis added).

*I'm* an AR-15 owner, and 55gr JHP (my own choice) penetrates less than the loads SWAT typically uses. LE/SWAT seems to be trending toward the heavier 62-77gr loads for more barrier penetration, since LE use goes beyond sheltering-in-place, but even that is less prone to overpenetration than handgun JHP. But for suburban civilian use other than in law enforcement, I think 55gr JHP/SP strikes a good balance; more effective than the fragile 40gr loads, but with less wall penetration than heavier-bullet loads.


AR-15's. Penetrate. Less. Than. Handguns.

Again---because it seems this is having trouble sinking in----a handgun has more chance of penetrating multiple walls and hitting an innocent than a .223 carbine using comparable ammunition, even though the absolute risk of both is quite low. Yes, if you shoot recklessly at an interior wall with *any* gun (even with Glasers), you can mortally wound someone on the other side of the first wall. But that is less likely with .223 loads than with almost any other caliber.

Re: Glasers, they were all the rage in late 1980's/early 1990's, but the consensus in the wound ballistics community seems to be that there are better choices now. I notice that even the Federal Air Marshals Service has now switched from Glasers to lightweight JHP for on-aircraft use. In 9mm, you're talking about a 75gr or 80gr capsule of very small birdshot at 1500 ft/sec, with neither the mass of a typical pistol round nor the velocity of a carbine. At $45 to $60 per magazine of Glasers, you can't exactly practice with them much, either.


Buckshot is buckshot; the lower recoil loads have a lower pellet count but roughly the same velocity and penetration, AFAIK. The shotgun still penetrates more walls than an AR unless you go down to birdshot, and birdshot isn't very effective at stopping a determined assailant beyond near-contact distance.


Huh? An AR shoots at exactly the same rate as a handgun; it fires once and only once when you pull the trigger, and will not fire another round until you release the trigger and pull it a second time. You don't seriously think Title 1 AR's "spray fire," do you?


In your hypothetical "regular home invasion scenario", I would be sheltering in place with 911 on speaker, not opening doors and moving down hallways. And in that scenario, an AR is just as handy as a shotgun, while offering more precision than a handgun or shotgun, more energy than a handgun, and less wall penetration than either. I have a 9mm if I need it, but if someone is trying to get in, I'll choose a long gun, thanks.

If your home layout is such that you'd need one hand to carry a child to the safe room, open doors to get to your child's room, hold a phone, etc. then sure, a handgun of decent capacity might be a better choice for you. But that's not my situation.

So you know where I'm coming from, I shoot USPSA matches with my HD guns (my AR and a S&W 9mm); stages are typically multiple targets from 2 to 20 yards, often with barriers or from cover, so yeah, I know how to run both at across-the-room distances. The handgun reloads faster, the carbine offers more precision.


It's not either/or. In your "jiffy," I have a handgun; in a couple more seconds, I have the carbine. With the carbine stored in a quick-access safe, it's at hand if I'm in the room.


An AR penetrates less than a handgun and is the same length as a shotgun. Pretending otherwise doesn't help your case.


Wrong, wrong, wrong. With lightly constructed, relatively long-for-width JHP like .223, velocity across different loads is inversely correlated with drywall penetration, while mass is directly correlated. A 40gr .223 at 3600 ft/sec might penetrate one interior wall; a 55gr JHP at 3000 ft/sec might penetrate two; a .45 ACP 230gr JHP at 830 ft/sec will penetrate three or four. Head over to the Box o'Truth and check out the sections on shotgun slugs and .45-70; *those* penetrate like nobody's business because of their mass.

The reason that fast .223 penetrates so little is that when you take a lightly constructed .22-caliber JHP spinning at 300,000 RPM and whack it with a couple slabs of drywall at Mach 3, it tends to destabilize, tumble, and fragment because the centrifugal forces exceed the tensile strength of the materials from which it is constructed. The same is not true of most handgun JHP, since handgun bullets are less long-for-caliber, are traveling far slower, and are less likely to fragment when transitioning from an axial spin to a tumble.


No. The momentum delivered to the target is equal to or less than the momentum delivered to the shooter's shoulder. If the 12-gauge doesn't knock the shooter on his/her ass, it won't knock a vest wearer down either. It could cause blunt trauma to someone not wearing a plate, or knock the wind out of them and drop them that way, but the main danger to the person wearing armor is from pellets that miss the armor.

That point is academic, though, since home invasions by people wearing armor aren't common.

March 12, 2013

Well...

That is precisely the question that could be asked of Bloomberg et al right now, as he and his supporters seek to purge the Democratic party of pro-gun Dems, and corral Dems in swing states into pushing gun bans.

The parallels between early 1994 and now are striking, except (1) the bans being floated now are vastly more restrictive than the 1994 Feinstein law, (2) the guns slated for banning are now the most popular civilian firearms in the United States, rather than niche enthusiasts' guns, and (3) gun owners are more aware of pending legislation than in 1994. Yeah, that's going to really help at the polls in '14.

March 11, 2013

Much more than that.

Several years ago, an arms collectors' association put the number of SKS's in U.S. homes at approximately 7 million, though I was never able to track down the calculations. Add 4 or 5 million AR's, a million or so mini-14's, plus uncounted WASR's, Saigas, Kel-Tecs, M1A'a, FALs, CETMEs, M1 carbines, Remington 7400's, BARs, etc. etc. etc going back at least to the Remington Model 1908, plus a whole slew of pistol-caliber carbines going back decades, and that's just the centerfire rifles and carbines.

Add to that millions of Ruger 10/22's and other rimfire semiautos going back decades.

Add to that all the semiauto shotguns out there that would be affected by an AWB, and all the pistols with nontraditional features.

Then add to that all the over-10-round rifle magazines manufactured from the 1860's to the present, all the over-10-round pistol magazines made from the 1930's to the present, and all the repeating shotguns holding over 5 shells, that would be affected by magazine capacity limits.

Using some reasonable assumptions, I think you could easily exceed 40 million gun owners directly threatened by either features bans or magazine capacity limits, depending on the limits selected.

March 8, 2013

As an AR owner...nice thought, but I think I'll pass, thanks.

As part of a fun-n-games fundraiser, it's a neat concept, but not in the context of trying to bait me into compliance with somebody else's Authoritah. Besides, I'm very relationship oriented, so a kiss from a woman who is only trying to get me to comply with her employer's dictates...nah, I'll pass.

But I would like to revisit a statement you made upthread---that you couldn't understand why any reasonable gun owner would want to own an AR. That statement boggles my mind as much as my AR ownership apparently boggles yours.

You do realize we're talking about a non-automatic, small-caliber rifle here, yes? A Title 1 civilian centerfire .22. Not a heavy-caliber weapon, not a gun that fires faster than "regular" civilian guns, not a "badass" gun.

The civilian AR-15 platform has been on the civilian market since the early 1960's (JFK owned one), and there are good reasons why it been the top selling centerfire rifle in the United States for a decade now. The AR-15 *dominates* competitive centerfire target shooting in the United States. It's the most common defensive carbine in U.S. homes. It's the #1 centerfire plinking rifle in the United States. There are reasons for that---accuracy, ergonomics, reliability, economy, versatility, familiarity---that aren't going to be changed by manipulative advertising.

So you know where I'm coming from, I shoot a Rock River .223 AR for fun and competition, currently set up for 0-200 yard shooting with a holographic sight, and it's also my stand-in for a 12-gauge since I have little interest in shotguns. FWIW, I'm not an NRA member; I used to be, years ago, but dropped them when they got too cozy with some affiliates of the Religious Right.

March 6, 2013

Finn M39 on a 1905 Izhevsk receiver still bearing the Romanov crest,

"Machismo" is a noun. The adjective form of your insult would be "macho", would it not?

In any case, on the macho-vs-geek spectrum, I'm very much at the geek end (technical writer, Perl wonk, Guild fan) and very proud of it.

Yes, a Mosin...a very nice Finn M39 on a 1905 Izhevsk hex receiver still bearing the Romanov crest, rebarreled and converted to M39 configuration in 1942 at VKT in Jyväskylä. A fascinating piece of history, in my opinion, and not your garden variety M1891. Best group so far is 1 3/8" at 100 yards, which isn't too shabby for a rifle that's 108 years old.


Neither do I. That's one reason the AR is so popular. You can rebarrel, change caliber, change stocks, free-float, install a match trigger, install optics, install a light, install a sling, change length of pull, and anything else you'd want to do yourself without every having to pay someone else to do it for you. That's a key difference between an AR and (say) a Mini or a Remington 7400.


Knowing what the hell you're talking about when it comes to firearms, firearms law, and the shooting sports is not a radical position. Distressingly rare, perhaps; radical, no.

People who'd understand what I said would be target shooters, competitive shooters, and people interested in the technical aspects of guns and shooting, instead of just bleating about what a gun looks like or how well it kills Bambi or what kind of noise it makes when you cycle it or what Cletus on TV says about it.

People who understand things like sight offset, ballistic coefficient, muzzle energy, how momentum affects recoil, and such. The people who know the difference between a rimfire and a centerfire cartridge, or know how to use a ballistic table. *Those* are the people who understand why a non-automatic civilian centerfire .22 isn't some uber-superweapon. It's a rifle, period. A non-automatic rifle, and a small-caliber one at that.

Bottom line, you're fighting to outlaw the most popular civilian target rifles and HD carbines in the United States and you don't even seem to realize it. But you're in good company, far too many legislators are laboring under the same misconception, and it is going to hurt the party in 2014.

March 6, 2013

Umm, the AR-15 absolutely dominates centerfire target competition in this country...

Umm, the AR-15 absolutely dominates centerfire target competition in this country. The only disciplines it *doesn't* dominate are those in which it is too physically small to dominate (I'm thinking F-class benchrest here). It not only is a target rifle in its many iterations, it is the top selling centerfire target rifle in the United States.

The AR also dominates centerfire recreational shooting, and the rimfire variants are making inroads on the ubiquitous (and functionally identical) Ruger 10/22.

As far as home defense goes, it's a centerfire .22. With JHP in the 50-62 grain weight class, it penetrates less in wallboard than either shotgun 00 buckshot or 9mm JHP, while giving better precision and less recoil than the shotgun, and far more more precision than the handgun. So, yeah, it's a darn good alternative to a 12-gauge, assuming you go with a 16" barrel and not a 20" or 24" long-range barrel. And it's easier to mount a light on an AR than it is to mount one on my old Mini-14.

As far as hunting, the AR isn't widely viewed as powerful enough for most deer hunting unless you step up to a bigger caliber upper than .223, and the power of the rounds it can feed is limited by the AR's small magwell. 6.8mm Remington or 6.5mm Grendel would make pretty good deer calibers, as would the .30 Remington AR, but the overwhelming majority of AR's are chambered in .223, a coyote and prairie-dog round in the hunting world.

What it's *not* commonly used for is "hunting humans." Rifles are the least misused of all weapons in the United States, as you well know. And to this day the worst mass shooting in U.S. history used an ordinary 9mm and a backpack full of low-capacity magazines, as I recall.



Prior to the current ban-fueled buying frenzy, you could get a Smith & Wesson AR for $600. I'd love for you to show me "two excellent rifles" you can buy for $600 total. You could hardly buy a bare-bones Ruger Mini-14 for $600, never mind two higher-quality rifles. Heck, even a cheap-cheap Remington 770 at Walmart is, what, $450?

You've been spun, and hard.

March 6, 2013

A perfect case in point.

That perception is *exactly* why the gun control lobby keeps shooting itself in the foot on the subject of rifle bans.

Dude, I shoot an AR and two 9mm's competitively (local USPSA), and the smaller of the 9mm's is a Smith & Wesson Lady Smith. I'd love to hear your "machismo" take on that.

The AR-15 platform is the most popular centerfire target rifle in the United States not from "the pretext of fear, or to assuage a machismo ego", but because it is far and away the best small-caliber centerfire carbine on the market. Period. Compare a Ruger Mini-14 and a Smith & Wesson AR, which are identical in terms of capacity, caliber, rate of fire, and tell me why for the same money you'd choose a less-accurate, less-ergonomic, less-configurable, less-durable, less-weather-resistant gun for the same price. Show me another single gun you can use for F-class benchrest, IPSC/USPSA, .30-caliber deer hunting, .22LR squirrel hunting, *and* as a less-penetrative, lighter-recoiling stand-in for a 12-gauge in the HD role simply by swapping components with no gunsmith required.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/ar-15/all/



Heh. My AR is a Rock River, in a configuration that has never been used by any military on this planet. It no less "civilian" than a Remington 700 deer rifle (aka "M24/M40 Sniper Weapons System&quot or a Winchester Model 70 (military-style Mauser derivative that served as the standard-issue USMC sniper rifle in Vietnam). FWIW, I own one and only one military rifle, and that one is a bolt-action made in 1905 that helped kick both the Soviets and the Nazis out of Finland. My 9mm's are both Smith & Wessons.

The gun control lobby made a huge miscalculation when they assumed, based on the arguments put forward by Diaz et al that you repeat upthread, that "black rifles" are fringe guns mostly purchased by Walter Mittys, and acted accordingly. The AR is the Winchester .30-30 of my generation (Gen-X) and subsequent, and will undoubtedly surpass the total sales of the Remington 870 within a few years. Face that fact or not, it's no loss to me, but it might keep your side of the argument from stepping in it quite so badly.

March 1, 2013

That might have been the case a couple years ago; probably not now, I think.

That would have been the case until fairly recently, back when it appeared that gun-owner rights were seen as pretty safe from new AWB's and magazine bans. Now, I think such a move would be considered an attempt to proactively add teeth to the gun/mag bans being pushed at the state and national level, since without mandatory recording of transfers, such bans are completely unenforceable.

That's the boat I pretty much find myself in....OK with background checks for private sales in theory, but absolutely opposed in the current environment. NY, CA, and MD, and the Bloomberg machine have shown where they want this bus to go.