I have never bought the argument that it does more damage. The AR-15, the civilian model of the M-16, is an amazingly accurate gun. Firearm novices can hit stuff consistently at 300m in an afternoon of practice. I think that more than anything else is why the military went with it.
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/12/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael Proctor-Smith</b> <<a href="mailto:mproctor13@gmail.com">mproctor13@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On 7/12/07, Dustin Laurence <<a href="mailto:dustin@laurences.net">dustin@laurences.net</a>> wrote:<br>> On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 05:04:18PM -0700, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:<br>> ><br>> > Risking the the reeducation squad and the epa I have to say from
<br>> > personal experiance that for "spectacular display of dismantlement",<br>> > throwing a printer off a multi-story building on to pavement is a way<br>> > better show then shooting one.<br>
><br>> There's still nothing better than a nice blackpowder charge though.<br>><br>> > ...Plus I don't have much experiance with<br>> > soft targets, but I have used millary hollow-points (wierd in that
<br>> > they where hollow point riffle ammo with a steel cores, but again they<br>> > were of soviet design). They did make bigger holes but still just<br>> > holes in the metal and wood object that we were shooting at.
<br>><br>> That's all bullets are supposed to do--make holes in things that need<br>> to have holes put in them. :-)<br>><br>> That said, if said object in need of holes is a soft target the exit<br>> wound can be quite large. That's why nobody uses military rounds for
<br>> hunting; they're far too likely to wound an animal and let it run off<br>> bleeding from a puncture wound, because the puncture is small.<br>> Mushrooming bullets kill by shock, because the hole *isn't* small. Part
<br>> (only part) of the reason muzzleloader calibers run so large is that<br>> balls don't really expand well, so the bullet already needs to be large<br>> for maximum shock. (The other reason is the atrocious sectional density
<br>> of spheres, of course.)<br>><br>> THis is related to a small theory of mine that I've never seen verified,<br>> but I'm convinced of it nevertheless. "Rules of war" rarely are obeyed<br>
> unless they don't inconvenience the war too much. "Humane bullets" that<br>> don't expand are more convenient for military purposes than it seems,<br>> because killing a soldier in an army that cares for it's wounded is
<br>> rather inefficient. It creates one casualty. *Wounding* a soldier not<br>> only creates the same casualty, it consumes considerable resources in<br>> evacuation and medical treatment. So "humane bullets" are not so much
<br>> of a sacrifice after all, *if the opponent has sufficiently high<br>> standards of casualty care*.<br>><br>> One way to test this is to find out where the Russians wanted to use the<br>> "poison bullet"--I seem to recall it was in Afganistan against irregular
<br>> troops who did *not* have to support medical or evacuation resources.<br>> (For those that don't know, the Russians managed to design a bullet that<br>> was unstable enough to tumble on contact with a soft target, and a
<br>> bullet ploughing sideways has much of the effect of an expanded bullet<br>> without having to expand.) Also I wonder who else has tried this.<br>> Widely deploying unstable bullets for use against a regular Western army
<br>> (which has a high casualty care burden) would more or less disprove the<br>> hypothesis.<br><br>Yes, the tumble bullet is why other then a single solder being able to<br>carry more rounds that the US adopted the .223(
5.56mm). Down sizing to<br>a lighter .22 caliber from the .30cal(7.62mm) rounds that had been the<br>standard. The claim is that the high velosity low mass .223 round<br>tumbles after hitting a person and acctually causes more damage then
<br>the higher energy .30cal that they replaced.<br><br>The sad part is that all our ammo designed to wound poeple is<br>acctually a burden on our selves currently. As we tend to shoot the<br>irregular we are currently fighting and the care for them as well.
<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>John Lowry<br><br>