Tactical Thursday #1 - Different cartridges for different cases

So, the astute observers among you shall recall that I'd prefaced this week's Tactical Thursday with a snippet of pocket pistols and flash lights. Well, I'm not one to disappoint, so I will briefly touch on what would have been my original post.

• Carry a flashlight. Seriously, Streamlight makes a little guy smaller than a cheap Bic pen that has a pocket clip. It's like 18 bucks on Amazon. Buy one if you aren't already carrying something more substantial. 
• Clean that pocket pistol weekly. If you aren't at least shooting it weekly, at least clean out the pocket lint and dog hair each week. It just wouldn't do to have a Wilson Combat in the safe at home and get done in by some Goblin with a Lorcin because your LCP jammed.

Okay, now that's out of the way, I'm gonna hop on my personal soap box concerning infantry rifles and the perfect caliber therein. But before I go down the rabbit hole of that particular rant, I'd like to take a minute and think everyone who commented and offered support this first week or so of blogging. Thank you all very much. Especially the commentariat from Weaponsman. Nice to hear from some of you guys again. In fact, this rant is inspired in part by something Kurt posted over at ForgottenWeapons. Strangely enough, it did not involve tripods. And an extra special thanks to Tam for the linking. Might have had to breath into a sack for a minute after that one. Anyways, on to your regularly scheduled rant. 

Edit - upon further thought, this will be fleshed out in a more in depth Military Monday posting, but this is sort of a primer.

I like external hammers

As the above post shows, in any given caliber there are going to be several variations of available bullet. And in any given style of firearm, you will have numerous variations as well. And here lays my view of the current debate concerning the lethality of the average weapon system issued to SPC Snuffy and LCpl Louie. 

SOCOM has announced it is looking at new DM and Sniper platfrom weapons. 6.5 Creedmoor is now the new buzz round. Obviously, that's the cartridge that will solve all our issues in the GWOT. But last week it was the .260 Remington. And before that it was the .300 BLK, oh but only for suppressed use. And before that we had the 6.8 SPC and 6.5 Grendel. And all of the aforementioned rounds were good, quality rounds from major ammunition manufacturers. But, other than helping the bottom line of Big Green and Academy, how much would they have really done to help the average G.I. Joe fighting Cobra? Errr, the Taliban or ISIS. And how cost effective would it be to Tom and Taylor Taxpayer?

My answer is long and convoluted, and to be honest, kind of rambles into bashing the ROE our forces operate under and out dated conventions trying to make war more humane. And hell, I even bring up the old warhorse M-14/M-21 platform and in some ways slaughter that scared cow. But, I digress. 

On Monday, we'll delve into the murky world of the Hague, the M-16, twist rates, why M855 is effing stupid, how Ronnie Barrett almost saved us all, and why the .260 Remington isn't going to be filling PMags of guys down range any time too. (that was painful to type)