Thursday, May 10, 2018

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)

6 comments:

  1. Hey Mack;

    All these calibers comfused the crap out of me, but I guess I am old school and I know the mouse round and the 7.62x51. I don't know much about the others.

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    Replies
    1. Tune in Monday! I'll have a post with pictures!

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  2. I don't want to see us make the "mistake" made by Mac Arthur in forcing Garand away from the .276 cartridge because of all of the .30 on hand and at the same time I've embraced "Better is the enemy of good enough"; pretty sure 7.62x51 is good enough with 5.56 filling the role of .30 Carbine.
    I like some hammers too (though don't particularly care for the M9) but am carrying a striker gun most of the time these days.
    Boat Guy

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    Replies
    1. Oh man. Don't even get me started down that rabbit hole. Or going with the M-14 over the T- whatever the FAL clone was. And the Beretta was a concession to my inner future old guy.

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  3. I toyed with 6.8, as well as .300 back when it was "Whisper" not "BLK", and decided that something's gonna need to be pretty well-proven to bump me off 5.56 as long as I'm sticking with the AR-pattern. I'm done guinea pigging.

    (Now, I still think .300 is the berries for teeny short-barreled things, but that's another conversation altogether...)

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    Replies
    1. 6.8 SPC has been by dream caliber ever since I saw a REC-7 on the cover of Guns & Ammo in the PX one day.

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