Ammunition

 

I’m sure most people who don’t care about guns don’t care about ammunition, but I find the topic useful for addressing some of the issues which come up in gun control.

With regard to cannabis legalization, many people who oppose it likewise seem to be militantly ignorant about marijuana, its forms and uses, etc.  It’s like not only do they oppose cannabis use, per se, but they also seem to oppose learning anything about it.  What’s flower? What are edibles?  What is concentrate?  And why would someone give edibles, which aren’t cheap, for free to children?  Again, learning about it doesn’t mean you have to try it.  God forbid that if you learned that it’s impossible to get addicted to, or overdose, on marijuana, you might actually stop trying to ban it.  The #1 “drug” which causes problems in this country is alcohol, and that little experiment from 1920-33 called “Prohibition” didn’t exactly solve it.  Banning MJ hasn’t been any more effective and likewise caused far more problems than it solved.

Likewise with guns. Someone posted pics of various people, all Americans, posing with ther gun collections.  Massive negative reaction.  “These people are sick!”  No, they’re not sick to own guns at all, not sick to own more than one, and not sick to be proud of their collection.  Almost certainly these people purchased their guns legally and do not use them in crimes.  Either they use the guns for target shooting (legal), hunting (legal) or legitimate self-defense (also legal).  Not your cup of tea, yeah, we get it.  But not illegal OR morally reprehensible, no matter how many mass shootings are occurring.  It would be nice if these gun owners were able to stop those shootings, but they are not deputized to do so.

The cartridge itself consists of a casing, a bullet, gunpowder, and a primer or percussion cap.  Up until cartridges were developed around time of the US Civil War, muzzle loading weapons had to be loaded manually.  The breech is the entrance end of the barrel; the muzzle is the exit end of the barrel.  First the gunpowder, then the bullet, rammed down, a percussion cap placed below the hammer at the breech, and then the gun is ready to fire – once.  The whole process had to be repeated each time the gun was fired.  [This itself made a small, well-trained professional army far superior to a mass of untrained volunteers.] Revolver ammunition was finally produced in cartridge form, and rifle ammunition for the Sharp’s carbine.  This used black powder gunpowder.  The invention of cartridges allowed guns to be loaded at the breech instead of this cumbersome business of loading from the muzzle.  Breechloading then allowed semi- and full-automatic firing.

Typically a firing pin is held forward by a spring, and held back against the spring by the trigger mechanism.  When you pull the trigger, this releases the firing pin to strike forward against the cartridge’s primer cap, igniting the gunpower inside the cartridge, which pushes the bullet down the barrel and out of the gun.  The bolt mechanism has an extractor, so when you work the bolt again, it extracts the empty cartridge and allows the next round to feed. 

Bolt-Action.  Once the cartridge was developed, a breech loading rifle could exist.  At first these were single shot.  You opened the bolt, loaded a single cartridge, closed the bolt, and fired when ready.  Then you worked the bolt open again to eject the empty casing, loaded a new cartridge, and continued.  By the 1880s, an internal magazine was developed which allowed 5-10 rounds to be stored at a time (usually 5), loaded by chargers (which remained in the rifle) or stripper clips (which ejected once the rounds were in the gun).  By WWI guns with removable magazines came out (e.g. the Chauchat light machine gun and the Browning Automatic Rifle), which could be preloaded and carried in bulk.  Pistols and submachine guns also use detachable magazines.  However, most, if not all, bolt-action rifles have integral magazines, mostly 5 rounds, except the Lee-Enfield, which can store 10. 

Although nominally rendered obsolete by semi-automatic weapons, in practice bolt actions are supposedly more accurate than semi-automatics, and thus remain in favor and in use mostly as sniper rifles – and as hunting rifles.  Moreover, trained soldiers familiar with their rifles can cycle the bolt action fairly quickly. 

Semi-automatic.  The gun fires one bullet each time the trigger is fired, the bolt being worked back to firing position either by recoil or gas operation.  The most famous is the M1 Garand of WWII.  The French actually had semi-automatic rifles in WWI, the RSC 1917, but the design was flawed and unreliable.  The French switched back to bolt action (MAS36) for WWII.  Germany had its Gewehr 43 and the USSR had its SVT40 during WWII, but as a practical matter only the US was widely using semi-automatic weapons in that war.

Full automatic.  The gun fires continuously as long as the trigger is held and ammunition is supplied.  Ammunition is supplied by a magazine (assault rifles or light machine guns) or belt-fed (machine guns).  The rate of fire might be anywhere from 250 rounds per minute, average about 500-600 rpm, or as high as 900 or 1200 rounds per minute.  Needless to say, the higher the rate of fire, the more difficult the weapon is to control and the sooner you will run out of ammunition.  A higher rate of fire also increases the risk of jams or misfires.

In many cases, full auto actually simply wastes ammunition, and soldiers find that semi-automatic weapons work fairly well as infantry weapons, leaving the full auto business to submachine guns and machine guns.  The FAL is often in semi-auto only mode, and the US military ramped back the M16A1 (full auto) to three round bursts (M16A2).  A weapon which can fire either full- or semi- auto is called select-fire.

Different types of guns fire different types of ammunition. 

Pistol. 9mm, .40 S&W, .45.  At low end of ammunition in terms of power is pistol ammunition, fired from a handgun.  Revolvers, remarkably enough, still seem to be popular.  Pistols are also popular:  Beretta (my favorite), Glock, and Sig Sauers are the most well know brands.  They vary from fairly compact, easier to conceal or easier for people with smaller hands to deal with, all the way up to the Desert Eagle, which fires a .50 round.  The famous .44 Magnum is on the top end of the revolver selection.  These all fire one bullet each time you pull the trigger.  Revolvers have to be reloaded in their cylinder – though there are speed loaders which expedite this process – whereas automatics have magazines, ranging from 8 to 15 round capacity.  My Beretta uses 15 round magazines.  Is 15 round “high capacity”?  Well, for a handgun it could be.  Then again they sell drum magazines for pistols, though I rarely see anyone use them.  Drum magazines are disfavored even for submachine guns.

Pistol ammunition has a fairly low muzzle velocity (less than 1000 feet per second).  Probably the most popular caliber is 9mm, aka 9mm Luger after famous German handgun, the first one to use that caliber.  Next are .45 ACP (a US caliber, famous in the 1911 automatic), .40 Smith & Wesson (in between the two), .38 Special – popular in police revolvers, and .380, used in the Walther PPK and Colt 1908, being one step below 9mm and used in many compact fireams.  In the original James Bond novels, Bond carries a gun in .32, until MI6’s armorer insists he upgrade to .380 as .32 is too weak, at which point he adopts his famous PPK.

A weapon which fires pistol ammunition full auto is a machine pistol, but better known as a submachine gun.  The most famous SMGs are the Thompson (.45) (US/UK/Canada) (.45), MP40 Schmeisser (9mm) (Germany), M3 “Grease Gun” (.45) (US), Sten Gun (9mm) (UK), Uzi (9mm) (Israel), and the PPSH (7.62x25) (Russia), all of which (except the Uzi) were most prominently featured in WWII.  The Russians equipped entire units with PPSh, whereas in most other armies it was the squad leader (sergeant) who carried the SMG.  Most of these use box magazines, with the Thompson and PPSh famous for 50 and 71 round drum magazines.  The PPSh had a relatively high rate of fire – 900 rounds per minute.  The Thompson was famous for being favored by gangsters in the ‘20s and ‘30s, and was adopted by the Allied armies in WWII, though the final high production variant, the M1, deleted the provision to use a drum magazine.  It was expensive to mass produce (as well as heavy), so the US developed the Grease Gun, whereas the British developed the Sten gun, both fairly cheap but effective – and much lighter. 

Full power Rifle/MG.  Generally .30 caliber or 7.62mm.  In the late nineteenth century the French invented smokeless powder, and a rifle to fire the cartridge, the 1886 Lebel.  That cartridge is the 8x50mmR.  Originally it had a round nosed bullet (Balle M) and then they sharpened the point (“spitzer”) (Balle D) in 1898.  Before the Lebel, everyone was using black powder.  Smokeless powder, in addition to being smokeless, was far more efficient and made all black powder weapons obsolete, forcing everyone else – most notably the Germans – to change.  They also had to change when the Balle D replaced the Balle M.

Rifles tend to be fed by chargers/stripper clips, or magazines; light machine guns generally use box magazines; and heavy machine guns use 500 round belts. 

Britain: .303 (7.7x56mmR).  Used in Lee Enfield bolt action rifles of WWI and WWII, the Bren light machine gun, and the Vickers heavy machine gun.  The British were the last to upgrade their roundnosed cartridges with a spitzer design (Mark VII) in 1910.

Germany:  7.92x57mm aka 8mm Mauser.  Used in the Gewehr 98 rifle (WWI), Kar 98K rifle (WWII), various Maxim machine guns during WWI, and then in the MG34 and MG42 machine guns during WWII.  Germany eventually developed a semiautomatic rifle, the Gewehr 43, but it was never very popular.  The initial 1888 version was round nosed (Patrone 88) and upgraded to spitzer version (S Patrone) in 1903.

Russian:  7.62.54R.  Initially used in the Mosin-Nagant 91/30 bolt-action rifle, plus the famous Maxim machine gun.  The Russians upgraded from round nose to spitzer in 1908.  The Maxim was fairly heavy, so the Russians devised a clever tripod mount with wheels.  They also mounted the machine gun on horsedrawn carts during the Russian Civil War (1918-22), kind of making it a machine gun chariot.   By WWII they had the Degtyarev light machine gun SVT-40 semiautomatic rifle.  Although the Russians switched over to the AK47 after WWII, they kept using machine guns, and the Mosin-Nagant, like many bolt-action rifles, remains popular as a sniper rifle.  So the full power round remains in full production.

US.  .30-06.  In 1903 the US copied the Mauser to make the Springfield, and the roundnosed cartridge was the .30-03.  Three years later they switched to a spitzer design, the .30-06.  That round was used in WWI in the Springfield, 1917 Enfield, and Browning Automatic Rifle, and then the Browning machine gun – 1917 water cooled, 1919 air cooled.  When the Garand came out in 1936, it was also chambered in .30-06.  In 1958 this round was superseded by .308/7.62x51 NATO.   The M14 and FAL use .308, as do the GPMG, the M60, and M3 (modern version of MG42) machine guns. 

The French started out, in 1886 and WWI, with 8x50R Lebel, which is a rimmed round.  The original round nosed cartridge (Balle M) was upgraded to a spitzer variant (Balle D) in 1898; in addition to being the first to use smokeless powder, they were the first to use spitzer bullets.  Before WWII they switched over to a rimless round, 7.5x54mm, used in the MAS36 bolt action rifle which served as their standard rifle – until June 1940.  However, the French weren’t able to produce enough MAS36’s to equip their entire army, so they had to rely on WWI Lebels and Berthiers in the older caliber.  After WWII they managed to ramp up production of the MAS36 and equip their armies fighting in Indochina and elsewhere. 

Both Italy and Japan started the war with relatively lower power rounds.  For Italy, they started out with 6.5x52mm, and switched to 7.35x51mm, which meant having to rechamber their earlier guns for the new caliber.  Oddly, Lee Harvey Oswald’s Carcano was chambered in the earlier 6.5x52mm caliber, and certainly sufficed to put two rounds through Kennedy and one through Connally (the first shot which struck Kennedy).  For the Japanese, they began the war with 6.5x50R, and switched to 7.7x58mm, meaning rifles and machine guns were either chambered for one or the other.  Needless to say, switching in the middle of the war caused logistical issues. 

Intermediate Cartridge.  During WWII, the Germans discovered that the full power 8mm Mauser round, designed for optimal accuracy out to 300 yards, was unnecessary, as tactical encounters by German troops were occurring well closer than 300 yards.  They designed a smaller round, 7.92 Kurz, and a weapon to fire it: the STG44 (Sturmgewehr, Assault Rifle).  The smaller round was lighter, the troops could carry more, and the recoil was less, making the weapon easier to control on full auto.  The STG44 was the world’s first assault rifle.  They made about 400k of them, and they were very popular with German troops in the later part of WWII.  For their part, the Russians had come to the same conclusion, and their man Kalashnikov designed their own equivalent, the AK47, though this gun came out after WWII was already over.  Since the Russians switched over to the AK47 by the time of the Korean War, they had a huge surplus of PPSh SMGs left over – which had been their main weapon, along with the Mosin-Nagant 91/30 bolt action rifle, during WWII.  They supplied Mosin-Nagants and PPShs to the North Koreans and Chinese in the Korean War.

In the late 50s, Eugene Stoner invented the AR15, which the US military adopted as the M16, during the Vietnam War.  Stoner specifically designed the 5.56 (.223) cartridge with a bullet that would tumble as it penetrated flesh, doing more damage than a 7.62/.308 bullet which might simply pass through flesh altogether.  Sadly, the US military couldn’t help messing with the AR15 – a matter of pride as Stoner was a civilian – and the original M16 was fairly unreliable.  The M16A1 fixed most of these issues.  Later the Army figured that full automatic was overkill, and modified the gun to fire three round bursts, which became the M16A2. 

The semi-automatic, civilian version of the M16 is the AR15, firing the same 5.56 mm round.  

The AK47 fires a shortened version of the original 7.62x54R rifle round, known as 7.62x39.  In the 1970s the Russians changed their round slightly, from 7.62x39 to 5.45x39, in the AK74.

.50 Caliber/12.7mm.   Short of 20mm or 30mm cannon rounds, .50 is about as large a caliber as you’ll get with an infantry weapon.  Although there is a Barrett .50 bolt-action rifle, the most famous .50 weapon is the M2 Browning, used by the US since WWII, still used today.  The Russians have a DSKK machine gun in 12.7mm. 

Muzzle Velocity & Recoil.  Muzzle velocity is the speed at which the bullet leaves the gun.  Typically pistol rounds will have a muzzle velocity less than 1000, whereas most rifle rounds have a muzzle velocity over 2000.  Of course, that muzzle velocity translates into recoil.  On a pistol, the recoil will cause the pistol to raise up after you shoot it.  On a rifle or shotgun that recoil will be felt on your shoulder where the stock rests when you shoot.  Other things being equal, faster muzzle velocity = greater recoil.

JHP vs. FMJ vs Steel Core.  As I see it, ammo essentially comes in three varieties.  Steel core is the cheapest.  The bullet is made of lead but with a small steel core.  Although it’s cheap to buy in bulk, when it comes time to fire it at the range, NOPE!  The range won’t let you shoot it, as it causes problems.  So you’re left with a lot of cheap ammo you can’t use for target practice.  If there was a real war and you wanted to shoot it at someone, then it would be useful.  But for target practice at most ranges it would be useless.

FMJ is the next up.  Lead bullets with no steel core.  Average prices and the ranges won’t give you hard time.  This would be right smack in the middle.  It’s cheaper than hollow point and more expensive than steel core.  This is what you want most of if you intended to shoot at the range.

Jacketed Hollow Point is the most expensive.  The bullets actually have a hollow point with a brass jacket.  When the bullet hits the target, it expands like a mushroom to do more damage.  They’re more expensive than FMJ so it would be a waste to use it for target practice.  If you bought the weapon for self-defense, this is your “shit hits the fan” ammunition you load in the gun for real emergencies.  If you bought the weapon for both target shooting AND self defense, you might load one or two magazines with hollow points and set them aside from “in case you really need it”, and use the FMJ to shoot at the range.