The Small Arms Thread, Part 8: 2018; ICSR to be replaced by US Army with interim 15mm Revolver Cannon.

[Sturgeon]

Erm.... max loaded 10mm beats the shit out of .40 S&W performance wise, mainly out of longer barrels.

 

Not in terms of terminal effectiveness vs. soft targets, such as in a normal civilian defense scenario it's not. If you start putting car doors and shit in front of the target there begins to be a case for it, which makes sense as that's what 10mm was designed for.

[Donward]

At any rate, I take it that Sturgeon agreed with everything else that I wrote on my Ayoob fisking. 

 

Plus, I don't want to seem like I'm denigrating the 9mm round since everyone knows I'm a fan of it as still the best option in terms of performance, price and availability in semi-automatic ammo.

[Sturgeon]

Yeah, I did generally agree with your takedown of the article. There are a lot of misconceptions about handgun terminal effectiveness, and I admit to having repeated a few myself in the past.

 

The important thing to remember is that all these rounds pretty much suck (yes, even Mech's sacred 10mm). They're all very poor at stopping a target, and no major full-size caliber really offers a qualitative difference versus another. You start getting into .380 JHPs and of course those are running out of the gas needed to expand and penetrate at the same time, but from 9mm to 10mm you're pretty much worried about the things I talked about above, and that's mostly to do with bullet selection. You want something that will expand even if it hits a rib (something 3rd gen hollowpoints like the HST and Gold Dot have a serious problem with) or denim, that expands as wide as possible, and that penetrates to FBI specs. If you're a law enforcement officer, you can perhaps think about augmenting your handgun further to compensate for velocity loss through barriers like car windshields, but even gains in that area tend to be more marginal than transformative.

Ironically, while this model is not gentle to cartridges like .357 Magnum (which I still think is a very good round by the way and worlds better than .38 Special), it does reflect a little better on the old .45 ACP. After all, .45 JHPs tend to expand a little wider than their 9mm equivalents, although in my opinion it's not enough to matter (the greatest difference I've seen was in the Brassfetcher comparison tests of the two calibers, but other examinations have shown much less of a difference) and certainly not enough to make up the difference in capacity for most pistols - though I note the .45 Glocks actually do quite well for capacity for their caliber.

 

A final word on temporary cavity wounding for rounds striking below 1,500 ft/s: So far as I know, no significant wounding effect has been established for projectiles in this bracket. This is something that outfits like the FBI also agree with me on. However, the subject of terminal effectiveness, especially as it relates to shock and psychological effects, is very difficult to examine scientifically. That means that it's still possible that the temporary cavity of these rounds is having some effect on a living target perhaps related to psychology or certain non-permanent physiological effects (e.g., "knocking the wind out of someone"). While no advantage is minor when one's life is on the line, these are in the big scheme of things not nearly as significant as the direct effects of the bullet cutting a wound channel into the target. I don't feel comfortable calling these unknowns "insignificant", but I will say that their definition through scientific testing is very unlikely to radically change the model I establish above.

[Khand-e]

I don't even hold 10mm auto in a sacred place, but saying it performs mostly the same (without context the first time) as .40 S&W was just flat out wrong.

 

Also, there's a pretty big contradiction in saying "Oh, all pistol rounds suck so it doesn't matter, but buy a 9mm because anything else is wrong."

 

If anything, you seem to be the one obsessed with a particular round, not me, how often do you see me make posts deriding 9mm Luger, or really any pistol rounds aside from actually retarded shit like .50 GI?

[Sturgeon]

saying it performs mostly the same (without context the first time) as .40 S&W was just flat out wrong.

 

You can rest easy, then, given that I didn't say that.

 

Also, there's a pretty big contradiction in saying "Oh, all pistol rounds suck so it doesn't matter, but buy a 9mm because anything else is wrong."

 

Whew. Glad I dodged that bullet, because I didn't say that, either.

 

If anything, you seem to be the one obsessed with a particular round, not me

 

You seem to be buttmad that I said anything except "10mm is basically the Death Star's main turbolaser".

 

how often do you see me make posts deriding 9mm Luger, or really any pistol rounds aside from actually retarded shit like .50 GI?

 

Then why are you putting words into my mouth and calling me obsessed?

[Sturgeon]

Or, by analogy, if I fill one glass three quarters full of urine and one quarter full of fine scotch whisky, and another glass half-full of urine and half-full of scotch whisky, then yes, on a technicality the latter glass is "better", but both suck and you wouldn't drink either of them unless you were dying of thirst.

That's basically pistol cartridge effectiveness.

[Sturgeon]

In other news, one of my commenters has just won the Inane Pedantry Award for 2016:

[Khand-e]

You can rest easy, then, given that I didn't say that.

 

Expect for the part where you did, hence the "without context the first time" part you edited out.

 

 

Whew. Glad I dodged that bullet, because I didn't say that, either.

 

Except the part where you say it all the time, oh, and what's this?

 

"which in turn is hardly measurably more effective than 9mm, so yeah, just carry something in 9 or if you really need something more concealable, .380."

 

You seem to be buttmad that I said anything except "10mm is basically the Death Star's main turbolaser".

 

Yes, because I'm the one throwing a tantrum right now because I didn't say that only 9mm is the bestest for everything even though handguns don't matter, choice in caliber really doesn't the difference is you're the one contradicting yourself about it.

 

Oh, also, speaking of "putting words in people's mouths", The irony you accused me of that while writing that line is goddamn exquisite.

 

Then why are you putting words into my mouth and calling me obsessed?

 

Isn't that exactly what you're doing actually?

 

 

I forgot though, I disagreed with you on something so this will just end in some pointless pedantic argument.

 

First you may want to find where I ever said the 10mm auto was ever the best defensive round though and carrying anything else is pointless. Go on, I'll wait.

[Donward]

It's the compromise game. Yes pistol rounds suck. But on the other hand it's being able to maximize what you want to do with the role of the handgun which - in the civilian world is how well you can conceal or carry it offset with the positives of how big of a round and how many rounds you can carry. And this is all over the map with .44 Magnum (and larger) derringers that fire two shots, Glocks and other semi-autos that can fire 17 shots and whatnot.

 

It's a great world we live in where we can get small concealable semi-autos which are smaller than .32 ACP Ortgies, Colts and Remingtons of a century ago that are chambered in 9mm and hold just as many rounds and are - potentially - more reliable. 

[Donward]

In other news, one of my commenters has just won the Inane Pedantry Award for 2016:

 

Marines were following Army soldiers around Guadalcanal waiting for them to die so they could take their gun?

 

That's a new one.

[Sturgeon]

I forgot though, I disagreed with you on something so this will just end in some pointless pedantic argument.

 

First you may want to find where I ever said the 10mm auto was ever the best defensive round though and carrying anything else is pointless. Go on, I'll wait.

 

Um, your end of the conversation does not appear to exist in the same universe as mine, so I'm leaving it here.

[Donward]

OHMAHGERD!!!!

 

MAX POPENKER HAS HIS FEDEROV POST UP AT TFB!!!!!!!

 

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016/02/22/brief-history-russian-fedorov-avtomat-rifle/

 

[Khand-e]

Um, your end of the conversation does not appear to exist in the same universe as mine, so I'm leaving it here.

 

Yeah, I'll just accept that as a defeat by no actual response.

 

Cool.

[Sturgeon]

It's the compromise game. Yes pistol rounds suck. But on the other hand it's being able to maximize what you want to do with the role of the handgun which - in the civilian world is how well you can conceal or carry it offset with the positives of how big of a round and how many rounds you can carry. And this is all over the map with .44 Magnum (and larger) derringers that fire two shots, Glocks and other semi-autos that can fire 17 shots and whatnot.

 

It's a great world we live in where we can get small concealable semi-autos which are smaller than .32 ACP Ortgies, Colts and Remingtons of a century ago that are chambered in 9mm and hold just as many rounds and are - potentially - more reliable. 

 

I have no problem with someone carrying whatever they wish, so long as it's reasonably modern and safe. Whether that be a Ruger GP100 or a .50 GI 1911, or a Glock 17 or whatever, it doesn't really make a difference to me. If they are assailed, they will for most situations have the means to defend themselves.

And that's precisely why I tend to choose 9mm and .380 ACP for my defensive handguns. The ammunition is cheap, widely available, low-recoiling, and effective enough. I could imagine situations where I'd want more punch and might spring for another round, but that doesn't seem likely where I live. If I had already bought a .40 S&W handgun, or a .45, I wouldn't feel too much need to switch to 9mm.

A lot of people, like Mech above, take my general standing recommendation of 9mm as a condemnation of every other caliber and a sacrament to the God of DWM, but really it's just "generally speaking, 9mm will do what you want it to do".

I like to make it simple for people. "Find a gun that fits you and that you shoot well, and get it in 9mm" is a simple recommendation. In my experience introducing people to the defensive handgun world, they like it to be simple, too. It's not always the recommendation I will make, for example if someone worked on a ranch or in the hills and might have need to put down a bigger animal than a man, or if they needed a more concealable piece, but for most people it's a good answer.

[Sturgeon]

Yeah, I'll just accept that as a defeat by no actual response.

 

Cool.

I prostrate myself in the light of your prowess at pigeon chess strategy.

[Khand-e]

I prostrate myself in the light of your prowess at pigeon chess strategy.

 

It would be alot easier to simply admit you were wrong then make yourself look dumb, but whatever I guess.

[Donward]

Fuck the sniping. Maybe it's old news to you guys, but I'm learning some new shit in that Federov article. Russkies pulled them out of storage and equipped ski troops with the Federov to counter Finnish ski troops because they didn't have enough submachine guns at the time?

 

Federov designed a bunch of other guns that are shown.

 

And this quote...

 

"Therefore, the term “Avtomat” should not be considered as a synonym for “assault rifle”. In fact, the latter term should be dropped from scientific consideration (apart from its historical context in conjunction with few automatic rifles or carbines actually called “Sturmgewehr”), but this is a topic for a separate article."

[Sturgeon]

It would be alot easier to simply admit you were wrong then make yourself look dumb, but whatever I guess.

 

Admit I was wrong in saying things I did not actually say? Stop wasting my time.

What you are acting like I said:

 

Erm.... max loaded 10mm beats the shit out of .40 S&W performance wise, mainly out of longer barrels.

 

I know you have some strange urge to to defend the honor of 9mm Luger as the only possible defensive caliber, but really, come on man.

 

I don't even hold 10mm auto in a sacred place, but saying it performs mostly the same (without context the first time) as .40 S&W was just flat out wrong.

 

Also, there's a pretty big contradiction in saying "Oh, all pistol rounds suck so it doesn't matter, but buy a 9mm because anything else is wrong."

 

If anything, you seem to be the one obsessed with a particular round, not me, how often do you see me make posts deriding 9mm Luger, or really any pistol rounds aside from actually retarded shit like .50 GI?

 

 

 

What I actually said:

 

Unless you've got a shooting iron the size of the Joker's comedy flag gun, .357 Magnum is just a hair more powerful than 9mm, so no you're not getting "rifle-like" ballistics out of it, you're getting virtually identical ballistics because that additional modicum of velocity is doing exactly jack to make your permanent wound channel bigger.

10mm has a similar relationship to .40 S&W, which in turn is hardly measurably more effective than 9mm, so yeah, just carry something in 9 or if you really need something more concealable, .380.

 

Not in terms of terminal effectiveness vs. soft targets, such as in a normal civilian defense scenario it's not. If you start putting car doors and shit in front of the target there begins to be a case for it, which makes sense as that's what 10mm was designed for.

 

Yeah, I did generally agree with your takedown of the article. There are a lot of misconceptions about handgun terminal effectiveness, and I admit to having repeated a few myself in the past.

 

The important thing to remember is that all these rounds pretty much suck (yes, even Mech's sacred 10mm). They're all very poor at stopping a target, and no major full-size caliber really offers a qualitative difference versus another. You start getting into .380 JHPs and of course those are running out of the gas needed to expand and penetrate at the same time, but from 9mm to 10mm you're pretty much worried about the things I talked about above, and that's mostly to do with bullet selection. You want something that will expand even if it hits a rib (something 3rd gen hollowpoints like the HST and Gold Dot have a serious problem with) or denim, that expands as wide as possible, and that penetrates to FBI specs. If you're a law enforcement officer, you can perhaps think about augmenting your handgun further to compensate for velocity loss through barriers like car windshields, but even gains in that area tend to be more marginal than transformative.

Ironically, while this model is not gentle to cartridges like .357 Magnum (which I still think is a very good round by the way and worlds better than .38 Special), it does reflect a little better on the old .45 ACP. After all, .45 JHPs tend to expand a little wider than their 9mm equivalents, although in my opinion it's not enough to matter (the greatest difference I've seen was in the Brassfetcher comparison tests of the two calibers, but other examinations have shown much less of a difference) and certainly not enough to make up the difference in capacity for most pistols - though I note the .45 Glocks actually do quite well for capacity for their caliber.

 

A final word on temporary cavity wounding for rounds striking below 1,500 ft/s: So far as I know, no significant wounding effect has been established for projectiles in this bracket. This is something that outfits like the FBI also agree with me on. However, the subject of terminal effectiveness, especially as it relates to shock and psychological effects, is very difficult to examine scientifically. That means that it's still possible that the temporary cavity of these rounds is having some effect on a living target perhaps related to psychology or certain non-permanent physiological effects (e.g., "knocking the wind out of someone"). While no advantage is minor when one's life is on the line, these are in the big scheme of things not nearly as significant as the direct effects of the bullet cutting a wound channel into the target. I don't feel comfortable calling these unknowns "insignificant", but I will say that their definition through scientific testing is very unlikely to radically change the model I establish above.

 

 

Your behavior was embarrassingly predictable, Mech. I said something moderately unflattering about 10mm, and you pounced. From then on, it's been big bad 9mm sycophant Nate against Reasonable People's Sage Mech, or so goes your narrative. To everyone else, this just looks like you've got thorns in your glutes because I didn't fall down in praise over the 10mm.

[Donward]

Oh, and how about this quote?

 

"Lack of appropriate ammunition forced Fedorov to adopt an existing cartridge of same caliber but lower power – the Japanese Arisaka 6.5x50SR. This ammunition was in use thanks to purchase of significant amount of Japanese rifles by Russian government, seeking to alleviate war-induced shortage of standard issue rifles."

 

With the Avtomats, from the way I have always interpreted the story, it always sounds like the designer seized upon the Arisaka round because it was the perfect intermediate cartridge at the time.

 

When in actuality, the only reason he chose it is because the Russians needed to buy anything that could shoot from any old places, ended up with a bunch of Arisaka rifles and Federov chose that round simply because that was what was on hand. 

 

Oh, and the round kinda sucked.

 

*giddy, giddy*

[Sturgeon]

Oh, and how about this quote?

 

"Lack of appropriate ammunition forced Fedorov to adopt an existing cartridge of same caliber but lower power – the Japanese Arisaka 6.5x50SR. This ammunition was in use thanks to purchase of significant amount of Japanese rifles by Russian government, seeking to alleviate war-induced shortage of standard issue rifles."

 

With the Federov's, from the way I have always interpreted the story, it always sounds like the designer seized upon the Arisaka round because it was the perfect intermediate cartridge at the time.

 

When in actuality, the only reason he chose it is because the Russians needed to buy anything that could shoot from any old places, ended up with a bunch of Arisaka rifles and Federov chose that round simply because that was what was on hand. 

 

Oh, and the round kinda sucked.

 

*giddy, giddy*

 

All praise be to Max, but I still kind of think he's not reading between the lines enough. That I think so may be the result of a deficiency in my sources, though.

[Donward]

All praise be to Max, but I still kind of think he's not reading between the lines enough. That I think so may be the result of a deficiency in my sources, though.

And that very well could be. It's just interesting to get a different take since the 6.5 Arisaka has kind of been resurrected from the dead as the "what might have been" cartridge by certain caliber fetishest who like their round to start with the number SIX.

[Khand-e]

Admit I was wrong in saying things I did not actually say? Stop wasting my time.

 

*Claims I said a bunch of shit I didn't say.*

 

*Rages like a bitch when I call out you did the exact same thing to me.*

What you are acting like I said:

 

 

 

 

What I actually said:

 

 

 

 

Your behavior was embarrassingly predictable, Mech. I said something moderately unflattering about 10mm, and you pounced. From then on, it's been big bad 9mm sycophant Nate against Reasonable People's Sage Mech, or so goes your narrative. To everyone else, this just looks like you've got thorns in your glutes because I didn't fall down in praise over the 10mm.

 

Dude, you are either flat out blind or retarded, and the only thing embarrassing right now is the amount of reflection you're showing because you couldn't actually back up a single fucking thing you accused me of (and still are), now you're acting like the usual "OH, MY NAME IS STURGEON AND I CAN NEVER ADMIT WHEN I'M WRONG!" shit we've seen so many times.

 

I couldn't care less you didn't praise the 10mm for the 5 thousandth time, if you can get that through your thick skull right now, infact, I flat out challenged you to find where I've ever even unjokingly praised it as the best defensive round, and you flat out pussied out and thought I was just going to sit back and let you accuse me of doing the exact shit you're doing right now without saying a word?

 

The only thing anyone can see here is you throwing a fit because someone didn't 100% agree with you, how about either cut the fucking shit or get the fuck out of my thread?

[Sturgeon]

You seem to have forgotten that this is my forum, not yours. Let me remind you.

Oh, and for the record, the reason I'm giving you a temp ban is because you're being a delusional little shitdick.

[Donward]

Looking at a lot of the designs he was making in the 1920s and the pictures in that article, I think this is yet again another example of the Russkies being fully aware and capable of making modern rifles. And while these are prototypes, you can see how the Soviet small arms industry was on its way to producing modern weapons like the SKS and the Kalashnikov which both saw heavy use in the second half of the 20th Century's conflicts.

 

And yes the term "assault rifle" can be a somewhat unsatisfactory term to use in order to describe these sort of weapons. But at first blush, the weapons shown in Popenker's article look like "assault rifles" to me and certainly would be categorized as such in certain states in this country.

[Bronezhilet]

Guys, there's only one thing I have to say about this:

 

 

 

 

That's all folks, on to the next forum drama!