As most probably caught, Amouranth had a home invasion in an attempt to rob her crypto. Husband shot one robber and the rest fled.
Colion does a half hour rundown with them both, at their house and using security camera footage as well.
If nothing else this is the kind of stuff that can help mainstream 2A and self defense going forward. Also is an excellent illustration of how shit a defensive situation is, cause almost nothing went "right", but the outcome ended well.
? There's tons and tons of videos showing that the round tumbles and fragments in target. Ballistics gel blocks prove this unequivocally. There's lots of guntubers who've shown this, in very slow motion, as the bullet impacts the clear gel targets. There's also anecdotal reports of 5.56 injuries proving the tumbling and fragmenting nature of the round.
There's conflicting info on whether the round was intentionally designed to tumble in target, or it was a "happy accident". Regardless of intention or not, the M193 round, the Mk262 round, and the newer military variant of the M855 round all tumble in target (above the tumble velocity). The original M855 didn't tumble in target, but subsequent changes to the round, by the military, made it reliably tumble (and fragment) in target. Furthermore, the 5.56 rounds which do reliably tumble are very prone to fragmenting, because the crimping of the copper jacket (the "gear" indentation look), which helps to seat the bullet into the brass, preventing the bullet from being pushed back further into the brass (which can cause other problems), creates a weak point in the brass jacket, causing it to break apart when the bullet tumbles in target, due to the incredibly shearing and torque forces, turning the round into a small claymore in target, with bits of the copper jacket and lead core going in different directions. This fragmentation is also proven by tons and tons of videos.
You're falling into a false dichotomy, that it's either one or the other. There can be numerous reasons for something. It's not either/or. You are right, that one of the reasons for switching to a smaller caliber round was so troops could carry more, but that's not the only reason.
Technically, yes, there are much better rounds, but that argument becomes moot when you just keep trying to up the caliber to call smaller rounds "mediocre" by comparison. I mean, a .22 is "mediocre" compared to a 5.56, which is "mediocre" compared to the .308, which is "mediocre" compared to a .338, which is "mediocre" compared to a 30mm round, which is "mediocre" compared to a 16 inch battleship gun. The bigger the round, the more deadly it is. But, that's not the only test and measure of a round. Range, velocity, lethality, specified targets it'll be used on, how light it is, they all play a factor in how good a round is for its intended role. For example, if you're hunting, you don't want to shoot a squirrel with a .308, because you'll have almost nothing left of the animal, which is why squirrel hunting is usually done with smaller rounds, like the .22, which makes the .22 a superior round to .308 for that specific purpose.
Furthermore, by your own admission, you say that 5.56 was selected, in part, because it's a smaller and lighter round, enabling troops to carry more of them. Just because a round is bigger and more lethal, doesn't necessarily make it better. Since GWOT, military studies have shown that the side that can put the most rounds down range almost always win an engagement, which shows that even a smaller lighter less lethal round, in many ways is superior to larger heavier more lethal rounds, due to volume of fire.
Full auto fire isn't preferable for regular rifles used by most troops. It's incredibly inaccurate, and is used by fewer squad support weapons to lay down voluminous fire to suppress enemy positions, enabling friendly troops to flank enemy positions, or to fire on grouped up enemies (very rare unless in ambushes). You don't even need to fire a full auto weapon to know this, just fire a gun, any gun, in rapid fire, and see how accurate you are. This is the primary reason why most infantry rifles no longer allow full auto.
This is true somewhat, but suppression requires voluminous fire, which semi auto rifles can achieve quite well, with a fast trigger finger. Again, it's incredibly inaccurate, but sometimes useful in certain engagements.
Literally the only reason 5.56 is preferable for a civilian rifle has nothing to do with lethality of the round, and tumbling is neither an exceptional characteristic nor does it make 5.56 extra lethal. It is useful for people who can't control recoil, and in urban self defense when you don't want to shoot through the neighborhood. It is not better for any civilian combat application. It is not better for quickly neutralizing a target. Tumbling and fragmentation are shitty memes that make no difference to caliber comparisons.
"More rounds = won engagement" is a fucking moronic take from accountants. Even if that was serious, the army had a 10,000 rounds to one kill ratio - because we used suppressive fire. Which you can't do in the civ world. More accurately, that number came from suppressive fire and the fact that 5.56 was woefully insufficient for the engagement ranges in afghanistan. Which were more than double than the effective range of 5.56 out of the short barrel carbines we were using.
We did not kill barely literate, untrained goat herders by the dozen just because "side has more bullets = more winning".
Huh? In your previous comment, you admitted that (one of) the reasons the military switched to 5.56 was that it was a smaller lighter round, enabling troops to carry more. So, which is it? Recoil, or more rounds?
There are other methods for increasing wound cavities and increasing lethality, but it requires the round to have a soft point or hollow point, to expand in the target, ammo which is also produced in 5.56. The tumbling and fragmentation nature of the 5.56 rounds (which are designed to do so) can often produce larger wound channels than larger caliber rounds using soft/hollow points. There are pictures all over the internet proving this. There are videos in soft gel targets proving this.
Larger calibers do have better penetration characteristics, like through barriers, and more (what many call) "take down power", but that doesn't mean that 5.56 isn't lethal. If tumbling and fragmentation didn't make 5.56 "extra lethal", then there wouldn't be mountains of anecdotes from Afghanistan of U.S. soldiers shooting their M4s well past the tumble range of the ammo they were using, and not being able to take down targets, because past the tumble range, the 5.56 is just a glorified .22. The longer engagement distances in Afghanistan is one of the primary reasons why the U.S. military began to use a lot more DMRs (designated marksman rifles) in combat units, allowing them to make lethal shots at ranges that their stock standard M4s couldn't do.
??? The AR15 is relatively light and heavily modable, and the ammo is light. Within the average engagement distances one would see in civilian life (less than 200 yards in a suburb conflict), the AR15 is more than adequate. If you want to shoot through cover, then yes, a higher caliber would be wanted. But, that was kind of the point of this entire thread, that AR-15s are preferable for home defense because of their lack of penetration through cover/barriers.If someone wants to use their AR15 past normal engagement distances, they can just attach a longer barrel, use mk262 ammo, or a soft/hollow point ammo.
You're acting like 5.56 isn't lethal, which is just flat out wrong. I'm quite frankly unsure why anyone would even advocate for this position, given the history of the round. The only reason I can think of is that you have a preferred caliber and have a weird hate fixation for 5.56, and/or are just trolling for drama points.
If that was "moronic", then why would all of military history (past the invention of the gun) prioritize ammo conservation and ammo use policy? If you run out of ammo, guess what, you only have 2 options: retreat or fix bayonets. More ammo wins engagements.
This is neither here nor there, and doesn't change anything about the conversation. I agree that most civilians don't have as much ammo as the U.S. military, although many civilians have a lot, lot more guns and ammo, and better equipment, than the standard U.S. soldier. I know plenty of them, personally. But, why would civilians ever utilize standard military protocols in an engagement? If there was ever a civilians vs military war, civilians would utilize guerrilla warfare. And, again, this has no bearing on the topic at hand, the use of AR15s in self/home defense situations, and the tumbling and fragmenting nature of the 5.56 rounds designed to do so.
Thanks for admitting what I've been saying from the start, that 5.56 rounds which are designed to tumble and fragment in target, require the necessary velocity to do so, and thus, at engagement ranges past that velocity (i.e. bullets slow down the longer they're in flight), the round loses a lot of lethality. Your initial comment, which is what I was responding to, said:
"No, 5.56 tumbling is at actual range with lost velocity and stability, not at 25 feet still going supersonic."
Which suggests, with how you worded it, that you thought 5.56 rounds can't tumble at close ranges while going "supersonic", and require "lost velocity" (i.e. longer ranges) to tumble. That's just flat out wrong, as I pointed out. 5.56 rounds which are designed to tumble require velocities far higher than the speed of sound (which is 1,125 fps).
Thank you, again, for admitting to what I said initially. Longer barrels impart more velocity on a round, which is necessary for tumbling 5.56 rounds to work. An 14.5" barrel imparts less velocity on a round than a 16" barrel, which is less than an 18" barrel, which is less than a 20" barrel, and so on. This is why, the longer the barrel of an AR15, if using tumbling ammo, the longer the engagement distances can be.
Again, this isn't relevant to the discussion, and doesn't prove one side or the other.
Tumbling isn't fucking relevant to shit, it is an overhyped marketing urban legend you moron. Fragmentation doesn't increase wound cavity size, it just adds smaller wound cavities. Shot placement kills, blood loss and shock kill slower. "Frangible" rounds are not unique and as the RIP round and 5.7 demonstrate, are marketing bullshit for goofball "I read it on the interwebs" types. For home defense an immediate stop of a threat will not be achieved by fragmentation. Either great shot placement or multiple rounds to induce shock are required with 5.56.
5.56 doesn't lose lethality because it stops speeeniiiiiing, it loses lethality from lost velocity and lost ACCURACY because of that lost velocity. If you knew shit about fuck and actually shot guns, you'd know that tumbling is aerodynamically undesirable behavior. Keyholing at close range means you have a bad barrel. When a round is no longer aerodynamically stable tumbling results. That is after the effective range. It's not special, it doesn't improve the round.
Then how come the military promotional pamphlets and instruction material for the troops released with the M16 rifle in Viet Nam included information on the tumbling round of M193, and explained why the round was deadlier than it normally would be given the small caliber size? How come the vets that actually shot people with their M16, and were able to inspect the bodies after the conflict, never had anything bad to say about the round?
Here ya go, I did a basic internet search for you:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pHuZJbyzFb4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DamerZHdoY8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x72JOi74Xwk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm-KamGe3VM
Well gee, no shit. Center mass hits are more deadly than limb hits. That's true for all rounds.
In the 1920s, the U.S. military tested some new rifles and rounds. They did some tests against pigs, titled the "Pig Board" tests. The military (just like you're arguing now) were worried that the smaller calibers wouldn't be lethal. However, even in competition with larger calibers, the smallest caliber they tested (.256) produced the most lethal wounds at 300 yards and closer, even compared to the larger calibers, and even performed comparably to the larger caliber rounds at longer ranges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedersen_rifle
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/us-semi-auto-rifle-program-in-the-1920s-yields-intermediate-or-schv-cartridge.466029/
Do you think this knowledge about wound characteristics of smaller calibers just disappeared into the ether after the tests were done? Kinda weird how Stoner designed his rifle around such a small caliber, if, according to you, no one knew about the characteristics of the small caliber round. I mean, according to your own logic, the military would never have approved use of the weapon, and Stoner never would've designed his rifle around such a round, if no one knew about the characteristics and lethality of the round.
The restrictions on military use (like the Hague and Geneva conventions) play a small role in affecting how our military designs stuff. "Officially", the U.S. doesn't "want" our rifle ammo to tumble in target. It's just a happy "accident", and every change they make to rounds, purely by coincidence, happens to exacerbate that characteristic. Designing rounds to do that is purely by mistake, and not by intention (wink wink nudge nudge).
Furthermore, do you know one of the reasons why self defense ammo is designed to expand in target? It's not just to create a larger wound. It's also to impart as much of the round's inertia into the target as possible. If a bullet goes straight through the target and keeps going, a lot of the bullet's energy is lost and not transferred to the target. If the bullet expands and stops in target, it imparts more forces on that target, almost invariably producing more harmful wounds because of it. Expansion isn't the only way to achieve this. Tumbling and fragmentation of the round achieves the exact same thing, while also producing larger wounds, as all of the above videos I linked demonstrate.
You're half right and half wrong. Lost velocity of 5.56 (at least with regards to the ammo that is designed to tumble) can drastically lower lethality of the round, if the velocity drops below what's necessary for the round to tumble. Lower velocity doesn't affect accuracy much, at least in most engagement distances. With how fast most 5.56 ammo travels, the loss in velocity attributing to loss in accuracy is negligible. You'd have to be firing well past 500 yards to see any appreciable accuracy loss due purely to loss in velocity, and that would mostly be due to wind having more time to move the bullet in flight, and in comparison to how fast 5.56 travels, it's still miniscule.
If lost velocity did affect accuracy, then the longest barrels would be the most accurate, and short barrels would be incredibly inaccurate. That's not the case. Short barrel ARs are just as accurate as long barrel ARs, all other things being equal.
Have you even shot a rifle before? Have you researched AR15s and 5.56 ammo, at all?
I shoot regularly, with friends and family, and have for decades. Given how many blatant ignorances you're proudly defending on here, it's you that's probably inexperienced.
Tumbling in flight, yes, that's undesirable. You can actually see that in action, and negatively affect accuracy, in the Paul Harrell video I linked above, where he compared M855 to M193, where the M855 was being fired out of a rifle with a bad twist rate for the round, causing it to tumble in flight and negatively affect accuracy.
However, the 5.56 was designed to tumble in target, not in flight. With how fast the round is moving, and with how back heavy it is, when it impacts the target, the heavy back end starts to yaw and flip around to the front, causing it to tumble in target.
That's not the only thing that can cause keyholing. If you're firing a round through a barrel with an improper twist rate (dependent on bullet weight and caliber), it might not be able to properly stabilize the bullet in flight, causing it to tumble in flight and "keyhole". It can also be caused by a dirty barrel. That doesn't make the barrel "bad".
Your "research" into 5.56 and AR15s is sorely lacking. You're espousing opinions completely contradictory to every single gun person I've talked to, contrary to every forum I've visited, contrary to every study performed, contrary to every ballistic gel and target tests done, in video and on paper.
What are your sources for your claims? I've not heard one single gun hobbyist, gun manufacturer, gun tester, or military member make the claims you have, not in decades I've been shooting and researching shooting, in person or online. Where are you getting your info?