Firearms Part Two More basic stuff for the N00B

That you ABSOLUTELY MUST KNOW if you are going to have guns around.

This is part two in my multi part series on firearms you can find part one here.  Now that we have covered some of the basics and you have considered some of the more basic elements of firearms in this installment we will talk about ammunition and then get into considerations for choosing a caliber.  Before I get to that I do want to address a common question I have gotten about several of my prepping survival posts and that is where are the specific recommendations.  The answer is there are not any because with all of these topics there are far to many variables to each persons situation to make any intelligent recommendations.  Even though I am a lay person in the order of Walther and have been initiated into the mysteries of Fabrique Nationale (FN) when it came time for my eldest daughter to select her first EDC handgun for the 21st birthday we talked about options and had her handle and shoot 25-30 different pistols until she found the one she was most comfortable handling and shooting.  Realize this is with a person who I taught from a very young age to shoot stating with BB guns around 5 and progressing through everything else over the years, a person who I have taken to the range countless times, and a person who I know nearly every aspect of their lives as well as I know my own.  Even then it took handling many different handguns, a couple hundred rounds, and many conversations over about three weeks to find the exact right fit for her.  Given those are the facts as I see them for any first-time primary decision there is no way I can in good faith say use (insert gun/ammo/holster here) it is the absolute best.  The product is probably high quality and probably is the absolute best choice for me, but that has nothing to do with how it will work for you.  As such I will not make any recommendations, but I will try to provide my readers with sufficient information that they can make informed choices and not get taken in by anyone’s opinion of what is the best.

Please don’t take this as a slight against Glock because they make an absolutely fine firearm and would be a great choice for anyone, but they just don’t feel comfortable to me.  I shoot them ok, but never as well as arms that I feel comfortable with, and as such I don’t personally choose to own them.  If you don’t understand what I am saying now go out handle, shoot, and mess with a handful of different arms from a handful of different manufacturers and you will understand.  Then if possible shoot the same gun chambered in a different caliber and see how much that can impact the experience.  Bottom line is I want new shooters to be as informed as possible and be as comfortable as possible with their initial purchases.  This will lead to people sticking with it, actually carrying their firearm, and a safer world for us all.  There will come a time when you have been shooting a while and made some wise purchases of guns that really fit and you shoot really well then it won’t matter as much if you pick something up because it is cool or someone recommended it.  At that point the things that matter early on no longer matter as much as they do in the beginning, and if it isn’t right for you then it isn’t your primary either you can trade it off for something else to try.  Ok, enough of that lets move on to the meat of today’s paper.

The very basics of caliber, gauge, and how that relates to ammunition.  Caliber describes the diameter of a bullet for a pistol or rifle and gauge describes the number of balls of lead of the same diameter of the barrel to equal a pound (except 410 that is actually a caliber).  As such, a 40-caliber bullet is .4 inches across, where 10mm is 10mm across (a quick and dirty conversion from imperial to metric can be done by multiplying mm by 4 or dividing caliber as a whole number by 4 this should result in the realization that 10mm and .40 caliber are essentially the same sized bullet diameter), and it takes 12 balls of lead equal to the diameter of a 12-gauge shotgun to equal one pound of lead.

When we talk about the power or ammunition we are generally talking about foot pounds of energy delivered at the point of impact.  This can be determined by measuring the speed of the bullet and multiplying it by the weight of the bullet at any given point in its flight path.  This calculation will tell you how much energy a round has.  You can learn the math and while I do recommend that, but you can also use a calculator found here.  Bullet size can sort of be used to determine the power of a cartridge, but not always.  If we look at a 9mm 115gr bullet, it has 308.91 foot pounds of force where a .40 caliber 165gr bullet at 1050 carries 403.84 foot pounds of force.  This doesn’t always hold true. For example, a 40 caliber round weighing 165 grains leaving the barrel at 1050 feet per second has 403.84 foot pounds of energy, where a 45 caliber bullet weighing 220 grains and traveling at 800 feet per second is a bigger bullet but it only carries 312.57 foot pounds of energy, and a rifle round at 55 grains traveling at 3100 feet per second carries 1173.38 foot pounds of energy.  Note, the significant increase in power as you move from centerfire pistols into the realm of center fire rifles even with small bullets.  Be aware these are calculations at the muzzle and will drop lower the farther the bullet travels as it expends its energy overcoming friction and gravity.

Very nearly all production ammunition you purchase will have the muzzle velocity, bullet weight, and force at the muzzle listed on the box somewhere usually in a little chart.  Muzzle velocities are used because under controlled conditions (barrel length, temperature, elevation, among others) producing a consistent result from a specific firearm.  Please be aware that the published number only applies to the specific barrel length, action, and range conditions used for testing (you will probably never know all the details).  Generally, if your barrel is longer you will get a little more velocity and if it is shorter you will get a little less.  If you are using a manual action you will get a little more velocity and if you are using an automatic action you will get a little less.  That being said, the numbers on the box are a good general guide to what you can expect from the ammunition, and if you are using the same gun, then hotter (more powerful) ammunition will still be more powerful than less hot ammunition, even if both preform slightly differently than listed on the box.  Also note that even if bullets are bleeding power as they go down range the more energy it has at the muzzle the harder it will hit at any range.

The loss of power over range becomes critically important in longer range applications like hunting and isn’t nearly as important at shorter range applications like self defense just because the energy loss at 3-7 yards in a self-defense shooting is going to be negligible where the loss over 200 or more yards in the field can result in a caliber no longer carrying sufficient energy to effectively harvest your prey creating the risk of wounding rather than killing an animal and no ethical hunter wants to do that.  That is why it is critically important to understand the ammunition you choose to use.

There are many commonly believed myths about ammunition and most of them are harmless however a couple can be dangerous the two most common are that .223 and 5.56x45 NATO (5.56N) are the same round as well as the myth that .308 and 7.62x51 (7.62N) are the same round they are not and while you may get away with treating them as such in modern arms there is a chance for catastrophic failure especially in older guns.  In both cases the rounds do use the same bullets and casings however in both cases the head spacing and pressures they are loaded to are different.  5.56N is loaded hotter than .223 and as such generates more pressure in the chamber.  The 7.62N is loaded lighter than .308 generating less pressure.  The results being that you can safely shoot .223 caliber out of a 5.56N gun with a slight reduction in accuracy and you can safely shoot a 7.62N out of a .308 chambered rifle with a slight reduction in accuracy.  It is not safe to shoot 5.56N out of a .223 or .308 out of a 7.62N rifle.  Stop I know thousands of people are going to say they have been doing it for years and it is totally safe.  Those people are completely correct right up until they are not and the gun comes apart in their hands with their faces right up on it.   Please note it is always best practices and policy to only shoot ammunition specifically manufactured to the chamber specification of the gun being fired.

Second only to the firearm you choose is bullet selection for the intended task.  For home defense you want a round that won’t over penetrate and will transfer as much energy to the target as possible so that it either doesn’t exit or doesn’t travel far after exiting all of its energy being spent in the initial target.  When you are hunting you want a round that will fully penetrate the intended target and transfer sufficient energy to cleanly kill without damaging to much of the meat (note I do not hold with trophy hunting you kill stuff to eat it or because it is presenting a danger to you or your property not to hang on the wall as the primary purpose [as a secondary it is a whatever kind of thing in my book]).  For competition shooting you want the most accurate ammunition you can get for your specific gun (Your gun may throw ammunition of similar specification from different manufacturers to slightly different points of aim and ¼ to 1 inch can make a big difference in competitive shooting).  Lastly if your goal is just to go plinking, practicing or Target shooting for fun then you want the least expensive ammunition you can get your hands on for your specific gun.

As a general rule and we touched on it in the first paper hollow point bullets are probably going to be your best choice for defensive ammunition as their rapid and extreme expansion transfers the most energy to the intended target reducing the chances a bullet will pass through the assailant and kill or injure an innocent bystander or family member.  Typically for hunting applications soft tip or all lead bullets are the best choice because they deform transferring much of their energy to the target, but their expansion is slower and not as extreme as that of a hollow point preserving more of the meet around the wound channel. For competitive shooting the best choice is what your gun shoots best within the rules of your chosen events.  Most manufacturers produce a Match grade ammunition specifically for shooting sports.  These rounds are usually the same as other rounds they produce except if regular production has a specification tolerance of say .1 in something the match grade ammo will have a tolerance of .05 this is supposed to make performance from round to round more uniform especially when fractions of an inch count.  Ultimately, it will take trial and error to find out specifically what round is going to preform the best and help you to victory.  Everything else practice and for fun you probably want to shoot full metal jacket rounds as they are the least expensive and will allow you to afford to put more rounds down range.  The practice use does come with a caveat make sure whatever FMJ practice rounds you are using preform similarly to the rounds you intend to use in real life.  So it is best to try and keep them the same bullet weight and design so if you are going to carry 115 grain HP ammo in you EDC then you probably don’t want to practice with 128 grain or if you are going to hunt deer with 150grain SP boat tail you probably want your FMJ practice ammo to be 150 grain boat tail.  Then you want to take it a step farther and shoot them both side by side to make sure they hit in a similar location.  It is fine if you go from a 1 inch group to a 1.5 or 2 inch group moving to practice ammo, but if you go from a 1 inch group to a 8 or 10 inch group then it probably isn’t going to help you get better when shooting you regular rounds and you need to find different practice ammo.

I hope this has helped you or will help you in your contemplations of firearms.  Next time we will be talking minimum proficiency and situational awareness.  Until then God bless.

-Sam