Sunday, April 06, 2008

Because John Browning didn't use metric, that's why.

On one of the gun boards I frequent, an ESL member asked:
to a junior member like me the inch system seem to be a peculiarity .in all matters of fire arms.

why this industry has not adopted metric system ?

Obviously, I couldn't resist...
If God wanted us to use the metric system, he'd have given us ten fingers and ten toes.

Besides, it's a lot easier to find a rhyme for "forty-five" in a country-western song than it is to find one for "eleven point two-five millimeter".

23 comments:

  1. I don't know. The legendary Montenegran 11.25mm wouldn't be near so cool if it was just another .45!

    Authenticator: lfwjmb

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  2. The short answer is for "historical reasons".

    Besides most of the world HAS adopted metric, which is why you see modern designs in 10mm pistols, 20mm cannon, 40mm, 120m etc...


    Also, mm are kind of big in personal weapons ( so you have 5.7mm, 5.56mm , etc...) and it's at least as awkward as .233 or 7.62x51 / .308 /.303 / .30-30 /.45-70


    So there's no particular advantage in metric, nor a particular disadvantage in traditional measures. And the technology hasn't changed much in 70 years, so there's no real benefit or obsolecensce - a .45-70 kills every bit as convincingly as a 5.6mm

    I'd willing to bet that almost all modern firearms engineering is done in mm - fewer fractions to give a care about.

    Though they may convert back to inches and thousandths in a specific country.

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  3. 9x29mmR wouldn't have sounded so good to Donnie Van Zant.

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  4. The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 1,419 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I like it!

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  5. Dirty Harry just wouldn't be the same if he carried a 10.8966 mm magnum.

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  6. Here in Israel, everything is metric. But it makes no sense.

    For example:

    * A miss is as good as 1.6 kilometers.

    * Put your best 0.3 of a meter forward.

    * Spare the 5.03 meters and spoil the child.

    * Twenty-eight grams of prevention is worth 453 grams of cure.

    * Give a man 2.5 centimeters and he'll take 1.6 kilometers.

    * Peter Piper picked 8.8 liters of pickled peppers.



    DoubleTapper
    DoubleTapper@gmail.com
    DoubleTapper, blogging on Guns Politics Defense from Israel

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  7. Offtopic, the front page here seems to keep screwing up Firefox.

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  8. "If God wanted us to use the metric system, he'd have given us ten fingers and ten toes."........?????????.......Apparently God wants us to use the metric system.

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  9. Awww, what's Heknow?

    ...

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  10. "Offtopic, the front page here seems to keep screwing up Firefox."

    Weird. I'm using Firefox and not having any issues at all...

    What's it doing?

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  11. Most of the serious, commercial advancements in the firearm industry were made in countries that used the Imperial standard.
    A Metric using country may have invented metallic cartridges, but America made them consumer products.

    It was a serendipitous combination of Freedom, Capitalism, and wide open frontiers.
    Old, tamed, Europe only had need for a limited number of private arms, most were in the hands of the competing armies. They developed metric ammo and weapons.
    Wild young USA had people who could not wait a couple of days for the cavalry to arrive to save them, they needed guns and ammo, and they liked to measure stuff in Inches!

    Tradition and quality design keeps the .30-30, .45-70, the .30-06, .22 rimfire still selling strong more than a century after introduction.

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  12. Anonymous said...
    "If God wanted us to use the metric system, he'd have given us ten fingers and ten toes."........?????????.......Apparently God wants us to use the metric system.

    2:06 PM, April 06, 2008



    Quick, guess whether I'm laughing with you or at you.



    Turk Turon said...
    My car gets 1,419 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I like it!

    12:41 PM, April 06, 2008

    I find I shoot better with an onion tied to my belt, m'self.

    Word verification: swuntlkz

    Polish sausage pastries?

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  13. actually the inch is a metric measurement.

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  14. "The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 1,419 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I like it!"

    Actually, if you work it out, the typical car should get more like half a million rods to the hogshead.

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  15. I'll throw my two cents in.

    As someone who deals with measurements in ways most of you can't even imagine(CNC manufacturing), I'd like to say METRIC SUCKS! It IS the tool of the Devil! Either the divisions are too damn big to damn small.

    Keep in mind,
    A) the metric system was designed to be "neat" - it went up cleanly by orders of magnitude.
    B) The French invented it, so clearly they'res something defective about it.
    C) The Imperiel system is/was "organic". We decided on particular standards because they were "practical" for their application. It isn't a coincidence that the foot can be neatly divided into inches by halves, quarters, thirds. It isn't a coincidence that the inch works out nicely for doing smaller work, and the foot for larger ones. It isn't a coincidence that a mile is a good measurement for measuring larger distances..
    In short, the metric system was designed by ivory tower intellectuals, the standard system evolved to fit it's uses.

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  16. From a grave marker at Tombstone:

    "Here lies Les Moore
    killed by 4 bullets
    from a .44
    No Les
    No More"

    I think in metric you lose something.

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  17. "I find I shoot better with an onion tied to my belt, m'self."

    We can only get yellow onions here. All the white onions are going to Iraq. Damn things are still up to three bees apiece, too.

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  18. It's kinda funny that when you get a set of metric sockets, they're in 1/4", 3/8" or 1/2" drive.

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  19. Since the invention of firearms considerably predated the metric system and the widespread availability of cheap digital calipers, the gauge system for barrel size became the generally accepted standard.

    "How many balls can I get for this firearm from 1 pound of lead?" was the question, and the answer started at 2-gage and proceeded through all the now-popular shotgun sizes, except .410, and down to 100 gage (.357").

    Blame the density of lead.

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  20. Re: Firefox,

    Sometimes I encounter a page which causes all the Tabs to just "freeze". (Can't switch between them; the only solution is to close the window and re-open the tabs.)

    But it seems to have stopped, now. It's pretty random.

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  21. My God, are you people trying to make my head explode!!!!

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  22. The metric system is the revenge of France upon the word. For their having to be the French.

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  23. Decimal is so old-fashioned. We should use hexadecimal units instead.

    Lets see... Rulers that use inches frequently divide them into 16ths...

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