Live and Learn

So, 'way back in 2012, this meme from Robb Allen gave me the giggles...

"Great, I just had my pajamas pressed and now this midget comes charging down my hallway!"

Back in those days I expended a lot of keystrokes saying that .22WMR was almost as good as 5.7mm, at least as far as private citizen self-defense use went.

I've changed mind since then. These days I think that, given the right loads and circumstances, .22WMR can be rather better.

Shooting jello with John Johnston of Ballistic Radio

There's an aphorism regarding defensive handgun ammunition that states "Shot placement is king, penetration is queen, and everything else is just angels dancing on pinheads."

The wounding mechanism of pistol bullets is entirely based on poking holes in things. There's no magical "hydrostatic shock" at these velocities. The bullet has to penetrate deep enough to go through something vital.

The block of clear gel below was shot without any layers of denim or anything. Bare gel is generally easy work for a good bullet. Hollow points will often expand with catalog picture perfection. In fact, that's the problem with the .380, there.

That .380 bullet expanded, and the round just doesn't have enough steam to expand like that and still wind up down there where the adequate service calibers are. It stopped nine or ten inches in.

Here's where I digress to point out that that fourteen to sixteen inches of penetration in gel is not a direct correlation to fourteen to sixteen inches of penetration in bad guy. Bullets that penetrate fourteen to sixteen inches in gel are the ones that are found in the bad guy's clothes on the far side. Bullets that penetrate nine inches in gel are the ones that don't get all the way to the spine.

Anyway, you'll note that the service calibers all went deep and expanded. (The .38 just went deep, but that's a discussion for another time.)

See what else is there next to the .380? That's right, the SOOPER PENETRATOR 5.7x28mm.

See, the pointy spitzer bullet gives the bullet a rapid yaw cycle. Now, if you're a 5.56mm rifle bullet traveling at rifle velocities, that rapid yaw cycle is what causes you to break in half at the cannelure and cause massive internal injuries as two big chunks of bullet and bunches of smaller ones go all over the place.

If you're a little FiveSeveN bullet traveling at pistol velocities, turning through 180 degrees really puts the brakes on penetration. The SS198LF is not going to the spinal column today.

You know what bullets aren't radically spitzer-shaped and therefore tend to penetrate pretty okay? .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire. Note the table at the end of that article. And remember that .22WMR is in that ballistic category where trading penetration for expansion is not necessarily a good thing. Solids penetrate real good.4

Oleg's CMR-30 at the Lucky Gunner Blogger Shoot back in the day.

Unless you're facing zombies wearing body armor, I'd generally prefer the .22WMR over the 5.7x28. In fact, I know some pretty clueful individuals who use small-frame .22WMR J-frames and LCRs as "gym shorts guns".

So, hey, I learned new things! I wonder what I believe right now that will have me looking back in 2024 and shaking my head?
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Do you know who designed that gun?

Digging through the bowels of VFTP Command Central's hard drive, I found this pic of me shooting the BAR at the LuckyGunner BloggerShoot...

(Dear FTC: No, srsly, I was rummaging around through my documents folder and found this. LuckyGunner didn't pay me bupkis for the link, or suggest it to me in any way. If you got to shoot a BAR, you'd put up piccies too. D'you know who designed that gun?)

Space Oddity.

At the Lucky Gunner shoot, Oleg showed up with an assortment of odd guns. Among them were the Kel-Tec PMR-30 and its carbine spinoff. I'd shot the PMR's predecessor, the Grendel P30, before, but it's been at least fifteen years, so I took Oleg up on his offer to give the current iterations a spin.

I'll be up front and admit that I still don't get the point. .22WMR is in that gray area where it's marginal as an antipersonnel round, but will turn a squirrel or rabbit inside out, making it a bit too much for hunting small game for the pot. It's obviously better on varmints than .22LR, but so are lots of things, like .22 Hornet, which is reloadable.

It's also almost as expensive as centerfire handgun ammo, which makes it less than suitable for plinking, and its operating pressures require more robust and/or sophisticated designs than the humble .22LR, as can be witnessed by the discontinuation of most straight-blowback .22 Magnum rifles here in the modern United States of Liability.

Still, a 30-round magazine does cover a multitude of sins, and both weapons were pleasant to shoot. The suppressed carbine was quietish and seemed accurate at the pistol ranges at which I was shooting, and the pistol was stupid easy to shoot: Like a Ruger MkII with a really big muzzle blast. Even going really really fast, you could keep the rounds on a pie plate. I was actually very pleasantly surprised by the trigger.

Like I said, I'm still not certain what exactly it's for, but you know what? If I had to buy a lightweight plastic pistol that fired a high-velocity smallbore cartridge of questionable utility from a large capacity magazine, I think I'd be foolish to spend twice and more the price of the Kel-Tec on an FN Five-seveN.

Random Linkery:

• Blogging, and adventures tangentially related thereto, has left me with some neat-o desk impedimentia: A mostly-finished revolver cylinder from Og; a beautifully case-colored cylinder blank mounted on a wooden base to serve as a pen holder that I picked up from Doug Turnbull's booth at the '08 NRA Convention... Now I've got that cool faux-30mm cannon shell from Technoframes that I got by way of a trophy from the Lucky Gunner awards thingie.


• Robb was bragging on Florida's new CCW preemption law, which apparently imposes fines on local officials who violate it. The best part? Those $5k fines can't come from public funds, but have to be paid out of the offending politico's own pocket. I really like the sound of that.


• "Come back, Shane!"

It's hard to hear me roar over all the gunfire...

So, at the LuckyGunner shoot, they had people with "ammo menus" coming up to shooters on the firing line and asking if they needed any ammo or water, which was a very novel idea.

However, the people in question were young women dressed in a fashion that was only a low-cut neckline away from looking as though they should be asking if you wanted your wings mild, medium, or Three Mile Island. As Breda points out, this fails to attract half of the potential market, if it doesn't outright repel it. If you're only selling to men, that's fine; it works for brands from Old Spice to Hooters (or to Bushhamster, with their ridiculous "man card" campaign.) But if you want to broaden your market, it's the kind of thing you might want to think carefully about.

In short, had the "ammo waitresses" been wearing khakis and polo shirts, all we'd be discussing right now is what a neat idea the "menus" were. So, ten out of ten for cleverness, but minus several hundred for not thinking through all the implications.

Overheard on the Phone:

Me: "...and they had all kinds of targets downrange, like appliances and old cars and even a school bus!"

Shootin' Buddy: "Did you shoot the cannon?"

Me: "No, I didn't get around to that."

Shootin' Buddy: "You need to shoot the cannon. Do it for Fourth Grade Tamara. Fourth Grade Tamara would have crawled on two broken legs to shoot a cannon at a school bus."

For your health and safety...

(Click to Embiggenate.)

Because smoking is bad for your health...
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The nicest horse and buggy I've ever seen.

Les Jones got some video of me shooting the KRISS guns on Day Two of the shoot. The guys from KRISS were professional and enthusiastic and willing to answer questions; they practically dragged you to the line and pressed the guns into your hands.

The guns were extremely well made, and the controls were well-thought out and fell easily to hand. The semiauto pistol version was as silly as most weapons of that type are, but that hasn't stopped people from buying everything from TEC-9's to B&T TP9's to HK SP89's, not to mention every AK and AR "pistol" they can lay their hands on. Seriously, if you want a .45ACP pistol with a ~5" barrel that eats out of Glock 21 mags, why not just get a Glock 21? (Because it's not in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, that's why. Duh!)

The semiauto carbine version, with its dummy can to bring the barrel out to the required 16" length, makes slightly more sense, at least if pistol caliber carbines are your thing; they're generally not my bag, baby. The fake can is dorky, but you could always spend the $200 with the BATFEIEIO and get the gun registered as an SBR and lose the "can". I'd probably go ahead and spend another $200 getting a real can, like the second gun in the video above.

The real reason for the existence of the KRISS system is, of course, the SMG version for law enforcement and .mil customers. As you can see in the video, it is unbelievably controllable for a buzzgun launching 230gr slugs at over 1,000 rounds a minute. I've got a fair amount of trigger time on various machine pistols, and the KRISS is like science fiction compared to most of them.

There's only one problem: Most of the people who used machine pistols have gone to rifle-caliber "shorty" carbines over the last few years; any agency still using the MP5 is probably going to replace them with M4s or shorty G36's or the like, rather than another pistol-caliber weapon. I felt like I was looking at the sleekest, most-advanced, CAD-CAM, carbon fiber and titanium... horse and buggy. I wish 'em all the best of luck, though, or maybe they can translate the system to something that fires a rifle round.

Green Machine.

One of the most interesting things I saw at the LuckyGunner blogger shoot was a prototype of the newest "green" armored fighting vehicle for the U.S. Army: the Personal Infantry Fighting and Logistics Vehicle, or "Piffle-vee", as it is nicknamed.

Made from 100% recycled materials, it is projected to lower the carbon footprint of our armed forces significantly, as well as contributing to soldier fitness.

Who down wit' O.P.A.?

Yesterday was spent at the nearest thing to Valhalla there is, turning Other People's Ammunition into noise and reloading components. I've got to hand it to LuckyGunner: They put on a show. By combining their shoot with Bulletfest, it was like having an All-Access Pass at Knob Creek, only without the massive crowd of spectators. (Actually, scratch that: I believe the firing line was longer than Knob Creek.)

I got to put a lot of names with faces, and see friends I hadn't seen in a while... Just a fantastic day.

How to top it? Why, do it again today, of course!