US causalities in Vietnam would have been much higher without the M16's "powder change" - understanding why is key to realizing why the "powder change" was actually a good idea.

If the US had to stick with 4475, their options were: 🧵 1) Have 1/10th of their initial ammo needs met (only 1/25th of their ammo needs at the peak of demand) by 4475, supplement 9/10ths of your troops with M1 Garands converted with chamber sleeves to fire 308. (this was actually the fallback plan)

The number of people who think they could shoot down drones with a shotgun (while revealing they have little to no experience shooting birds or clays) is staggering.

If you bought a "tactical" shotgun for "drones", you should probably practice by shooting clays with it... Even in sporting clays, where the targets are ~50mph, you'll have some shots where the lead will be longer than the window on a red dot is wide. Forget about your rifle sights.

Happy 308 Day!

Originally referred to as "Caliber 30 Lightweight", 308 became the American domestic market's name for 7.62x51 - aka 7.62 NATO.

There's a lot of misunderstanding surrounding this cartridge, so let's do a little thread about its development. 🧵
During WW2, the US military relied on the tried-and-true 30-06 (typical designation M2 ball) for its service rifle. The "06" in 30-06 refers to 1906, which is where the cartridge dates back to. That's pretty old, considering WW2 kicks off for the US in 1941!

It's been a year since I did this brief 223 History Thread.

Since then, there's been more evidence and data to help understand why the "designed to wound" myth is so stupid.

So here's some updates:

https://twitter.com/NaviGoBoom/status/1748062952521937246

First off - early testing reports describing the requirements for 223/AR15 shifted from lethality compared to 30 carbine to lethality compared to the M1 Garand's M2 ball 3006.

Imagine filing lawsuit against Glock, getting five paragraphs in, and admitting you fundamentally don't understand how the gun even works.

Holding down the trigger bar will cause a dead trigger - not fire the gun repeatedly. Embarrassing.

https://twitter.com/NewJerseyOAG/status/1867239915894796420

Fundamental misunderstanding continues. The G18 achieves auto fire differently than a G17 with a switch does. The trigger bar isn't "held down" in either case, though.

If holding down the trigger bar is all that was required, you wouldn't need a switch at all.

Remember that time when the US Army designed a civilian version of the M14, sold it to civilians, and a few years later the ATF came along and decided they were machineguns?

Here's the story of the M14 NM. Most are already familiar with the M14 - it's the disfavored stepchild of US military rifles, and it's shortcomings left it as a stopgap between the M1 Garand of WW2 and Korea and the AR-15s the US military has used since.

Perhaps the greatest damage the Hughes Amendment did to gun rights advocacy is by making room for the current "machinegun zeitgeist" to exist.

Allow me to over-explain: 🧵





Passed in 1986, the Firearms Owner Protection Act (FOPA) was staged to be a massive victory for gun rights - establishing a way for guns and ammo to travel interstate, even in states that restrict or ban their sale/possession. This allowed ammo to by mailed as well.

AR15-geek post -

The original buffer for the AR15 was extremely lightweight - about 1.8oz. By comparison, the modern rifle buffer is about 5.1oz. A difference of about 3oz doesn't sound like much, but actually represents a ~20% increase in the reciprocating mass of the rifle. Which is very significant. The edgewater buffer (actually listed as a spring guide in parts lists) was meant to cushion the impact of the bolt on its rearward stroke by using a series of stacked discs. However, when exposed to rain or debris, the rings could stick together, and the spring guide would become a rigid post instead.

Where did .223 Remington (the AR-15s adopted cartridge) come from? Was it designed to wound? Is it a meat-cooking elephant killer? Let's take a look at the history and see what it tells us! 🧵 223's history dates back quite a ways, but in the interest of clarity, I'll leave out some of the details of early military experiments with small caliber rounds, and start with the "Small Caliber High Velocity" (SCHV) program.

Guntubers when they haven't posted an illegally imported gun in a week Gun import laws shouldn't exist, not even for sanctioned countries, but unfortunately they do and the relevant three letter agencies care way too much about monitoring this sort of thing.

Complete awful ruling that aggressively misinterprets both Heller and Bruen

https://twitter.com/gunpolicy/status/1640467609056423940

Dang judge, you really think so? Well you said it, not me!

If Eugene Stoner didn't want or intend for his design(s) being sold on the civilian market, why would he make fun of "antigun lobbyists" wanting to (presumably) ban his guns?

Even Kalashnikov thinks it's funny! Note that the only people claiming he didn't want people to own ARs are anonymous (fictional?) family members and out of context quotes which correctly point out the original idea was for a military rifle which had a civilian version made shortly thereafter. It's a joke!

Let's give WaPo's bit about the AR-15/M16 a little look. How wrong could they get it?

Evidently, it was the first gas operated firearm, very innovative!

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1640338240468131842

The M16's reliability was very clearly traced to the use of powder design for 308 in the new 223 ammo being used. The 308 powder was much slower burning, and caused cases to stay sealed tight in the chamber during extraction.

Colt didn't revamp anything at all to fix it.

Let's talk about firearms, serial numbers, tracing guns, as well as gun use in crime by gun type.

The ATF recently released a comprehensive report on this subject, and the data is pretty interesting. Lets take a dive!

We'll be looking at trends and surprising results. This thread is quite long, so I'll summarize some key points:

-Gun "tracing" by serial number is not like on TV shows
-Cops themselves are to blame for a surprising number of untraceable guns
-State with strict gun laws have less success tracing guns

https://twitter.com/NotoriousPBG/status/1625918581325332480

"People might learn about Rhodesia because of this video and become racists" it's a wonder how your puny brains remembers to breathe

I'm not sure who needs to hear this, but you should stop willingly accepting antigun framing and talking points.

This includes all forms of denial along the lines of "the AR-15 was designed as a sporting rifle" and "no military ever used it, it's not a weapon of war!" The AR-15 was designed as a select fire rifle. Semiautomatic civilian variants did not exist until after the military had started testing the AR-15. The US armed forces have used AR-15s - select fire and semiautomatic ones!

None of this means you don't have a right to own one.

I, for one, think guntuber drama is not good and that people should spend less time building hyperobsessive parasocial relationships (especially if built out of spite) and instead spend more time shooting guns or lifting weights or another healthy activity instead. Disagreeing with people is cool and good, a lot of guntubers have wretched takes that should be made fun of.

But guilt by association witch hunts are not cool or good.

A thread on the state of metal 3D printing as it applies to self-made guns: 🧵

Without saying too much, I'm quite familiar with the state of metal printing, and the array of options and techniques available as far as metal AM goes - so here's why it sucks for DIY guns: I'm speaking more to DMLS/LFMT/Wire-fed setups here and less to the BMD and post-deposistion sintering setups here - I'll explain why later, but the reason revolves around why metal AM would even be useful given what FDM can already do.