How to Defend the Wounds Caused by Guns Like AR-15s

[TXAZ]

LogicMan,
you're arguing with an ignoramus, who is trying to make an argument out of BS.

The two times I've been 'acosted' by an anti when they find out I have an 'evil' gun, I've asked them what their first hand experience is with specific guns and wounds, then told them straight up they haven't a first hand clue on weapons or wounds.
It works.

 

[Nathan]

The conversation has to begin with both sides agreeing that having and carrying ALL small arms are protected by the 2nd amendment

Then, ask how they think ammunition should work? Would it be best if it did not hurt the person shot? Would you like a police officer's gun to work like that?

 

[Aguila Blanca]

The amount and type of powder effects the speed of the projectile and that can have an effect on whether the bullet fragments. The bullet itself depending on construction will fragment or not depending on what it hits.

So you can get a fragmenting bullet in any type of cartridge size. If a person uses a varmint or deer bullet they will be more likely to fragment or deform than a military fmj round.

The mythos of wounds from the AR-15 5.56 cartridge doesn't have as much to do with fragmenting as it does with tumbling. The original bullet was a relatively light 55gr. Stories started circulating that the round wasn't stable. "If it hits a leaf in flight it will tumble", "A tumbling bullet will hit a guy in the heel and exit through his arm pit", and "a bullet will hit a man then tumble through his body".
These are all lines I've heard from a variety of sources, but its pretty much all anecdotal. It is possibly this that reporters are talking about when they describe the wounds of people shot by the .223/5.56.

The "stories" are not anecdotal, they are documented. See the link I provided in post #12. The 5.56x45 round upsets (yaws, tumbles) on impact, and it's the extremely rapid tumbling that causes the fragmentation -- not hitting a large bone.

The issue of tumbling in flight is a different issue entirely. The original M16 barrel twist was too slow, and they found out when they got the rifle to Alaska's cold winters that even the 55-grain bullet couldn't be stabilized by the 1:14 twist. They changed it to 1:12, and that solved the problem. Until they adopted the 62-grain M855 bullet, then they had to change the barrel twist rate again.

 

[riffraff]

What I tend to say to people is fairly simple.

1. There is nothing particularly dangerous about 5.56 versus many other rounds readily available. They are the cheap basic bullet used in many rifles today, some would be better or worse to get shot by than a 5.56 but they are all made to kill. Guns are dangerous in the wrong hands.

2. With tens of millions of them in circulation, AR15's are the most popular gun today and it's been that way for a long time - people like them because they are light, easy to shoot, and are more of a platform that can be easily modified for serious target shooting, hunting, or self defense, and they can shoot a variety of different rounds.

3. I like guns but most importantly the reason we are the greatest nation in the world is our freedoms. I think part of being free is it tends to come with a price, a free place tends to be a little more dangerous. It's terrible what happens sometimes when bad people do bad things but I do not want to see us give up our freedoms because of a few bad people.

Now attempting to state the above to some hardcore anti gun person isn't going to matter. They will not let you finish that. But my mom and aunt for for instance, who are late 60's, never been around guns, certainly never shot one, and do not particularly like them, understood and agreed with those ideas.

Trying to argue technicalities doesn't work - trying to explain to someone who thinks it's out of the realm of possibility why we should be armed to resist a potentially tyrannical government of the future doesn't work. Personally I think it's better to state the simple fact all guns kill, AR15's are extremely popular for some very innocent reasons, and to state that freedoms in this country are important - most people understand the concept that giving up freedom is bad even if they see guns as more of a curse.

 

[JohnKSa]

Yes, there is something special about 5.56x45 wounds, at least if using military ammo. The 55-grain and 62-grain bullets are base-heavy. When the tip makes contact with the target, the bullet upsets (often referred to as "tumbling"). The least that happens is a ragged, elongated hole such as you'd see in paper if the bullet is keyholing. But ... the 5.56x45 military ammo is made with a cannelure. If the velocity is high enough (typically within about 200 meters), when the bullet upsets it rotates fast enough that the jacket separates at the cannelure, resulting in fragmentation that makes the wound even uglier.

All of that is true except for the implication that tumbling and fragmentation are unique to the 5.56/223.

There are many other rifle cartridges with bullets that tumble and/or fragment. An image search using the terms 'wound channels fmj' will turn up a lot of evidence to verify this statement. And it's not just that the statement is true with relatively light and high-velocity bullets/calibers. At least one WWII 8mm Mauser loading was known to tumble.

Tumbling and fragmentation is not even unique to rifles. FMJ handgun bullets often flip at least once if the wound channel is long enough, it just takes them longer to complete the flip than what is typical with the longer bullets typical of rifles. And it's not hard to design a handgun bullet so that it will fragment on impact--a few specialty ammo companies have made a living doing just that.

 

[LogicMan]

One reason I ask is because there is an ex-Army Ranger Congressman in Florida who did some TV interviews and wrote an article in the [I[New York Times[/I] explaining why he thinks the AR-15 should be banned. I may be misremembering, but I think one of the things he cited was the horrible wounds that the weapon creates. Such people, like it or not, are given more credibility than non-military people, so a non-military gun rights person needs to be able to engage and debate on ALL the issues of this subject, no matter how uncomfortable.

I understand that arguing with anti's won't really convince most of them (although some can be), but the fence-sitters who maybe ask genuine questions can be a different story. For those kinds, you don't want to seem evasive, but want to be able to address their questions. Otherwise it will come across that you just don't want to address that subject. On the wounding for example, I would point out what many of you are:

"We have a right to effective self-defense."
"All rifle shots make nasty wounds."
"How do you quantify or codify between what rounds are "too lethal" versus which are "acceptable?"

And so forth. That shows the fence-sitter that you are fully willing to engage on such parts of the discussion. No different than arguments about magazine capacity and whether you "need" an AR-15 or not. YES, the argument that, "We have a right to keep and bear arms, not a protected 'need' and the right is about possessing arms for individual self-defense and resistance to a governmental tyranny, therefore any bans on any small arms are mostly illegal" is how it SHOULD be, but to many, that just smacks of evasiveness in the debate.

 

[LogicMan]

One other question, but I have read that the 5.56x45mm, due to its (supposedly) being prone to fragment, can also thus be a round less likely to overpenetrate, and thus can be an ideal home defense round for this purpose. There was apparently an FBI test and report on this where they had a shootout involving handguns and ARs and found that the handgun rounds penetrated more than the AR rounds did. When they investigated, they found that the handgun rounds, due to traveling slower, did not fragment and thus penetrated more, whereas the 5.56 rounds would fragment and thus wouldn't penetrate as much.

I have only read of this report second-hand though, I have not been able to find an actual copy anywhere.

 

[HiBC]

LogicMan, I don't mean any disrespect.You are trying to do something all too common in our society.
You are building your argument based on labeling something and putting it in a simple box.Its just too flawed to continue.
I'm not going to do it for you,you have to do your own research.Go to the Sierra,Nosler,Speer,Barnes,and Hornady websites and check out how many .224 bullets are available,what their design charactaristics are.

To discuss the AR-15 bullet" is something like labeling and boxing "Native Americans" or "Women" or "White Males" into one monolithic group.
I can assure you within that box will be subsets and individuals who will invalidate any conclusion you may come to...but that does not deter media or politicians.

Edward Abby points that out in his book "Desert Solitaire"

The other problem with your pursuit :

We do have a problem. What greater way to terrorize any people,USA or elsewhere, than a mass killing at a school?

Per Rahm Emmanuel's doctrine of exploiting crisis,the media and political exploitation of pain and emotion begins while the fallen are still where they fell.

Its cynically exploited. The targets?

The 2nd Ammendment,the NRA,Gun Owners Gun manufacturers.

None of those,nor the AR-15,are the root cause ,and no action on any of those will remedy killing.

And I'm recognizing a trend.

Fairly new members with low post counts starting discussions such as this.

With a little orchestration,the discussion will polarize.

And then the posts take on the tone" The status quo you know is untenable.Compromisei is unavoidable. You must concede common sense gun safety measures. Resistance is futile.You must assimilate"

Sorry ,but my robot is saying "Danger Will Robinson"

I'm feeling like I am being mined for ore for the opposition. Trojan.

LogicMan,..I forget where to look them up,some fed gov website.

There are stats on homicides. If you lump all the AR-15 homicides in with all the other long gun homicides...rifles,shotguns,etc,by far,fists and feet kill more people.

I also can't say my source or an exact number,but gun homicides are way DOWN,more than 50%,over the last 15 years or so.

Now,the Doctors who ,understandably,are troubled by ANY high vel rifle wound,not AR-15 wounds,

I wonder how the stats work out for the number of people killed by our health care system versus firearms?

...

 

[turkeestalker]

YES, the argument that, "We have a right to keep and bear arms, not a protected 'need' and the right is about possessing arms for individual self-defense and resistance to a governmental tyranny, therefore any bans on any small arms are mostly illegal" is how it SHOULD be, but to many, that just smacks of evasiveness in the debate.

The problem is that you've already lost the argument because that is not how it should be but how it actually is.
That is the reality of it all and you've given your opposition the upper hand by not demanding that fact be acknowledged to begin with.
If that "just smacks of evasiveness in the debate", then it was never an actual debate.
Allowing our opposition to control the narrative in such a way simply means that we've already lost by choice.

added:
Including the word 'mostly' in what I copied and pasted above is proof of that, but I've done the same sort of thing.
Not one more inch.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

There are stats on homicides. If you lump all the AR-15 homicides in with all the other long gun homicides...rifles,shotguns,etc,by far,fists and feet kill more people.

I also can't say my source or an exact number,but gun homicides are way DOWN,more than 50%,over the last 15 years or so.

FBI crime statistics. They are available on-line. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014

There are a number of different tables, allowing viewers to look at different parameters. The link is to the 2014 data -- I'm not certain what the most recent is. 2017 may not be finlaized yet.

 

[Spats McGee]

So one of the factors of late that is a point of discussion regarding AR-15s and their legality is the massive horrible wounds they apparently create (or more specifically, the .223 and 5.56 rounds). Medical personnel have noted that unlike say a 9mm which punches a clean hole in a person, with an AR-15, the person has a baseball or grapefruit sized hole and the internal organs are completely destroyed. Lungs gone, bones made into powder, etc...so some naturally are using this as a way to demand that these weapons be banned, that they are extra-super-lethal. . . . .

Was wondering your thoughts? This is IMO an important part of this subject that we need to be able to explain to people, to everyone from regular folk to government representatives at hearings on legislation.

First of all, I call BS on "grapefruit sized hole and internal organs completely destroyed" by AR rounds. It could be done with many AR rounds, I guess, but I'd need to see some hard evidence that an AR round did that.

Second, I'm with Glenn: We're not going to win anything by arguing that "there are worse rounds out there." I don't own my guns because they're a lot like giant Q-tips. My defensive guns are just that, defensive. If they didn't inflict wounds on an attacker, I would find something that did.

 

[thallub]

IMO: There's no need to defend the choice of your preferred self defense firearm. Use your preferred firearm for self defense when absolutely no other option is available: In the "gravest extreme".

Defending/debating/arguing such with anti-gunners is a waste of time.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

Personally, I justify owning an AR-15 (I only have one) by reference to the Second Amendment. At this point, I'm older than the age range specified in the current version of the Militia Act, but I wasn't when I bought the rifle. I am an Army veteran, and if the country (or my state, or my town) were to wake up to a Red Dawn type situation I would still consider myself to be available for whatever sort of duty my physical condition would allow me to perform. We're extremely unlikely to experience catastrophic flooding in my town, and earthquake and hurricane damage is unlikely to be cataclysmic, but you never know. In other parts of the country, any or all of these may be higher probability. It makes perfect sense to me that the people who comprise the unorganized militia (most of us) should be armed with a rifle that's pretty much the same as what the Army and the National Guard have. That's in keeping with the intent of the original Militia Acts of 1792, in which the caliber of each militiaman's musket and the amount of ammunition he was supposed to have was specified. That was done for operational uniformity (dare I say "regulation"?). Certainly, in an emergency citizens called up to provide security against ____ could be armed with deer rifles, lever action cowboy carbines, and even high-pressure pellet rifles -- but compatibility with what the government forces are carrying would greatly simplify logistics.

 

[Evan Thomas]

I've edited or deleted some posts. The general ills of society are off-topic here.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

All good points. A question: is the .223 and 5.56 unique in that they fragment, which from my understanding is what causes the massive damage, or do other rounds such as .308 and 7.62x51 do the same? Or 30.06?

As someone pointed out earlier, bullet selection plays a more important role in whether something fragments than caliber. The specific phenomenon you are referring to is with military ball ammo (FMJ) and not even all ball ammo but very specific types.

All spitzer shaped bullets will tumble eventually. Most of the mass is at the rear of the bullet and as the front decelerates on hitting the target, the back end wants to swap places with it. The question is WHERE this happens? In a bullet travelling 2,500fps, a slight delay in when it tumbles can mean the where is outside the target entirely (or past the vitals). Lighter rounds have less momentum and upset faster. Bullets with thin jackets and soft lead cores may break apart completely when they tumble and spray the wound channel with fragments. If they are too light, they may do it so fast nothing vital is hit.

The thing is, not all 5.56 FMJ does this - for example, the old Wolf FMJ has a thick copper washed steel jacket and a lower velocity. The lead just squeezes out of the exposed base like toothpaste. Swiss or British 5.56 is also designed with a thicker jacket and rarely breaks apart.

Likewise, even bigger FMJ bullets like 7.62 will tumble and fragment if the velocity is high enough and the jacket thin enough (and some military 7.62x51 does do this).

The people who think the AR15 is special in this regard don’t understand how bullets do their work. Which is a common problem in debating gun control... someone will say 20 things demonstrating complete ignorance of firearms and it is easy to get lost in the weeds trying to educate them on what they don’t know instead of just going to the meat of the argument.

In this case, the answer is what several have already said. The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting deer. The whole point of a firearm is to cause serious injury to living creatures. That’s its raison d’etre.

 

[jimbob86]

I think the "general ills of society" are fair game: Those are the root problem. Violence is but a symptom. Guns/bullets/wounds/whatever are just red herrings thrown up by those that would disarm us. But go ahead and play their game if you wish. I won't.

 

[Evan Thomas]

I think the "general ills of society" are fair game: Those are the root problem. Violence is but a symptom.

Actually, I agree with you. The Firing Line, however, is not the place to have this conversation. We don't do general politics here, or sociology, so they're fair game elsewhere, but not here.

 

[Lohman446]

The argument we need to win is whether armed self-defense by private citizens is justifiable. If so, then EFFECTIVE armed self defense is in turn justifiable. All else flows from that.

I think this is a very effective articulation of the argument. In religions that encourage proselytizing they have the term "elevator chats." For the vast majority of people long drawn out debates and discussions are boring. If you cannot summarize a strong and understandable position in a typical short elevator ride you are likely not gaining with the majority of the population. While I am familiar with the concept putting it into use is obviously not my strong point.

 

[Lohman446]

The ill's of society are not the only answer in regard to answering questions on gun control.

Anti-premise "the AR-15 is simply too devastating to be allowed in the hands of private citizens"

Argument you seem upset to not be allowed to make "the ills of society are the problem"

Its kind of a red herring argument that doesn't even address the premise that AR-15s are too deadly for an individual to possess. Some on here are articulating an argument that the deadliness of the AR-15 is precisely why individuals should be allowed to possess them.

 

[jimbob86]

the premise that AR-15s are too deadly for an individual to possess.

That premise is ridiculous on it's face: there are other guns that are more powerful and are accepted as fine by those that would ban the AR-15. This gun, or that gun, are not the problem. The other side wants to make this the debate so that they can take all the guns, one type at a time, when each successive ban does not solve the symptom, ignoring the fact that doing the same thing over and over again, only harder, and expecting a different result is insane ...... they don't care, because solving the actual problem was not their intent in the first place. Disarmament IS.