This is referring to all the people who say I own this gun to protect against a tyrannical government. While I agree fighting a tyrannical government is noble Most of those people aren’t serious about it and are just LARPing. If you are serious about fighting for your freedom then you’d know that fighting alone will get you nowhere. No revolution or civil war has ever been won by scattered armed individuals with no organization, you need to join a group to be effective.
But all the militias are full of right wing psychos
Yeah, but you won’t be able to change their mind from the outside. Join one and try to educate them on true freedom from the billionaire capitalist class. Worst case scenario even if they don’t respond you’ll still be training and learning how to work in a group, and you can be a spy and learn their tactics and how to defeat them in the case of a civil war.
I’ll just buy the gun now and join a group once shit starts going down
That’s the wrong order, get organized and then buy weapons. Left wing organizations will be banned and forced underground long before guns are. There’s a very high probability trump will ban armed left wing groups in the next couple years, him restricting gun purchases is far less likely. It’s best to get in an organization and build trust before it goes underground because after they are banned they are rightfully more picky on who they let in for fear of informants.
If it’s chambered in 5.56 it is not the best option for hunting. The round is smaller compared to hunting rounds and is designed to reduce recoil so you can fire it in bursts or in quick succession for suppressive fire. You don’t need suppressive fire for hunting though, you want one good clean shot to the vitals, if you empty a clip into a deer you’re liable to destroy a lot of the meat. Also since it’s smaller it has a higher likelihood to wound rather than kill which is unethical as the animal is suffering, and is annoying as you then have to track the wounded animal.
If you’re using an ar-15 to hunt it’s not because it’s the best gun for the job, it’s because it looks cool and that’s not a valid reason to keep them around.
… No serious hunter who is hunting with an AR 15 is going to be emptying an entire magazine into a single target.
It is a weapon that can be used for fairly rapid suppressive fire or successive point fire… but it can also just shoot one bullet at a time, pretty accurately, a pretty decent distance away.
And while sure, a 5.56 is maybe not strictly optimal as a hunting round in some scenarios… it is totally capable as a hunting round in many hunting scenarios.
There are many rounds that are specifically geared toward hunting… that are comparable in size and velocity to the .223 / 5.56.
There are many kinds of game where a round roughly the size and velocity of a .223 / 5.56, from the right range… where that round is a reasonable and effective way of taking down your target, with a single well placed shot, without overkill, and without being underpowered.
Yes, there certainly are some animals and ranges where a 5.56 would be ineffective and you’d basically just be needlessly harming and injuring the animal but not likely to kill it any kind of quickly.
Generally speaking, in the US, there are a myriad of laws that govern what kinds of animals can be legally hunted with which kinds of rounds, through which kinds of guns, at which ranges, though the specifics of this vary considerably by region and locale.
Its not really accurate to say that the .223/5.56 is like, somehow, uniquely unsuitable as a hunting round.
It is entirely possible to take down the approriate sized game from an appropriate range, with one well placed .223/5.56 round.
Indeed, the 5.56 … basically just is a beefed up, militarized version of the .223, which was originally a hunting round.
The .223 also just still is a common hunting round.
Also your reasoning about how hunters do or should reduce the animal’s suffering doesn’t make that much sense.
With most kinds of game, an ideal shot will go through both lungs and the heart.
But big animals are big, and it’ll take em a while to bleed out. This is this case with basically any kind of round being used to hunt any kind of game of moderate to large size.
Its pretty rare to get a shot that just instantly kills an animal.
You are basically always going to be tracking them for some distance… and even if they drop dead in place, you have to make the trek from where you are to where they are, which could be … roughly a 1/4 of a mile, 1/2 a kilometer, across difficult terrain.
Guns are also not as easy to shoot, and many more factors go into their accuracy, than you would think from just watching movies or playing video games.
Shooting, marksmanship, is a skill, really a set of many skills, and no amount of … perfectly made, superior weaponry… will magically make an unskilled or low skill marksman into an expert.
For the record: I’ve never actually gone hunting. I do not own an AR 15.
I don’t think I could bring myself to end another living creature, aside of being in some self defense situation like for some reason a mountain lion is inside my apartment.
But I’ve known hunters, know at least something about hunting, and I do enjoy going to a range and just target shooting, every so often.
An AR 15 is a practical weapon, that can be used to moderate or great effect in a wide variety of possible scenarios.
They are also plentiful and fairly cheap, at least you can get some variants fairly cheap.
They are also very modifiable and customizable so that they can be better at certain tasks, then reconfigured to be better at some other task.
I’m not even trying to argue that… mass civillian ownership of AR 15s is good or bad, I am just trying to explain why a lot of people have them, and do not necessarily have them for dubious or delusional reasons.
Though there certainly are a lot of people who I would say do have them, or maybe, have as many as they have of them, for dubious and delusional reasons.
Not saying you can’t use it for hunting, just that it’s not optimal and you don’t need one to hunt. Therefore it’s not a valid reason to keep them legal, as you can and should be hunting with something else.
Yeah and you’re less likely to hit those vitals with a smaller faster round. Yes if you’re a very good shot then you can hit them but with smaller rounds you’re more likely to miss them, wound the animal and then have to track it down, further then if you hit vitals, to get another shot at them. The more you’re able to reduce the chance that you wound an animal without killing it the more ethical hunting is, part of that is using larger caliber rounds.
For that reason no hunting guide is going to recommend using 5.56 on anything bigger then a raccon. They’re fine for smaller game but don’t offer much advantage over a .22.
What, in your mind, are optimal weapons for hunting?
How do they differ from an AR 15?
I have tried to spell this out in more detail, but let me say it more plainly:
There are many hunting scenarios where a 5.56 or .223 is optimal.
I … don’t know why you think this is not the case, or maybe I am misunderstanding you and you have some other set of criteria, or are saying something else?
Ok so, with respect, you seem to fundamentally not understand how bullets work when they hit things.
Roughly, Kinetic Energy = 1/2 (mass * velocity^2)
When a bullet impacts flesh, as it travels through the target, it creates what is called a hydrostatic shockwave, or shockfront, or shockcavity, inside of the body.
A high powered, high velocity bullet does far, far more damage than simply drilling out exactly what it plows through.
https://brassfetcher.com/Wounding Theories/Velocity of Radial Expansion.html
You can go into a lot more detail by reading all of that if you like, but to summarize:
A .22lr and .223 / 5.56 are roughly the same diameter of bullet.
But a 5.56 has an average muzzle velocity of roughly 3000 feet per second, while a .22lr has an average muzzle velocity of about 1000 feet per second.
So, the masses of these two rounds are not too much different, but the velocity is 3x higher, and the velocity component is squared, when determining kinetic energy.
What that means is that a high velocity round creates a huge temporary cavitation within a target, many, many times wider than the bullet itself.
A low velocity round behaves more like the way you are thinking, where basically the bullet only damages tissue that it directly passes through.
So, put those two things together, and what you end up with is that a rifle round, such as .223 or 5.56… you don’t need to have the bullet directly pass through all the vital organs.
If you get anywhere close to them, they’ll get shredded, ripped apart, cause massive internal bleeding anywhere that internal shock cavity fucks up.
When you see a gruesome, gaping exit wound, what that is is the shock cavity opening up and exiting the body.
See, hopefully you now understand why this is incredibly innacurate.
A .22lr into a Raccoon is … sure, we’ll call that reasonable for killing a Raccoon, at say, 50 feet.
… a 5.56 into a Raccoon at 50 feet would literally blow off huge chunks of its body, could potentially just actually blow it apart into multiple seperate pieces.
Because a 5.56 carries roughly 9x the amount of energy as a .22lr.
You can go look up how you are also just factually wrong, if you prefer, as to what kinds of animals are legal to hunt with .223.
They include coyote, white tail deer, pronghorns, and feral hogs.
EDIT
As an aside… the hydrostatic shock effect is the actual reason why shooting fish in a barrel is so easy.
You don’t have to hit the fish with the bullet to kill them.
The hydrostatic shock of the water trying to get out of the way of the bullet kills the fish in a similar manner as the pressure wave from a bomb kills a person.
A rifle with a caliber .300 or greater for hunting anything bigger than a raccoon such as boar, deer or elk.
The size of the bullet, again assuming it’s chambered in 5.56, I guess you can get ars in a larger caliber but they’re less common.
Ok name one then. They are not optimal for hunting boar or deer, just google it if you don’t believe me. You said they aren’t the best for small game either as they’re overpowered, same with birds, so what should you be hunting with an AR ?
Seriously just google this, I’m not gonna argue the math and ballistics with you because I honestly don’t know them that well and am going to take the many testimonials and guides online of actual hunters. You can even ask your friends who hunt if they would recommend using 5.56.
Also legal doesn’t mean ethical, you can hunt elk with a handgun here in California legally, that doesn’t mean it’s ethical. There are no restrictions on caliber size, just that it has to be center-fire and soft point. Idk if California is strict or lenient on hunting but I assume it’s pretty strict relative to the rest of the country.
EDIT: apparently California is lenient and it looks like it is also illegal in some states to hunt deer with .223 including Illinois which requires .300 and above for hunting deer, but that must be because the law makers don’t understand ballistics and cavitation.
Oh, ok, so you mean an AK-47.
That’s a .300 caliber rifle.
AK 47s are pretty common.
No, you’re wrong, they are.
Just google it if you don’t believe me.
Hahah, ok.
I’m not arguing with you.
I just gave you a physics lesson.
You can be too lazy to read it or too incompetent to understand it, but you’re not gonna be able to argue with it.
Because its just true.
I was being polite up till this point, but you’ve entirely disregarded 90% of what I’ve said.
Its also hilarious to say you’re not going to argue with me, and then keep arguing with me by providing other arguments.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
And, you’re being immensely disingenuous now, you’ve gone beyond ignorant into willfully ignorant.
As such, we’re done here, fuck off.
Yeah, hunting with an ak would be better then hunting with an ar-15 in 5.56
Since you don’t seem to want to google “x hunting caliber recommendation” , or you did and saw that nobody thinks 5.56 is the way to go and came back here mad that you couldn’t find anyone to back you up, here’s some guides:
Here’s a boar hunting guide recommending:
Here’s a guide on the top 10 hunting cartridges for deer and look, 5.556/.223 didn’t make the list
And here’s a guide for elk hunting cartridges and again 5.56 is nowhere to be seen
Seriously just find a single person who’s hunted before and recommends using 5.56 and I’ll admit I’m wrong. You will get some people who have done it but it’s not making anyone’s top 10 list. Maybe thats because they can’t comprehend your physics lesson but I’d say they can understand what bullet makes the animal stop moving.
Neither do you, neither of us have hunted before, so we should both listen to the people who have. I’ve been looking into boar hunting recently and all the guides I’ve read recommend large caliber rounds to lower the chance of wounding the animal, which is why I made the first comment. So I’m going to take the words of people who have done this before over your physics explanations and when I do hunt it will be with a .300 or above.