Forget the "Bushmaster" for a moment...

[Bigmack]

and let's talk about the .223 bullet itself. It sounds like the perfect bullet for hunting.... oh... let's say 6 year old kids and firefighters!

The .223 breaks up more than other bullets. After it hits someone, the .223 round tumbles and fragments as it punches deeper into the body, multiplying the damage.

If the bullet is fired as a hunting round, with its lead tip exposed, the tip flattens and widens to as much as a half-inch as it travels before it fragments into a "lead snowstorm" pattern of many tiny bits.
If fired as a military round, with a "full metal jacket" of steel or copper covering the round, it may turn sideways and break in two after hitting someone.

For a little bullet, the 5.56 (.223) bullet produces quite dramatic wounds.   While the traditional 30-06 caliber bullet of the M1 Garand and 7.62 bullet of the M14 rifle would immediately knock a man down, the 5.56 bullet instead enters the body, quickly turns sideways after passing through only 4" of flesh, then breaks in two major pieces, as well as many smaller fragments.  During the Vietnam War, soldiers reported that shooting an enemy soldier with the M16 did not kill as quickly as the old 30 caliber weapons. Instead soldiers would follow a massive trail a blood a few feet away from where the enemy soldier had been hit to find him dead from massive blood loss.  Thus what was nominally a full-metal-jacket bullet had in effect roughly the same destructive capability as some hollow- or soft-point bullets

So the .223 round (like our former allies the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein – we can really pick 'em can't we?!) is just another tool that has come back to haunt us.

Famous for its use in the military's M-16 rifle, the .223-caliber round is known for causing extensive tissue damage, says surgeon Ron Maier of the Northwest Regional Trauma Center at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Like all high-velocity bullets, the .223 slug passes through the body with an accompanying shock wave that whipsaws blood vessels and organ tissue that are inches away from the bullet. It’s called hydrostatic shock.
The "cavitation," or cavity, caused by the high-velocity shock wave may briefly expand the diameter of the bullet hole almost 2 inches, about 10 times the width of the slug itself, before it collapses behind, tearing tissue further.

Exotic weaponry has become a staple of movies and entertainment in recent years, but this is the reality we are seeing. And now it is completely out of control.

Here's a wound diagram. Youtube has lots of videos of bullet channels in ballistic gel.


....Scrounged from many sources including... http://www.gunsandcrime.org/lethalty.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/steinreich6.html

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-10-22-bullets-usat_x.htm

[Indydem]

1. Here we go again.

Now it's the BULLET.

Not the lunatic who wielded the weapon.

It's the bullet. Because bullets just hop out of their boxes and kill people.

[RomneyLies]

6. We're talking a bullet with no practial application other than KILLING PEOPLE

It is completely impractical as a hunting round as it will destroy the meat the "hunter" is allegedly "hunting".

[Indydem]

10. That is absolutely not true.

A deer is a rather large animal. One, albeit large, gun wound will not "ruin" the meat.

Ever tried to clean all of the 00 buckshot out of a deer shot with a shotgun? Good luck.

[RomneyLies]

12. Second cleanest kill I ever had on a deer was with a slug.

Cleanest kill was with a .30-06.

[arely staircase]

19. only nine of them

and usually pretty close together as any shotgun you would hunt a deer with would have tight choke (at least ideally.) comparing a shotgun to a bushmaster in terms of lethality doesn't fly. most semi-auto shotguns that are used by hunters have very low magazine capacity (mainly for game management purposes, but nevertherless.) not to metion the veryy limited relative range. i am no gun nut, but i do know a little about shotguns since i used to hunt quail, duck, geese, etc. with my father - but haven't since he passed away. i know you can point to some goofy ass gun show shotgun with a million round drum or something, so spare me the picture.

[Indydem]

20. I wasn't making a comparison to 00 buck and .223 in regards to lethality.

The .223 is more lethal by far because of the reduced penetration of a round shot as opposed to a bullet. Well, at range at least.

I was talking about meat and meat only.

And I have gotten to the point I literally use a metal detector during dressing to assure I get all the lead out if I used a shotgun.

I have never used my AR-15 to hunt deer. But, I can see the usage of it.

[unblock]

9. yes i can see how actual information on gunshot wounds is irrelevant to everything.

all good hunters know the weapon selection is everything. just aim and squeeze the trigger and you win!

that whole "caliber" thing is just a marketing gimmick.
save your money and get generic bullets.

[morningfog]

16. Nice post, LaPierre.

[Indydem]

17. Once again, following me around DU.

Why don't you get a new hobby. Or a life.

[morningfog]

18. I just found you popping up, spouting the NRA talking points in GD again.

Not a hobby, I assume you have posted a lot since the last time I responded to you. I do admit it is helluva fun when I see you posting NRA talking points. You make it too easy.

[bettyellen]

22. no bullets hop out of magazines or clips and travel down gun or rifle barrels and kill people

Now, go have fun picking this statement apart, as is your habit.

[cantbeserious]

27. Dead Is Dead - Three Components: Firearm, Ammunition, Trigger Finger - Take Away Firearm Or Bullet

And one does not die from the bullet wound.

[bossy22]

2. I don't get your point?

are you trying to tell us that somehow the .223 is the only round that is exceptionally efficient at causing terrible gun shot wounds?

[Bigmack]

3. Of course...

...it's the only bullet that causes that kind of damage!

All the rest of them are fucking Nerf bullets!

Jesus Fucking Christ!

For those of you out there with a functioning brain... I'm trying to show that this particular bullet causes enormous damage....and that 30 of them, or 100 of them fired on semi-auto into soft targets at close range are not just killers... they are hamburger-making rounds.

Lots of people look at the caliber, and think it's a small bullet. Lots of people watch the TV and movies and have no idea about things like wound channels and hydrostatic shock.

Time - and past time - to educate them.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. To quote the surgeons taking care of an 8 year old we took to

The trauma center when it came to his spleen..."ground round."

[Peregrine]

8. Well ban that bullet

Only permit the sale of full metal jackets.

[Bigmack]

11. All that damage is with jacketed bullets... nt

[pipoman]

4. It is no more deadly

than any other rifle round, except maybe .22 or .17hmr and less deadly than most .30 cal. Gunshot wounds are ugly, the .223 is on the less powerful end of the rifle spectrum.

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. ...

.223 Remington wound profile:


.308 Winchester jacketed soft-point:

[aikoaiko]

13. Rifle rounds are typically more devastating compared to pistol rounds.

There's really nothing special about the .223/5.56 compared most other medium range ammo.

See the 30-30 for example.
[IMG][/IMG]

The sad truth is that the same qualities that make ammunition effective for self-defense also make them effective for murder.

[Indydem]

21. Could you link to where you are getting these from?

Thanks.

[aikoaiko]

23. here you go.

http://www.firearmstactical.com/wound.htm

[Indydem]

24. Thanks!

[NashvilleLefty]

14. I've had this "discussion" before.

A high caliber bullet such as a .45 may have more "stopping" power. But, the bullet tends to go right through you. A smaller caliber such as a .22 (or a .223) has more "killing" power, because instead of going right through you it tends to hit a bone and then bounce around tearing apart your insides.

One thing that really struck me in BCT when they were instructing us in First-aid, was to check for exit wounds - and the exit wound could be ANYWHERE because of the way the bullet bounces around.

It was brought home again when I read that deer hunters tend to use a smaller caliber in order to kill the deer instead of just wounding it.

it was also verified here on DU, when several Emergency Room personnel verified that they had been able to save almost all victims of high-caliber rounds, but most small caliber gunshot victims died from internal bleeding &/or from damage to multiple organs.

Let's be honest.

[slampoet]

15. One small nit pick. NO bullet knocks people down. Look up Issac Newton.

or Mythbusters.

[cliffordu]

25. OK - anyone here got any diagrams of what a 7.62 NATO round does to

humans??

Like, does it blow spines out of the backs of bodies?



If you REALLY want to see some bullet porn, look at films of 45/70 lever action cowboy rounds.

Buffalo Bore makes a round that moves out of the barrel at around 1900 fps.

More than enough to take a water buffalo.

Inside 50 yards, it'll stop a polar bear every time, if you're a good shot.

But I guess this is all ghoul talk. Right?

[Poll_Blind]

26. Earlier today I was actually going to post something like this in...

...response in a different thread. Because it also occurred to me that chasing around what a gun looks like only gets you so far. Hollow points, Glaser "Safety" slugs (not sure if those are still legal) and, of course, the ubiquitious .223.

Another thing about the .223 that I don't think you mentioned is that if one goes to gun shows it's not uncommon to find "green tip" (armor piercing) rounds and other military-use loads- all because of the military nature of the round. I suppose it's technically possible to find armor piercing 9mm rounds or whatever, but nowhere near the huge amount of military-style ammo, again, that I've seen at various gun shows.

And all of it, .223.

I doubt many here will take the time to consider this, "the other side of the equation". I think most people are already too burnt out to even read the gun threads here anymore.

The .223 is a very nasty round. It was years before I even understood why such a round existed as opposed to something like the .30-06 that WW II M1 rifles used.

PB

[cliffordu]

28. OK. Tell us about the .223.