Saturday, January 19, 2008

Hey! Old Man! It Ain't 1960 Anymore

So much of the knowledge most of us have picked up at the range, hangin' out out the gun store, bullshittin' online has been passed down from generation to generation. The grizzled old hunter is full of tales of prowess with that most American of tools: The Rifle.

Now, these oldsters have lived through the fanfare, frenzy, and hype of the introduction of many a hot-shit new cartridge. Some have even tried a thing or two. Some made legends whose name not only lives on the cartridges they pioneered but is applied to cartridges modified in similar fashion 50 years later. Most watched from the sidelines while other brave souls reached for the brass ring of better, faster, more accurate, more effective, more destructive perfection.

Listen to the Old Men who are still around to tell tales of deeds done and daring do, but do not fail to leaven that download at the first available opportunity to insure it still pertains to the rifles and cartridges bearing the improvements in applied technology available to us today. In many ways there is nothing new under the sun, in other ways what was once so is so no more.

We have all heard of the 220 swift burning the throats out guns it was chambered in, of the impossibility of spinning a long small caliber bullet hard enough to stabilize without having it disintegrate as it exits the barrel, how "Old Slab Sides" (1911 model pistol )is inherently inaccurate and those new .40's have bullets so short they tumble, those plastic guns just don't hold up.

Now that 220 will still self destruct with heavy use of hot loads, but the rest of that stuff is pure steamin' bull shit. Feel free to call call 'em on it.

Case in point; Those fast calibers spinning themselves apart:

These bullets are all running over 4000 feet per second, some over 4400. Thats Mach 4 people.



Hey! Old Man! It ain't 1960 anymore!

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