Not exactly. Here, foot-pound refers to the energy of the bullet, which can be calculated by taking the dot product of the force and the distance, where the for

Not exactly. Here, foot-pound refers to the energy of the bullet, which can be calculated by taking the dot product of the force and the distance, where the force and distance refer to how far the bullet could exert some force. Taking the dot product means that only the components of the force and distance that are in the same direction are used to calculate the result. When calculating torque, the force is applied in a direction perpendicular to the distance that is measured, because the distance refers to the distance between the place where the force is exerted and the center of rotation. Therefore torque is calculated by taking the cross product of the force and the distance. So while the units look the same, what they are measuring is different.