9 ms·

Bullets: Sizes, Calibers, and Types (2020)

91 points by poundofshrimp 5y ago

hellbannedguy 5y ago
Second pop-up wants an email. (I've noticed a lot of cheap stuff on Craigslist. I'm pretty sure they are placed their to collect emails. There's one in the bay area yesterday. It was a mill, and a lathe, for $100. And yes--I emailed him. In the back of my mind, maybe they just wanted it gone?)
giantg2 5y ago
I actually thought this might be about bullets in documents, like different styles and fonts.
- kkdaemas 5y ago
  Wait, it's not about game development??
swayvil 5y ago
"Stopping power". "Wound channels". Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. Now don't get me wrong, I own a gun. But still. Also, I hear that birdshot is actually better for home defense because it doesn't go through walls so much. And can you imagine firing a shotgun inside your house without hearing protection? Goodbye ears.
- trutannus 5y ago
  Former gun owner myself as well back when I lived in the sticks. Would carry on walks in my "yard" because of injured, hungry, or otherwise dangerous wildlife. > Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. This is the sort of thing that gives firearm owners a bad rap. Especially those who advocate for self-defense rights. Everyone already thinks firearm owners are gung-ho cowboys with itchy trigger fingers. The majority are not.
  - 0x7E3 5y ago
    > Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. >This is the sort of thing that gives firearm owners a bad rap. You're not wrong, but I do think it's unfair and a little odd. After all software engineers are almost exclusively depicted as engaging in unethical and outright criminal activity in pop culture, regardless of whether they are the 'good guys' or 'bad guys'. Many beginning training materials focus on things that are implied if not outright trumpeted as giving you the ability to commit illegal and immoral acts. We certainly don't (well someone probably does, but we shouldn't) consider that as a reflection on all software engineers.
    - trutannus 5y ago
      > After all software engineers are almost exclusively depicted as engaging in unethical and outright criminal activity in pop culture Right, I agree for sure. I think the reason why we don't consider this a reflection on software engineers is that no politician has thought using freedom to engineer software as a wedge issue in a campaign. It's absolutely unfair and a little odd. But, after all, I've yet to see a political wedge issue arise that isn't unfair, and viewed as a little odd by other cultures.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I mean, it's a bit difficult to compare and contrast various bullets without talking about stopping power and wound channels. You could use euphemisms or be more technical, but in the end you're comparing a thing made to transfer kinetic force and create a hole, on its ability to do those things. And yes IMHO, a pump action 12ga birdshot reduced-recoil load w/ a standard slug at the end of the magazine is hard to argue against if we're honestly talking home defense load.
  - drewm1980 5y ago
    What's the slug for?
    - akerl_ 5y ago
      There’s a decent cargo cult following for some level of magazine/tube-based escalation of force, where you have some sort of lower-impact ammunition loaded first, followed by higher-impact ammunition. In this case, the pitch is for birdshot at the front, followed by a slug. The issue is that in practice, once you pull out a gun you’ve fundamentally altered the state of the world between yourself and your assailant, and they have no way to know that you’ve stacked your magazine/tube like some kind of Dragon Ball Z power escalation where you’ll take 5 episodes to get to your Full Ultimate Potential. In practice, you’re better off just making a choice between wanting lower or higher impact projectiles. Increasing complexity in a high-stress / fast-paced scenario isn’t a great plan.
      - drewm1980 5y ago
        What scenario are you expecting to happen, and how will your specific choice of shotgun rounds factor into that?
        akerl_ 5y ago
        If I’m loading a shotgun for for home defense: somebody has broken into my home. As per my comment above, how I load my shotgun is mostly based around my willingness to inflict harm on somebody who has broken into my home. If I’m trying to limit impact, bird shot is lovely. If not, just load the whole tube with buck shot or slug or similar. But trying to pre-plan an escalation of force via the shotgun tube ordering is a fools errand. Police have an escalation of force via visibly different tools. A suspect can see the difference between a stick and a taser and a gun. And a cop can choose to draw any of these in any order. Stacking the tube locks you into a specific sequence that you have to remember and that your assailant can’t know.
- collegeburner 5y ago
  Do you have a problem with those terms? If it makes you feel better "stopping power" is at least half a meme these days, from all the old fudds talking about "muh stopping power" with their .45 1911s. And yeah a bullet makes a wound channel? This stuff is just as relevant of you're hunting or similar. And no, birdshot may not stop a big person. Hurt like hell but often won't kill. I personally don't have a shotgun for home defense though, 9mm hollow points in a PCC do the job fine. Anybody who's not an idiot wears ear protection when shooting but a few shots won't damage your ears much. But yeah a 9mm handgun is significantly less bad for these reasons. Thank the feds though, it's damn hard to get suppressors without tons of paperwork which would otherwise make this less of a problem.
  - rsyring 5y ago
    > But yeah a 9mm handgun is significantly less bad for these reasons. 9mm handgun is usually louder than a shotgun: https://earinc.com/gunfire-noise-level-reference-chart/ https://earinc.com/gunfire-noise-level-reference-chart/ > Thank the feds though, it's damn hard to get suppressors without tons of paperwork which would otherwise make this less of a problem. Paperwork isn't that bad and online retailers help a lot. It's annoying, expensive, and you have to wait a long time after purchase to get it, but it's not really "hard" IMO.
    - collegeburner 5y ago
      Huh never seemed like that, go figure. Tbh i usually shoot 9mm from a PCC so that may have skewed my impression. I consider a shitload of paperwork, months of waiting, and the $200 tax stamp to be pretty bad. More importantly, navigating that paperwork is hard for somebody kinda new to guns, even though it's better these days esp. with the internet.
      - nataz 5y ago
        And just a quick safety note, a 9mm round can absolutely cause long term hearing damage with just one shot, especially if fired indoors and unsurprised. Lots of variables in play here, but the answer is to always wear hearing protection.
drewm1980 5y ago
Guns are like COVID... but cool.
nataz 5y ago
I think hn and tech culture in general is sleeping on the rise of popular gun culture. Even with some significant headwinds on social media, gun culture influencers have huge audiences, slick media production, and run the gambit from highly technical to meme fueled gif parties. It's a long way from the old stereotype of an old white Vietnam vet waxing poetic about 1911 .45s. Something else that has been interesting to watch has been how much video game culture acts as an on ramp to gun culture. The influence that games like modern warfare have on the real life gun community is fascinating. It makes sense since there are way more call of duty players than actual high speed operators, but still... If you think about it, it makes sense. Unlike a lot of other gear orientated technical fields, it's almost impossible for people to regularly employ their toys outside of a range setting. Everyone and their brother wants short barreled ARs, but how many people are actually clearing rooms. Same goes for recce rifles. How many folks out there on patrol? It's the equivalent of the guy who buys a land cruiser with a roof top tent and hood mounted jack, but just drives it to the mall on the weekends (and yet look how much the overland community has exploded over the past few years). This is very much an underserved hobby driven by culture and entertainment. It's almost entirely disconnected from actual military needs/requirements/drivers. I think there is a lot of growth in the industry, surprised it doesn't come up more often.
- collegeburner 5y ago
  Yeah fudds haven't made up the bulk of the gun scene since the 90s really. I hope that since people in video games can use use a wide variety of weapons we get some push back against banning specific gun types. Opening the MG registry would be really good and maybe this is a way to encourage it, same for removing suppressor and SBR regulations. Btw there is some intersection between the two, a lot of the guys behind the 3d-printed gun movement are moving to decentralized technologies for chat, video hosting, etc. because the gun-grabbers running mainstream platforms don't like them.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Fudds. When I hear that I hear "n*-lover" or some other term meant to exclude anyone that isn't extremist/fanatical.
ur-whale 5y ago
From an engineering perspective, I've always found fascinating how complicated ammo taxonomy is and how weird the various units used are. I get the historical aspect that led to this giant mess, but ... at the end of the day, there's not that many parameters to define what a bullet is and does. In particular, wrt physical dimensions, my - probably naive - take is that (radius x length) seems to go quite a long way in describing a bullet. Anyone more knowledgeable care to explain why things are so complicated and haven't been normalized / simplified over time?
- 0x7E3 5y ago
  For the bullets themselves, in addition to the diameter and length you've got mass, material and shape (round nose, hollow point, ballistic tipped, etc.). For the cartridge as a whole you're also going to be concerned with powder capacity, shape (necked?, rimmed?), and to a lesser extent material. These are just a few examples and all are significant.
- akerl_ 5y ago
  What would the upside be in “simplifying” it? At present, there’s a known set of standard ammo sizes in use, and millions of guns in existence that use them. Sure, the nomenclature is weird, with a mix of imperial, metric, and just plain weirdness, but it doesn’t seem to be negatively impacting anything.
- bjt2n3904 5y ago
  > there's not that many parameters to define what a bullet is and does There's a surprising amount of parameters that define what a bullet is and does. Consider this article, which describes the difference between secant and tangent ogives. From an engineering perspective, long range shooting is FASCINATING! http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2011/03/tangent-vs-secant-vs-hybrid-ogive-bryan-litz-explains/ http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2011/03/tangent-vs-secan...
- paisawalla 5y ago
  I think this is yet another area where large budgets and low accountability creates "innovation" primarily in how to spend public money. Large police and military budgets create incentives for manufacturers to innovate away from the standard and introduce "high performance" proprietary form factors. In some cases a new round size/weight does actually produce better performance for the desired application. In many cases, IMO, those advantages are academic and achieved in highly controlled environments, i.e. they are nullified by the high variability of other factors, in real world situations. I am just an enthusiast and not any kind of professional though.
neither_color 5y ago
This is a nice overview of common types but I still don't understand the "why" of some of their names, such as the difference between a .38 and a .380 (It's the same number!)
- ptomato 5y ago
  the full name of .38 is .38 Special, and the full name of .380 is .380 ACP. IIRC, .380 ACP was so named to distinguish it from an earlier related design, .38 ACP. In common use, if somebody says .38 they're referring to .38 Special as that's by far the most common cartridge with .38 in it, and if they say .380 they're definitely referring to .380 ACP, though it's also sometimes referred to as 9mm Browning. ETA: and in the case of both these rounds, .38" is actually the approximate diameter of the _case_ not the bullet; the diameter of .380 ACP bullet is 9mm, and the diameter of .38 Special is .357".
- collegeburner 5y ago
  Because there's a lot more than caliber that matters. If you think about it, a .45 ACP is close in caliber to a .50 BMG. But there's hella powder behind a .50 and not so much behind a .45. The bullets themselves make a big difference also, there are at least a half dozen you can read more about here: https://gunvault.com/types-of-ammunition/ https://gunvault.com/types-of-ammunition/ If you think having 2 cartridges that both have .38" caliber bullets is confusing, take a look at all the 9mm ones. Just in the ones that are actually called 9mm and not just caliber equivalent, there's 9x19, 9x25 mauser, 9x57 mauser, 9x39, 9mm winmag, 9x18 makarov, and a ton more I can't remember. Some of those are rifle cartridges, some handgun. They have different bullets with different characteristics and different bullet lengths and different bullet weights. And the shape of the cartridges behind them, the guns they fire from, and the amount of propellant each one has is all different.
mikewarot 5y ago
One day I hope to get some range time with a Browning .50, just because. My shoulder will be sore for a week, but it'll be worth it.

91 points by poundofshrimp 5y ago

Second pop-up wants an email. (I've noticed a lot of cheap stuff on Craigslist. I'm pretty sure they are placed their to collect emails. There's one in the bay area yesterday. It was a mill, and a lathe, for $100. And yes--I emailed him. In the back of my mind, maybe they just wanted it gone?)

giantg2 5y ago

I actually thought this might be about bullets in documents, like different styles and fonts.

kkdaemas 5y ago
Wait, it's not about game development??

swayvil 5y ago

"Stopping power". "Wound channels". Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. Now don't get me wrong, I own a gun. But still. Also, I hear that birdshot is actually better for home defense because it doesn't go through walls so much. And can you imagine firing a shotgun inside your house without hearing protection? Goodbye ears.

trutannus 5y ago
Former gun owner myself as well back when I lived in the sticks. Would carry on walks in my "yard" because of injured, hungry, or otherwise dangerous wildlife. > Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. This is the sort of thing that gives firearm owners a bad rap. Especially those who advocate for self-defense rights. Everyone already thinks firearm owners are gung-ho cowboys with itchy trigger fingers. The majority are not.
- 0x7E3 5y ago
  > Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. >This is the sort of thing that gives firearm owners a bad rap. You're not wrong, but I do think it's unfair and a little odd. After all software engineers are almost exclusively depicted as engaging in unethical and outright criminal activity in pop culture, regardless of whether they are the 'good guys' or 'bad guys'. Many beginning training materials focus on things that are implied if not outright trumpeted as giving you the ability to commit illegal and immoral acts. We certainly don't (well someone probably does, but we shouldn't) consider that as a reflection on all software engineers.
  - trutannus 5y ago
    > After all software engineers are almost exclusively depicted as engaging in unethical and outright criminal activity in pop culture Right, I agree for sure. I think the reason why we don't consider this a reflection on software engineers is that no politician has thought using freedom to engineer software as a wedge issue in a campaign. It's absolutely unfair and a little odd. But, after all, I've yet to see a political wedge issue arise that isn't unfair, and viewed as a little odd by other cultures.
ethbr0 5y ago
I mean, it's a bit difficult to compare and contrast various bullets without talking about stopping power and wound channels. You could use euphemisms or be more technical, but in the end you're comparing a thing made to transfer kinetic force and create a hole, on its ability to do those things. And yes IMHO, a pump action 12ga birdshot reduced-recoil load w/ a standard slug at the end of the magazine is hard to argue against if we're honestly talking home defense load.
- drewm1980 5y ago
  What's the slug for?
  - akerl_ 5y ago
    There’s a decent cargo cult following for some level of magazine/tube-based escalation of force, where you have some sort of lower-impact ammunition loaded first, followed by higher-impact ammunition. In this case, the pitch is for birdshot at the front, followed by a slug. The issue is that in practice, once you pull out a gun you’ve fundamentally altered the state of the world between yourself and your assailant, and they have no way to know that you’ve stacked your magazine/tube like some kind of Dragon Ball Z power escalation where you’ll take 5 episodes to get to your Full Ultimate Potential. In practice, you’re better off just making a choice between wanting lower or higher impact projectiles. Increasing complexity in a high-stress / fast-paced scenario isn’t a great plan.
    - drewm1980 5y ago
      What scenario are you expecting to happen, and how will your specific choice of shotgun rounds factor into that?
      - akerl_ 5y ago
        If I’m loading a shotgun for for home defense: somebody has broken into my home. As per my comment above, how I load my shotgun is mostly based around my willingness to inflict harm on somebody who has broken into my home. If I’m trying to limit impact, bird shot is lovely. If not, just load the whole tube with buck shot or slug or similar. But trying to pre-plan an escalation of force via the shotgun tube ordering is a fools errand. Police have an escalation of force via visibly different tools. A suspect can see the difference between a stick and a taser and a gun. And a cop can choose to draw any of these in any order. Stacking the tube locks you into a specific sequence that you have to remember and that your assailant can’t know.
collegeburner 5y ago
Do you have a problem with those terms? If it makes you feel better "stopping power" is at least half a meme these days, from all the old fudds talking about "muh stopping power" with their .45 1911s. And yeah a bullet makes a wound channel? This stuff is just as relevant of you're hunting or similar. And no, birdshot may not stop a big person. Hurt like hell but often won't kill. I personally don't have a shotgun for home defense though, 9mm hollow points in a PCC do the job fine. Anybody who's not an idiot wears ear protection when shooting but a few shots won't damage your ears much. But yeah a 9mm handgun is significantly less bad for these reasons. Thank the feds though, it's damn hard to get suppressors without tons of paperwork which would otherwise make this less of a problem.
- rsyring 5y ago
  > But yeah a 9mm handgun is significantly less bad for these reasons. 9mm handgun is usually louder than a shotgun: https://earinc.com/gunfire-noise-level-reference-chart/ https://earinc.com/gunfire-noise-level-reference-chart/ > Thank the feds though, it's damn hard to get suppressors without tons of paperwork which would otherwise make this less of a problem. Paperwork isn't that bad and online retailers help a lot. It's annoying, expensive, and you have to wait a long time after purchase to get it, but it's not really "hard" IMO.
  - collegeburner 5y ago
    Huh never seemed like that, go figure. Tbh i usually shoot 9mm from a PCC so that may have skewed my impression. I consider a shitload of paperwork, months of waiting, and the $200 tax stamp to be pretty bad. More importantly, navigating that paperwork is hard for somebody kinda new to guns, even though it's better these days esp. with the internet.
    - nataz 5y ago
      And just a quick safety note, a 9mm round can absolutely cause long term hearing damage with just one shot, especially if fired indoors and unsurprised. Lots of variables in play here, but the answer is to always wear hearing protection.

drewm1980 5y ago

Guns are like COVID... but cool.

nataz 5y ago

I think hn and tech culture in general is sleeping on the rise of popular gun culture. Even with some significant headwinds on social media, gun culture influencers have huge audiences, slick media production, and run the gambit from highly technical to meme fueled gif parties. It's a long way from the old stereotype of an old white Vietnam vet waxing poetic about 1911 .45s. Something else that has been interesting to watch has been how much video game culture acts as an on ramp to gun culture. The influence that games like modern warfare have on the real life gun community is fascinating. It makes sense since there are way more call of duty players than actual high speed operators, but still... If you think about it, it makes sense. Unlike a lot of other gear orientated technical fields, it's almost impossible for people to regularly employ their toys outside of a range setting. Everyone and their brother wants short barreled ARs, but how many people are actually clearing rooms. Same goes for recce rifles. How many folks out there on patrol? It's the equivalent of the guy who buys a land cruiser with a roof top tent and hood mounted jack, but just drives it to the mall on the weekends (and yet look how much the overland community has exploded over the past few years). This is very much an underserved hobby driven by culture and entertainment. It's almost entirely disconnected from actual military needs/requirements/drivers. I think there is a lot of growth in the industry, surprised it doesn't come up more often.

collegeburner 5y ago
Yeah fudds haven't made up the bulk of the gun scene since the 90s really. I hope that since people in video games can use use a wide variety of weapons we get some push back against banning specific gun types. Opening the MG registry would be really good and maybe this is a way to encourage it, same for removing suppressor and SBR regulations. Btw there is some intersection between the two, a lot of the guys behind the 3d-printed gun movement are moving to decentralized technologies for chat, video hosting, etc. because the gun-grabbers running mainstream platforms don't like them.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Fudds. When I hear that I hear "n*-lover" or some other term meant to exclude anyone that isn't extremist/fanatical.

ur-whale 5y ago

From an engineering perspective, I've always found fascinating how complicated ammo taxonomy is and how weird the various units used are. I get the historical aspect that led to this giant mess, but ... at the end of the day, there's not that many parameters to define what a bullet is and does. In particular, wrt physical dimensions, my - probably naive - take is that (radius x length) seems to go quite a long way in describing a bullet. Anyone more knowledgeable care to explain why things are so complicated and haven't been normalized / simplified over time?

0x7E3 5y ago
For the bullets themselves, in addition to the diameter and length you've got mass, material and shape (round nose, hollow point, ballistic tipped, etc.). For the cartridge as a whole you're also going to be concerned with powder capacity, shape (necked?, rimmed?), and to a lesser extent material. These are just a few examples and all are significant.
akerl_ 5y ago
What would the upside be in “simplifying” it? At present, there’s a known set of standard ammo sizes in use, and millions of guns in existence that use them. Sure, the nomenclature is weird, with a mix of imperial, metric, and just plain weirdness, but it doesn’t seem to be negatively impacting anything.
bjt2n3904 5y ago
> there's not that many parameters to define what a bullet is and does There's a surprising amount of parameters that define what a bullet is and does. Consider this article, which describes the difference between secant and tangent ogives. From an engineering perspective, long range shooting is FASCINATING! http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2011/03/tangent-vs-secant-vs-hybrid-ogive-bryan-litz-explains/ http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2011/03/tangent-vs-secan...
paisawalla 5y ago
I think this is yet another area where large budgets and low accountability creates "innovation" primarily in how to spend public money. Large police and military budgets create incentives for manufacturers to innovate away from the standard and introduce "high performance" proprietary form factors. In some cases a new round size/weight does actually produce better performance for the desired application. In many cases, IMO, those advantages are academic and achieved in highly controlled environments, i.e. they are nullified by the high variability of other factors, in real world situations. I am just an enthusiast and not any kind of professional though.

neither_color 5y ago

This is a nice overview of common types but I still don't understand the "why" of some of their names, such as the difference between a .38 and a .380 (It's the same number!)

ptomato 5y ago
the full name of .38 is .38 Special, and the full name of .380 is .380 ACP. IIRC, .380 ACP was so named to distinguish it from an earlier related design, .38 ACP. In common use, if somebody says .38 they're referring to .38 Special as that's by far the most common cartridge with .38 in it, and if they say .380 they're definitely referring to .380 ACP, though it's also sometimes referred to as 9mm Browning. ETA: and in the case of both these rounds, .38" is actually the approximate diameter of the _case_ not the bullet; the diameter of .380 ACP bullet is 9mm, and the diameter of .38 Special is .357".
collegeburner 5y ago
Because there's a lot more than caliber that matters. If you think about it, a .45 ACP is close in caliber to a .50 BMG. But there's hella powder behind a .50 and not so much behind a .45. The bullets themselves make a big difference also, there are at least a half dozen you can read more about here: https://gunvault.com/types-of-ammunition/ https://gunvault.com/types-of-ammunition/ If you think having 2 cartridges that both have .38" caliber bullets is confusing, take a look at all the 9mm ones. Just in the ones that are actually called 9mm and not just caliber equivalent, there's 9x19, 9x25 mauser, 9x57 mauser, 9x39, 9mm winmag, 9x18 makarov, and a ton more I can't remember. Some of those are rifle cartridges, some handgun. They have different bullets with different characteristics and different bullet lengths and different bullet weights. And the shape of the cartridges behind them, the guns they fire from, and the amount of propellant each one has is all different.

mikewarot 5y ago

One day I hope to get some range time with a Browning .50, just because. My shoulder will be sore for a week, but it'll be worth it.