Military Guns and Ammunition
Hosted by gatnerd
This is intended for people interested in the subject of military guns and their ammunition, with emphasis on automatic weapons.
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PDW again Small Arms <20mm
From: graylion
4/1/21
US Army used to consider 58 ft lbs the minimum to be lethal. That would make a .25 ACP a lethal round. I'm giving up. Whenever I challenge you you dodge, weave and don't provide decent reasoning. kthxbai.
From: poliorcetes
4/1/21
Or a pistol brace, or whatever. I cannot realise any serious use of such ridiculously long "two-handed pistol" or "broadpistol" or zweihander or whatever
From: graylion
4/1/21
poliorcetes said:Or a pistol brace, or whatever. I cannot realise any serious use of such ridiculously long "two-handed pistol" or "broadpistol" or zweihander or whatever
You know, calling that thing a montante is rather hilariously apt.
From: 17thfabn
7/1/21
From: graylion
4-Jan
smg762 said:It's well known that anything above 50ft lbs is lethal so a 300ft lbs bullet is sufficient. Why add weight and recoil trying to increase that.
"It is? Show me some documentation please."
I seem to remember 50 foot pounds from a British study on artillery and what was the ideal fragment size. I think it was a World War II era study.
They wanted a fragment size that would generate at least 50 foot pounds of energy. If I remember correctly a fragment that generated that amount of energy and struck the torso would cause incapacitation per their studies. Probably not immediate incapacitation in most cases.
From: gatnerd
8/1/21
50ish ft/lbs is 'lethal' ie will penetrate 12" of ballistics gel, so long as the bullet is of sufficient mass and doesn't tumble.
The 50gr 00 buckshot (modern 'OO' is actually more like a real 0 due to the use of wads) is penetrating 12" of ballistic gel at ~700fps impact velocity. 50gr @ ~700fps being similar to a .25 ACP from a pocket pistol.
50gr x 700fps = 54 ft/lbs
That said, 'lethal' is not necessarily incapacitating. For example, a guy about to fire a gun gets tagged in the chest with a .25 ACP. He'll no doubt die or need serious medical attention - but will this occur before he's able to aim and fire his weapon?
For 'maximum effective range' I like to use Supersonic Velocity - 1125fps - as the cutoff.
Pretty much any FMJ bullet of 40gr or more at 1125fps will penetrate 12", and few shoulder fired weapons are accurate outside of their supersonic range. So its an easy, mostly universal metric, thats better then using a minimum energy figure.