Speer TBBC bullet

The Navy Times reports that the Marine Corps will be issuing 5.56mm ammunition loaded with 62 gr. “SOST” (Special Operations Science and Technology) bullets, a version of the Trophy Bonded Bear Claw bullet invented by Jack Carter in 1985.

The Marine Corps is dropping its conventional 5.56mm ammunition in Afghanistan in favor of new deadlier, more accurate rifle rounds, and could field them at any time.

The open-tipped rounds until now have been available only to Special Operations Command troops. The first 200,000 5.56mm Special Operations Science and Technology rounds are already downrange with Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan, said Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan, commander of Marine Corps Systems Command. Commonly known as “SOST” rounds, they were legally cleared for Marine use by the Pentagon in late January, according to Navy Department documents obtained by Marine Corps Times.

SOCom developed the new rounds for use with the Special Operations Force Combat Assault Rifle, or SCAR, which needed a more accurate bullet because its short barrel, at 13.8 inches, is less than an inch shorter than the M4 carbine’s. Using an open-tip match round design common with some sniper ammunition, SOST rounds are designed to be “barrier blind,” meaning they stay on target better than existing M855 rounds after penetrating windshields, car doors and other objects.

Compared to the M855, SOST rounds also stay on target longer in open air and have increased stopping power through “consistent, rapid fragmentation which shortens the time required to cause incapacitation of enemy combatants,” according to Navy Department documents. At 62 grains, they weigh about the same as most NATO rounds, have a typical lead core with a solid copper shank and are considered a variation of Federal Cartridge Co.’s Federal Trophy Bonded Bear Claw round, which was developed for big-game hunting and is touted in a company news release for its ability to crush bone.

The Corps purchased a “couple million” SOST rounds as part of a joint $6 million, 10.4-million-round buy in September — enough to last the service several months in Afghanistan, Brogan said. Navy Department documents say the Pentagon will launch a competition worth up to $400 million this spring for more SOST ammunition.

Since al Qaeda and the Taliban are not signatories to the Geneva Convention and because the United States never ratified Protocols I and II of 1977, a non-expansive interpretation of US obligations would permit the use of hollow point projectiles, but TBBC bullets are not actually hollow points.

As Bartholomew Roberts explains here:

It isn’t a hollow point. It is an Open-Tip Match round much like the M118LR. The jacket is drawn from the base (instead of the cheaper method of jacket drawn from the nose and an exposed lead base) to the tip of the bullet. The tiny little hole there is just a remnant from jacketing the bullet that way. It isn’t designed for expansion or calculated to cause unnecessary suffering, so it doesn’t violate the Hague conventions.

In fact, though TBBC bullets do expand, they expand and fragment less than partition bullets commonly used in hunting.

Me, too.

Where on earth did Steve Lee get some of the full autos and RPGs he’s shooting in this 2:39 music video?

Hat tip to Xavier.

The Chiappa company’s name is pronounced KEE-opp-a and it is attracting a lot of interest in handgun circles these days with the arrival of a startlingly different new production model revolver. The Rhino, chambered in .357 Magnum, is a radically innovative design by Emilio Ghisoni, previously known as manufacturer and designer of the Mateba Autorevolver (1, 2).

Ghisoni’s Mateba was a kind of modern reinvention with improvements of Lieutenant Colonel George Vincent Fosberry’s Webley-Fosberry automatic revolver, an accurate and intriguing sidearm produced in small quantities a century ago.

The Rhino differs from the Mateba in being an ordinary non-automatic revolver, but retains a number of its innovative design features including firing with the barrel aligned with the bottom of the cylinder.

Ammoland:

Chiappa Firearms debuts a new production revolver and concept at the MKS Supply 2010 SHOT Show display (booth 15549).

Called the Rhino (sort of resembles one too) you will first notice that the barrel is actually at the bottom of the cylinder. The gun is designed to fire from the bottom chamber of the cylinder (6:00 position not 12:00 as with other revolvers).

The new design resulted in improvements of the internal mechanisms over conventional revolver designs yielding up incredible reliability, a super-smooth action and improved safety.

The Rhino’s low barrel design ergonomically shifts recoil energy into the center of the palm of the hand and in line with the forearm thus greatly reducing the effects of felt recoil. Traditional revolver design (semi-autos too) place the barrel above the hand.

When the gun is fired the leverage applied by that design forces the recoil into the web area of the hand between the thumb and trigger finger causing significant muzzle snap. Not the Rhino! Due to this new design a shooter can now fire very fast and accurate repeat shots.

The Rhino is designed reduce its carry profile. This design is even carried into the hexagonal shaped cylinder making for a flatter profile when carried (especially handy for legal concealed carry).

Smith & Wesson 686P

Hand gun enthusiast Nutnfancy has a new 43:22 video out.

Nutnfancy is a modernist, a semiauto guy really, the sort of person who wants a magazine with enough rounds to deal with an assaulting Zulu impi, who prefers double action shooting, and who wants a Picatinny rail to hang lights from on his guns, but this time he is reviewing the Smith & Wesson 686P, the S&W Performance Center L-frame .357 Magnum revolver with the 7-round cylinder.

He is an intelligent critic though and rather insightfully, I thought, recognizes the S&W 686P as Smith’s version of the much-admired, but unfortunately discontinued, Colt Python, and proceeds with a head to head comparison.

I am not especially interested in this model. I already own two other S&W .357s, but Nutnfancy does quality reviewing, and I found this one entertaining enough to watch anyway.

Everybody today is watching this amusing skirmish in the culture wars.

Butler, Missouri car dealer Mark Muller turns the tables on oh-so-superior CNN interviewer Carol Costello foiling an attempted slam interview. Costello was intending to put Muller on the spot by confronting him in a live interview over a sales promotion at his dealership awarding a AK47 semi-automatic rifle with the purchase of a new pick-up truck.

But Muller quickly proves to be a lot more likable than the smarmy and condescending Costello. He answers frankly, as she continually targets him with hostile questions invariably presented as what “some people might say.” And the rube car dealer proves entirely capable of embarrassing the slick professional reporter by demonstrating repeatedly her weakness on details (like his name).

5:51 video

From Suzanna Logan.

Americans responded to the election of a democrat-dominated federal government by buying enough guns in 3 months to outfit the entire Chinese and Indian Armies. We also bought 1,529,635,000 rounds of ammunition in the month of December 2008 alone.

You have to give him credit. Obama certainly has turned one sector of the economy around.

Ammoland.com

British TV program Top Gear‘s Jeremy Clarkson decided that clay targets were too small and too boring.

4:32 video

Hat tip to Henry Bernatonis.

More gun makers and gun owners ought to be hanging “For Sale” signs on their current properties and getting ready to move West. Why would Auto Ordinance want to stay in the Catskills or Smith & Wesson in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, when there’s Montana?

Great Falls Tribune:

Montana lawmakers fired another shot in battles for states’ rights as they supported letting some Montana gun owners and dealers skip reporting their transactions to the federal government.

Under House Bill 246, firearms made in Montana and used in Montana would be exempt from federal regulation. The same would be true for firearm accessories and ammunition made and sold in the state.

“What we need here is for Montana to be able to handle Montana’s business and affairs,” Republican Rep. Joel Boniek told fellow lawmakers Saturday. The wilderness guide from Livingston defeated Republican incumbent Bruce Malcolm in last spring’s election.

Boniek’s measure aims to circumvent federal authority over interstate commerce, which is the legal basis for most gun regulation in the United States. The bill potentially could release Montanans from both federal gun registration requirements and dealership licensing rules. Since the state has no background-check laws on its own books, the legislation also could free gun purchasers from that requirement.

“Firearms are inextricably linked to the history and culture of Montana, and I’d like to support that,” Boniek said. “But I want to point out that the issue here is not about firearms. It’s about state rights.”

The House voted 64-36 for the bill on Saturday. If it clears a final vote, the measure will go to the Senate.

House Republicans were joined by 14 Democrats in passing the measure.

Hat tip to Bryan DiSalvatore.

L115A3 Long Range Rifle, chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum (8.59x70mm)

The Daily Mail announces the deployment of Accuracy International‘s Arctic Warfare Magnum (AWM), aka the Arctic Warfare Super Magnum (AWSM), to use in Afghanistan in the hands of British army snipers, which actually occurred last May.

British Army snipers call it ‘the Silent Assassin’ and it is the weapon the Taliban fear the most.

It is the British-made L115A3 Long Range Rifle which, in recent weeks, has killed scores of enemy fighters in Afghanistan.

In a new initiative on the front line, the Army is using sniper platoons to target the Taliban and ‘The Long’, as the snipers call it, can take out insurgents from a mile away. …

The L115A3 Long Range Sniper Rifle – based on a weapon used by the British Olympic shooting team – weighs 15lbs, fires 8.59mm rounds and has a range of 1,100-1,500 yards.

The .338 Lapua, interestingly, was developed by the American ammunition company Lapua as a joint venture with Accuracy International with the goal of producing a long-range cartridge firing a 16.2 gram (250 gr), .338-inch diameter bullet at 914 m/s (3000 ft/s) that would penetrate 5 layers of military body armor at 1000 m (1094 yd). The new cartridge was created simply by necking the illustrious .416 Rigby (introduced in 1911) down to .338 diameter and stiffening up the case to withstand higher pressure.

It’s an excellent cartridge, and the AWM sounds like a nice rifle, but the Taliban have a lot more cause to be afraid of the American Barrett M82, chambered in .50 Browning Machine Gun (12.7x99mm), which will reach out and touch someone even further and make a bigger hole.

A rather timid person, who knows nothing about guns, gets himself an escort and takes a ride through the Khyber Pass to go shopping at one of the arms bazaar villages in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribal province.

He finds locals making 9mm autos with hand tools. The shop he visits is loaded with swords, British Model 1853 Enfield Rifles, and Artillery Lugers at derisory prices. Xavier would love this place.

7:46 video

Hat tip to Bird Dog.

The election of leftwing democrat Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency has been widely reported to have provoked a public stampede to purchase firearms likely to be banned by the democrat-controlled Congress during the new administration. Strong evidence of the accuracy of those reports of surging gun sales in the following BATF notice.

Form 4473 is the document which must be filled out whenever someone purchases a firearm.

BATF online:

U.S. Department of Justice

A notice will be posted at the expiration of this temporary authorized change.

2008 Zombie Shoot held by the Langhorn Rod and Gun Club, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

9:53 video

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Hat tip to Geek With a .45 and Atomic Nerds via Karen L. Myers.