Ottawa gunman launched attack with slow-loading, John Wayne-style rifle: experts

[benEzra]

70. Ummm, expansion/fragmentation is what keeps rounds from overpenetrating and killing your neighbors.

"When fired from a 20? barrel at ranges of up to 100 meters, the thin-jacketed lead-cored round traveled fast enough (above 2900 ft/s) that the force of striking a human body would cause the round to yaw (or tumble) and fragment into about a dozen pieces of various sizes thus created wounds that were out of proportion to its caliber."

Ummm, expansion/fragmentation is what keeps rounds from overpenetrating and killing your neighbors. Rounds that stay together without deforming, instead of expanding/fragmenting, penetrate walls like nobody's business. That's a bad thing.

Also, you've been arguing for prefragmented defensive loads this whole thread (what do you think birdshot is?) and now you're saying that multiple small wound tracks is a bad thing? You do understand that a 12-gauge shooting birdshot at close range will produce from 200 to 1000 separate wound tracks depending on shot size, right? So you're complaining because a 55gr .223 FMJ can turn into a dozen pieces of birdshot upon impact and destabilization....yet upthread you approvingly posted a video of a guy dumping 600 grains of prefragmented lead into a pork loin at close range and said that was what we should be doing instead. Do you see the disconnect?

If the round doesn't fragment, here's what you get instead (from the article you cite):

"The AK-47's heavier 7.62x39mm round has superior penetration when compared to the M16's lighter 5.56x45mm round and is better in circumstances where a soldier has to shoot through heavy foliage, walls or a common vehicle's metal body and into an opponent attempting to use these things as cover."

Read it again, and let it sink in. Rounds that don't deform/fragment shoot through walls and into the bodies of people behind them. Like your neighbors. Don't do that. And that's why I use civilian JHP in my AR, because it fragments more reliably than military FMJ does and thereby greatly reduces the risk of overpenetration.

There's also that little tidbit that civilian HD rounds are not military FMJ. Unlike FMJ, civilian jacketed hollowpoint or softpoint doesn't have to tumble before it deforms and fragments, meaning civilian loads can be designed to fragment sooner and penetrate less. That's what you want in a civilian load, within reason. The military, on the other hand, tends to want *more* barrier penetration, which is why they eventually ditched M193 FMJ in favor of M855 which doesn't fragment as easily, especially out of 14.5" barrels.

"The 7.62x39mm M43 projectile does not generally fragment and has an unusual tendency to remain intact even after making contact with bone. The 7.62x39mm round produces significant wounding in cases where the bullet tumbles in tissue, but produces relatively minor wounds in cases where the bullet exits before beginning to yaw."

You do know that owners of 7.62x39mm carbines like the Mini Thirty and civilian AK aren't limited to World War II era FMJ loads, yes? Hornady makes a 124gr VMAX varmint load that penetrates a lot less because it expands and fragments instead of drilling through everything, just like the old Russian Ulyanovsk load (8M3) or East German FMJ. I know that because before I got up to speed on my AR, I shot a civilian AK (Romanian SAR-1, since sold, alas) with a Russian Kobra optic, and it was a neat little carbine---basically a magazine-fed .30-30, if you compare it to the lighter .30-30 loads.

"its most frequently criticized feature is its trigger mechanism. "The Kalashnikov trigger system (..) is all too often plagued with an objectionable, and sometimes quite painful, "trigger slap" and a creepy and unpredictable trigger pull"

Yup. That trigger discomfort existed in some early civilian AK's, too, but more recent civilian models have G2 style triggers that are much improved. I have to say that my SAR-1 trigger wasn't bad at all after a few hundred rounds through the carbine; after things smoothed up it actually had a better trigger than my Ruger did.

" It is much easier and faster to change magazines and get the M16 back into action than with the AK-47. "

In my experience, magazine changes aren't much slower with the AK if you know how to do it, whether you are reloading with retention or doing an emergency reload where you drop the empty magazine.

AK emergency reload (with annoying music to match):

AR emergency reload:

Mini-14 emergency reload:

So the AR is slightly faster than the AK and mini-14, but not really enough to matter. When I shot USPSA with my AK, I was faster than some AR guys on reloads and slower than others. I will say though that in that first video, the gloves aren't for show; when running the charging handle from under the carbine, you can scratch your hand up pretty good on the safety lever if you're not careful. Ask me how I know...

For fun, an M1 Garand reload] (no retention with that system!):

For more fun, Travis Tomasie reloading a 1911 racegun:

".. the M16's direct impingement gas operation system, straight-line recoil design and smaller caliber gives it less recoil than the AK-47 and makes it easier to control in full-auto - as well as more accurate & easier to control in rapid fire semi."

Good heavens, we can't have civilians owning rifles that are accurate and easy to control, can we? You seem to be arguing that I should only be "allowed" to own rifles that are inaccurate and hard to control, using nonfragmenting ammo that will shoot through my neighbor's house. No thanks.

BTW, semiautos in 7.62x39mm don't kick that much with lighter loads. It's an underpowered .30-30, not a full power rifle round. Full auto is a different story, but since full auto is limited to police/military/government and wealthy collectors by the National Firearms Act, under penalty of 10 years in Federal Prison, that's irrelevant to civilian defensive use anyway. And you do know they make .22 caliber AK's, right?