Heartland Musings

How to Select Your First Rifle Caliber

Guns sales are booming, so for all the new shooters who might be considering stepping up to a rifle to gain the major capability advantage it has over a pistol, here's a short guide to choosing a rifle caliber*.

There are very few bad choices in caliber. But there are some choices so compelling that you simply must have a good reason to move past them in favor of something else.

Which is why I can now offer you advice: if you never intend to hunt animals larger than a coyote or small deer at close range, then get a .223 Remington. It uses perhaps the most abundant and least expensive rifle ammunition on Earth, and is so versatile and useful that you simply must start there. It has been proven to be combat capable out to 500y, farther than most people can accurately shoot. In several States, it is legal for use on deer and has been used by skilled hunters for that purpose. It does so much while being much cheaper and more convenient that you simply must make it your first choice.

The only time I'd suggest something else as your first rifle would be if you only intend to use the rifle for hunting larger animals and will do no other shooting at all. In that case, your "first rifle" needs to be a bit more capable and you should select a .308 Winchester for the same reasons as the .223: military adoption has made it so cost effective and so abundant that you must have a good reason to choose something else.

To sum up: if you won't hunt larger game, get a .223 Remington. If you will only hunt larger game and this is your first rifle, get a .308 Winchester.  These are the correct and appropriate starting points for someone new to rifles. As you advance, you might identify a need or desire for a second or third rifle for a particular purpose. There are very good reasons to choose other calibers for particular cases here or there, as a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th rifle. But for a first rifle for a grown adult, get a .223 for most things, a .308 if you're only interested in hunting larger animals.

*Caliber technically refers only to the rifle bore diameter or corresponding bullet diameter. Every cartridge designed for a 0.244" diameter bullet is technically the same caliber. What we often consider to be the "caliber" is actually referring to the cartridge for which the rifle is made.  An example of the difference is that the .308 Winchester, 300 Winchester Magnum, and 30-30 are all the same bullet diameter (0.308") and technically the same caliber, but they are very different cartridges that cannot interchange. 

 

GUNS Magazine Editorial, January 1960

Over 50 years ago, the same truths and principles about gun ownership and the rights of the citizens were known and advocated in national publications. The following is from legendary gun writer Elmer Keith, father of the timeless .357 Magnum cartridge.

I am entitled to be called an American. George Washington and his staff had dinner with an ancestor of mine, one Bill Keith, before fording the Delaware. My grandmother, Druzilla Ann Cummings before her marriage, was a direct decendant of Bill Clark of the Lewis & Clark Expe· dition. My mother, a Merrifield before her marriage, (a cousin of W. A. Merrifield, Theodore Roosevelt's ranch forman for many years), was a descendant of one Benjamin Merrill, who started the first revolution against the British down in the Carolinas. His small army was crushed by the regular British troops sent against him, and he was captured, tried, and hung. (Nathan Hale was made a martyr for a lot less four years later.) As an American, I have a right to be heard in any matter of American "public opinion;" and as a man who has worked with peace officers and as a peace officer all my life, believe I am qualified to express an opinion on laws and law enforcement.

Our great country is now infested with a very small minority of people (Communist paid people, in my opinion) who would like to see us disarmed and who have been and will continue to exert all the pressure possible toward that' end. They have enlisted the help of a fine group of nit-wits and sob-sisters, who, while well meaning, have no idea of the consequences of the anti-gun measures they put before our state and national legislators. The most law abiding of all communities are those where every man is armed and has instant access to his guns. Switzerland, as a nation, is a monument to peace, went through two great world wars as a neutral, at least partly because she was so well armed and so well trained in the use of weapons that nobody wanted to tackle her. In both wars, Germany would have liked to annex Switzerland but knew the cost would be out of proportion to the gain.

I do not believe in any kind of police state or in police control of firearms. Wherever such laws have been adopted, they have also been abused. A friend of mine drove to California and was involved in a minor traffic accident. The police investigated and found a loaded .38 Special Webley under the front seat of his car. He is and has long been an N.R.A. Member, yet both car and sixgun were appropriated by the police and he came home on a bus. Only a week ago, another man phoned me from some town in Oregon. He also had been involved in some traffic accident, and the police found his .357 Magnum S & W locked in his suitcase in the car. They appropriated the gun and also fined him $175 for "concealed weapons." He asked me what to do. I told him to phone The National Rifle Association and get them on the ball. I don't know yet how he came out, but it's getting pretty bad when an honest citizen can't have a weapon for his own defense in his home or car.

 Our constitution plainly guarantees the right to own and bear arms, despite the interpretations of some courts. The National Peace Officers Association of America went on record in the "Law Enforcement Digest," (and in GUNS) to the effect that they did not favor restricting the ownership of hand guns by private citizens, or the curtailment of such ownership by registration. Registration of firearms is the first step toward a Police State and also to the ultimate confiscation of all personal weapons. Crime is mounting in this country, and I blame it largely on the crack-pot laws that have been instigated in many states prohibiting the carrying of a personal weapon by John Q. Citizen. In this little community in which I live, we have not had an armed robbery in over 20 years. Maybe that is because, if you shook down every citizen on the streets of Salmon, Idaho, you would come up with as fine a collection of handguns as is to be found anywhere! We in the police department like it that way, and habitual criminals usually give us a wide berth. If anything does start, we have good citizen help.

Dr. George Gallup would have the press believe that the consensus of opinion in America is for stricter control of all firearms, and particularly sixguns and pistols. As usual for Dr. Gallup, he could not be farther from the truth. However, it is high time we got up off our seats and let our legislators know what we want. Right now, a national law is badly needed specifically permitting any law abiding American citizen to carry a handgun in his car for personal protection when he is traveling in or through any state or possession of this country.

Having been in law enforcement to some extent the greater part of my life, I know how well the laws protect the criminal; we can send him up for robbery or murder or other crimes of violence, and the Parole Boards can be depended on to turn him loose in six months to three years, regardless of the enormity or extent of his crimes. It's high time the law-abiding citizen had the support of the police and the courts, and was allowed to carry arms for his personal protection. In imposing penalties, emphasis should be placed on the crime, not on the weapon used.

Politico: Obama calls for 'more rights' for those "vulnerable to gun violence"

I  had to re-read this headline a couple times.  There is a whole lot of scary-stupid packed into that phrase.

First-- who among us is not vulnerable to gun violence? Is there anyone who can say they have no risk at all of being exposed to violence-- gun-related or otherwise? Of course not.

Second-- how do you give more rights to someone on the basis of their potential future victim status? This is a really awful euphemism. The President doesn't want to characterize his desires--and the desires of many other Americans-- as taking rights away from anyone. So the almost-hilariously stretched characterization is that of giving more rights to some citizens. It's just taking away rights from law-abiding people. But let's not call it that.

If perhaps we punish enough innocent people, we'll have couple guilty people get it, too. That's the rationale.

Of course, it's not actually about reducing violence in total. No, it's about whether that violence occurs in forgettable, bite-sized chunks like the every day murders in Chicago-- or whether it occurs in clusters all at once-- the kind of clusters that the media feeds and that are used by easily traumatized Left to demand that its hypersensitivity and unearned moral superiority outweigh the cute and antiquated Constitutional rights of fellow Americans.

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Fabricating Ferguson

CTA Cameras: $25m Spent; Zero Effect on Crime Deterrence

That's all you need to know. Apparently, the camera contractor made substantial donations to Gov Quinn and Mayor Rahm. He got his money's worth.

Of course cameras help solve crimes-- AFTER the crimes occur.

 

But if the people were not kept  defenseless by unconstitutional handgun restrictions, thugs might  not do the crime to begin with.

 

Details here from Huffpo.

Chicago Gang Members Attack Innocents with Machetes

Perhaps the most underrported story in the Chicago media is the massive wave of violence in that city, and how the handgun laws have left the populace defenseless.

 

Witness this group of thugs attacking their victims. Their reason? The victims weren't in a gang.

 

Bloomberg STILL Doesn't Know that "Assault Weapons" are SEMI-Auto

Since NYC Mayor and Castro-on-the-Hudson Michael Bloomberg began his assault on the common law right of personal defense, I initially thought he was a well-intentioned but misguided Democrat, like so many others Democrats I meet.

Watching the interview below, I changed my opinion of Bloomberg. He's not well-intentioned. He's a power drunk dictator. He's been so surrounded by yes-men that even basic counterpoints are never made to him, and he doesn't know how weak his arguments are. Please note the following as you watch the video below:

• The national conversation about guns is "long overdue" according to whom? Cynthia McFadden, of course.
• The NRA is so powerful that they are keeping the government from doing anything on guns, but they are also just wimps that couldn't get Obama ousted from office. Which is it, exactly?
• The Sandy Hook massacre is a result of actions the NRA has taken, according to Bloomberg. I'm sorry, was there an NRA rep assisting Adam Lanza? How did the news miss THAT?
• "The public" isn't going to let the NRA get in the way anymore, according to Bloomberg. By what authority does Bloomberg appoint himself speaker for "the pulbic" and exclude the three million-plus NRA members from being part of that public? 
• Bloomberg claims you can buy armor-piercing rounds to kill cops.  There are no pistol rounds available to the public that are designed to penetrate armor. Instead, there the body armor varies in the degree to which is will stop a bullet. Some body armor will not even stop a weak 9mm pistol round.
• Bloomberg takes Obama to task for signing into a law a bill that allows you to carry a gun in a National Park-- "where our kids play." Mr. Mayor, did it occur to you that there are bears whose kids also play in those parks? Do you think an American should be able to defend against wildlife attacks in a national park? Why or why not?
• I've saved the most egregious part in which Bloomberg opines that you only deserve to kill the deer if you can do it in less than three shots (Mommy, why is there a maimed deer in our backyard?), and demonstrates that he (STILL!) doesn't know what SEMI-AUTOMATIC means and that the machine guns he thinks he's stopping have already been largely regulated out of existence.

When Seconds Count...

...the police are only minutes away. So is the trite but true saying. Veritas asked some police departments about how to handle the problem:

 

 

NBC Plumbs New Lows for Awful Journalism

I generally do not watch major news broadcasts. The national news programs on of each of the major networks are dominated by partisan hacks who have little interest in actual investigation and even less capacity for basic reason. Unsurprisingly, I stopped tuning in to have my intelligence and my values insulted.

While this does add a measure of peace and tranquility to my life, it does make me rather late to the game in catching the more egregious examples of journalistic malpractice.

The reporting at this link is certainly more of those more egregious examples.

The "story" is how that you can hop online to find a private seller from which to buy a gun and do so without any kind of government interference. Period. This is what passes for journalism: highlight a perfectly legal activity and exclaim that horror that it is allowed. Federal law requires background checks on a firearms sold by dealers-- even at gun shows. But, like every single other product a consumer would buy from a private party, no background check is required to buy a gun from a private party.

"But you could be a selling a gun to a violent criminal!" whines the reporter. Well, the reporter might be a child molester deserving of instant death; the gun seller doesn't know anything about him either. Why is the reporter presumed innocent but the gun buyer deserving of suspicion? The implication, of course, is that anyone buying a "military style weapon" (i.e. a scary black gun) must be up to no good. I wonder if the reporter has ever castigated a car salesman because he's selling a car that might be used in a DUI someday?

The reporter is just getting started. He has the fake purchasers-- called "straw purchasers"-- make some casual remarks about not liking a background check while the transaction is going down. The impression *I* get from the purchaser's remarks is that they didn't think they could pass a background check because of how inept and complicated gov't processes can be. But the reporter takes to task the sellers because they ignored an obvious alarm bell like trying to avoid a background check.  It wasn't obvious to me. The only thing obvious was that the reporter has an axe to grind. 

The reporter castigates these sellers as if they had just knowingly bought booze for underage kids with liver failure.  This, for making a perfectly legal deal between two private parties.

But the reporter is about to be shocked anew when a man brings his pre-teen son to the transaction. The reporter acts as if he witnesses two cases of clear parental negligence by the father: first, he let his son see the transaction and then he lets his son actually *touch* the morally tainted money that is the ill-gotten gain of selling the firearm. Can you believe it? A father taking his son with him instead of ditching him? A father, teaching his son the responsibility of firearms ownership? Letting the son actually touch cash? The parade of parental horrors doesn't end until  it is exchanged for the next scene's horror: the seller has the nerve to state that he's not responsible for what the next owner might do with the gun, and that he's selling it because he wants the money.

After painting a scary tale about the scary people selling scary guns to other scary people-- did I mention, it's a perfectly legal activity?-- the reporter gathers all his moral outrage together with his Star Wars Legos and huffs his way to talk to a few politicians about why they haven't done anything. He demands an answer! 

Don't blame us, they say. The evil NRA is super-powerful and we are really quite powerless to criminalize the conduct, they say. We keep trying to criminalize anything we don't like (like 32oz sodas in Bloomberg's case), but the people are stubborn and think they should be able to do as they wish, they say.

Because the reporter is somewhere between lead and uranium in density, he never stops to ask how the NRA got so powerful. It's really as simple as this: there are a lot of people who *freely* give money to the NRA to advance their interests against the busybodies like our childish reporter. Unlike the Really Powerful Betters, the NRA actually has to *DO* something for the people to get them to voluntarily give them money. That's a lot tougher than just ramming through another tax. But I digress.

The reporter's high-horse crusade also takes makes a stop at the "if-it-saves-just-one-life" exhibit as well. You know this tactic well: the reporter digs up a case where his proposed policy *may* have made some kind of difference in a tragedy,  fallaciously argues that the absence of the policy is the ONLY reason the tragedy occurred, and brings on the tearful victim as the emotional face of the policy. In this case, the reporter uses the person first to say what he can't (after all, he's the straight-down-the-middle, unbiased reporter-- Scout's Honor!) and secondly to make obvious how uncaring and insensitive is someone who disagrees with him.

By itself, the article is really just standard Leftist advocacy not-so-carefully disguised as inept journalism. But I think what really makes me mad isn't the standard journalistic malfeasance that is banal on the major networks. No, I think it's the demonizing of innocent people and the glossing over or far more relevant things-- like people's right to conduct legal transactions with other people without the government interfering.

Private sellers are not the problem! When Frontline delved into this issue with a former BATFE agent, the data showed that criminals mostly do not get the guns from private party, in-person transactions like the kind our huffy reporter wants to end. Instead they get them these ways:

• Straw purchasers. People who can legally own guns buying them for those that can't. It's the firearm equivalent of buying alcohol for the underage, and it's even more illegal.
• Crooked FFL licensees. Not all dealers who are Federally licensed wish to cater to law-abiding types. These FFLs are guilty of felonies by knowingly forging paperwork and selling to those who cannot legally own.
• Unlicensed street dealers who buy guns from one of the first two guys

Criminals have incentive not to buy over the Internet as this huffy reporter demonstrated because such transactions are more easily traced and a face-to-face transaction means there's a witness to the deal. No surprise here-- criminals don't get guns the same way law-abiding owners do. They get them from crooked dealers (already illegal) and family and friends.

So where does that leave us? That leaves us with an angry, childish reporter demonizing law-abiding citizens for legally selling firearms, an activity linked to only the tiniest fraction of that tiny fraction (<10%)of violent crime that actually involves guns. Sure, that .50BMG could shoot down a helicopter-- but it never did. It almost certainly never will. That fact is completely lost on the likes of this NBC reporter.

LA Cop Killer on the loose-- the rest of the story

So the news is bustling with yet another shooting by yet another gunman. Yet, these accounts are conspicuously not mentioning that this gunman posted a  Pro-Obama, Pro-gun control rant and is actually a Leftist.

Add this to the conspicuous absence of reporting a Floyd Corkins, the guy who tried to kill a bunch of Family Research Council people and wipe their corpses with Chik-fil-a.

The common thread of course is the Souther Poverty Law Center, a group that slanders its opponents by labeling them as 'hate group' (lumping them in with skinheads and such) and then this characterization makes it way to the Government because of the SPLC's influence.

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Physician Firearms Affidavit

Since it appears that many physicians are now inquiring about firearms in the home per President Obama's executive orders, you may find the this useful.