What exactly does “magnum” mean in firearms? What makes a .44 magnum any different from a regular .44?
a magnum is a large container. A magnum of champagne will get any number of people silly. Magnum means the .44 bullet is in a large cartridge that contains more powder, resulting in more energy behind the bullet when you fire. If you fire a .44 magnum, you will understand why rifles have stocks. Your hand will want to fly up over your head and you might find yourself sitting on your can. Be careful to keep your elbow straight or the gun will come back and pop you in the nose–very painful.
Now in all this confusion I can’t remember whether I fired five times or six. So the question is: Do you feel lucky…punk?
It is a very powerful gun, but it will not drive your hand back into your face, knock you on your butt, send your victims flying through the air, shatter engine blocks, etc. The physics just aren’t there. It hurts a little at first, but with a good grip and stance it doesn’t bother you.
Neither will the .454 Casull, although it does hurt an awful lot more to shoot (yes, I know, not as much as being shot by it…).
I mean really! If a little ol’ gal like me can shoot one, why can’t all you those big hairy behemoths do it without complaining?
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- Just for fun:
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- go to
http://www.fazed.net
and scroll down until you get to “Gun Safety”.
There’s another video of some other guy too, check the archives. - MC
I’m not a gun owner but I am curious about one thing.
Since (assumedly based on basic action-reaction physics) the additional kickback of a large gun like a .44 or .454 comes after the bullet’s firing does the large explosion kick affect the bullet in the barrel (and possibly diminish accuracy by jerking the barrel up) or is the bullet moving so fast it is long gone before the barrel is kicked back?
Originally posted by **astro **
I think the answer is close to the latter: the bullet isn’t in the barrel for very long, and while the gun might be given a lot of recoil velocity, it just doesn’t have time to move much before the bullet is gone. Furthermore, the weapons with longer barrels (rifles) also tend to have higher muzzle velocities (so the bullet is gone quickly even from their long tubes), and their muzzles won’t rise as much because they have more mass, further from the “pivot” (i.e. the buttstock).
Another thing to consider is, the weapons we expect most accuracy from have adjustable sights. An individual will click or drift the sights to suit the goal of accuracy. This - ideally - will take everything into account, including the wind, trajectories of various ammo types, where you place the front sight relative to the rear sight, etc. If there is a little bit of “bullet toss” (i.e., the bullet travelling high because of muzzle rise), adjusting the sights should account for that as well, at least at a given range.
you have to compensate a bit for the kick. And before you fire again, you have to reaim. But generally, the bullet is fast and the kick is slow, so once you compensate for wind and gravity, that will generally get the bullet where you want it to go.
One of the dangers of a machine gun is the tendency for the barrel to go up and up as the bullets are fired. If you don’t release the trigger, you might find yourself firing somewhere over the rainbow. AK-47s and M-16s and other assault weapons are set to fire short bursts of three or four rounds to force the shooter to rethink his firing solution before letting another burst go.
The .44 Magnum is like the earlier .44 Special in all dimensions, except that it is longer. This is for two reasons: the first is, as you might expect, that more propellant will fit into a longer case. The second is subtle, but important. A lot of .44 Magnum loads use different propellants from the regular stuff that you’d put in a .44 Special cartridge. A .44 Magnum weapons is more solidly built than a lot of .44 Special in order to handle the pounding; if you were to put a load that powerful in a lot of .44 Specials, the gun and possibly the shooter could be damaged. So the extra length of the cartridge prevents a less-attentive shooter from overloading his hundred-year-old 44.
That’s the story for handgun magnums. In shotguns, magnum can also mean a longer shell (usually 3", sometimes 3.5", c.f. the standard 2.75"), but sometimes it just means a standard-length shell that the manufacturer thinks is extra-powerful.
There are a lot of rifle cartridges with Magnum in the name, but these don’t necessarily have a shorter equivalent. I mean, there is a .458 Winchester Magnum, but I don’t know of any “.458 Winchester Standard” or “Special” or “Lite” or any of that. There is a .450 Weatherby Magnum, and I’m quite certain all Weatherby cartridges lack a non-magnum counterpart. In rifles, it just means, This ammo is meant for hunting bigger game than other rounds of this caliber, and for the love of your shoulder and your eardrums, don’t use it at the shooting range.
I must second Anthracite’s comments, with the exception that if one wasn’t ready for the recoil (standing unbalanced or holding it weakly with one hand), I could potentially see either of these two things happening.
FTR, I’ve fired .44 Mag out of both rifle and pistol. The pistol was a single-shot Thompson Contender of my dad’s, and he has the .45/70 barrel as well that he’s afraid to fire. I heard awhile back Thompson also was chambering .30-06 for the Contender, which would probably make it “the most powerful handgun in the world”. Unfortunately, I doubt Dirty Harry would want to carry a single shot pistol…
Gabby Quote,
AK-47s and M-16s and other assault weapons are set to fire short bursts of three or four rounds to force the shooter to rethink his firing solution before letting another burst go.
Complete crap.
I have fired (and trained on) both weapons and there is no “setting” to limit auto fire bursts to any number of rounds.
I have seen rod actuated modifications for the AR15 gas line that slow cyclic rate and reduce the shot group to 3. To my knowledge the U.S. Army Has yet to adopt these modifications into the M-16.
True, the U.S. Army teaches a strict fire disipline of three round automatic bursts. (for the M-16, much higher for other weapons)
yet,
I know of no soldier who would tolorate being deprived of the overun tactic known as rock and roll. That is, blind, sweeping automatic fire in the face of an enemy at the trenchline.
EvilGhandi Dude, you owe gabby an apology. The Armys M-16 A-2 has had a three round burst setting for over five years now. No full auto selection.
Partly right EvilGhandi Dude, three rounds for the M-16, one second burst for M-60 (about four to six rounds)
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Supposidly, The Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW)covers the need for full auto. I miss full auto, but there it is.