It turns end over end upon striking the target.
Again, this is just AIUI - but I believe the tumbling only happens at the far end of the round’s range, when the round slows and the spin imparted by the rifling grooves no longer is enough to counteract the forces affecting the bullet as it travels through the air. The tumbling at what for a larger round would be a relatively short range is one of the things that makes the .223 round such a comparatively short ranged round.
Granted a tumbling round will do a lot more damage than one going in point first, in line with the direction of travel. But the odds of hitting with a tumbling round are much, much lower, and I don’t think anyone seriously planning for a weapon would want to count of accuracy with a round that has started tumbling.
AIUI?
From the article I linked to, it tumbles on impact, tearing up more meat that if it just punched in straight. I didn’t see how it would be accurate if it were tumbling end over end through the entire trajectory instead of spinning.
For that matter cobras, like all snakes, have no ear openings to stop up in the first place.
Basically, the reasoning I’d heard was that in most armies what happens when a soldier is wounded is that one or more of his squadmates, as the situation continues, will work to aid that soldier, in stead of pressing the enemy. This general wisdom is limited by several real world considerations: AIUI, in short engagements, such as close range ambushes which were common in Vietnam’s jungle, this isn’t how people behave - things are too close and happening too quickly; secondly while professional armies will often behave in this manner, guerrilla armies often wont.
However, a quick look at the Wikipedia article for the M16 doesn’t touch on the wounding, but other issues. I may have been passing on an urban legend, after all.
Agreed, 100%. And you can still find people today complaining about the M16 and it’s derived weapons as being wounding weapons, not killing weapons. Let alone back when the M16 was first selected for use by the US Military.
On preview: carnivorousplant - First off - when I answered, I hadn’t yet seen your link - I’d not read that far down the thread, sorry.
Secondly, it seems to me that any comment about the characteristics of a spitzer bullet is a way to describe the behavior of any pointed rifle bullet, not simply the .223 round for the M16. (For example, this photograph is of several .30 caliber rounds all seem to exhibit some of the pointing that defines a spitzer round.)
Wow. Keith Urban, the singer, is the Pope now? Who knew! 
Nonsense! In The Adventure of the Speckled Band, the murderer trained a deadly snake to respond to a high-pitched whistle. Regretably, Dr. Watson neglected to advise as to the precise species of snake with such peculiar markings and an instaneously fatal venom, but we may rest assured, given the source, that such a snake exists! As it would be quite impossible for a snake to respond thusly if it were deaf, we may confidently consider the matter closed!
More tea?
458 = elephant gun.
Once I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I’ll never know.
Snakes can hear.
They just have no opening on the outside thus no ear canal to that we could block.
By coincidence, I was friends with Eugene Stoner’s son, who developed the M-16, and asked him what he knew on this point. He and his father were not close, by any stretch, but he was adamant that his father was intent on developing a killing weapon, and such conjectures infuriated him no end.
What Mr. Stoner was about was creating an automatic weapon that used all of its recoil in ejecting and reloading the next round, thus minimizing an automatic weapons strong tendency to lurch away from the targeted alignment, like a Thompson’s famous insistence on climbing up and right with each round.
The point being that the soldier could fire several targeted rounds in close succession. To accomplish this, he exactingly calibrated how much energy was required to work the mechanism, leaving as little excess recoil as possible. In testing, his specifications were followed and his nasty little gadget worked very well.
But deployed, a cheaper variety of ammo was substituted, and the exacting tolerances of the design were compromised, hence, the “jammin’ Jenny” nickname. And Mr Stoner (who I did not know, and probably would not have liked…) got an undeserved reputation, largely due to the efforts of military numbskulls to deflect responsibility.
The history of American military procurement is a grim and infuriating story, and this is merely another example. God speed the day such procurement is but another folly of history, long forgotten.
Amen! I could go on about situations I was directly familiar with, myself.
Thanks, OtakuLoki.
Speaking of wounding rather than killing, what a copper jacket on military rounds? Does it work better in an automatic weapon than lead?
No clue, sorry.
Full Metal Jackets and tumbling FMJs.
CMC fnord!
Thanks, CMC.
What I know is that your SOP for this sort of debate is to try to disqualify your opponents by crowing about how they don’t know about some irrelevant technical difference between this weapon and that. You don’t limit yourself to situations where the minutiae you are babbling about has some relevance to the specific point being made by your opponent in the debate (as here). One minute **foolsguinea **is making some joke about “high powered rifles” (probably as a whoosh, as you acknowledge) and the next minute you, like the obsessed wind up toy that you are in these debates, are wittering on about .458 Win Mags, .338 Lapuas, AR-15s, Garands, M14’s, M16’s .223’s, the difference between a full-power cartridge and an intermediate cartridge rounds etc.
I’m sure that the detail you outline is vewy, vewy important in certain situations, but in the context of gun debates it is only relevant a very limited proportion of the time.
You are indignant about being accused of being obsessed with minutiae but you should stand outside the debate as I am doing and see how funny you look from over here.
Ridicule as an element of debate, or a Barbara Walters imitation?
If the M-16 round did everything it is accused of doing, it would violate about 3 sections of the Geneva Convention. Since the US hasn’t been nailed for violating that agreement by using this ammo, we can assume that it doesn’t do what people says it does.
Fuck that shit, people are trying to create unjust laws by way of misdirection, obfuscating the truth and exploiting people’s ignorance, and I am not having it. I am simply not having it. This site is supposedly about fighting ignorance and that is what I’m going to do.
I think you should go with “A jackbooted mod stole my sig.”