I thought the power driving a bullet came from the charge inside the bullet. So why is the reference always to high-powered rifles? The rifle doesn’t provide any power. Couldn’t a handgun be made that fires the same bullet as a high-powered rifle, resulting in the same muzzle velocity and therefore the same “power” (energy)?
I suspect because it’s easier to say “high-powered rifle” than to say “rifle that can accomodate a high-power round”.
A hand gun that could shoot this type of round wouldn’t be very popular. People like their thumbs.
‘High power rifle’ is usually used to distinguish a rifle that fires necked cartridges from one that fires .22LR or what you’d normally consider handgun ammunition - there are a number of lever action rifles that fire .38 spec, .357 mag, .45, .44 mag and other lower-powered rounds, for example. As far as media usage goes, it’s just a matter of having enough adjectives; a ‘rifle’ is kind of vague, ‘high-powered rifle’ sounds more specific even though it doesn’t really tell you much.
BTW, there are handguns made that fire rifle cartridges like .223 or .30-06. They’re usually break-open, single-shot guns and are mostly used for silhouette shooting (firing at heavy metal targets shaped like various animal outlines). They don’t actually reach the same muzzle velocity as rifles because the barrel length is too short; up to something around 20"-22", cutting off barrel length cuts down velocity because the gasses have a chance to escape before imparting as much energy to the bullet as they can. They do have a nasty kick, but aren’t going to take off a thumb or anything like that.
(Nitpick: the bullet is just the lead bit, the correct term is cartridge for the whole thing.)
Bullets by themselves are pretty useless, unless you can throw really hard. Guns are actually fairly complex machines that use the energy stored in a metallic cartridge to propel a bullet stored in that same metallic cartridge. Therefore a cartridge by itself has no power, only chemical potential energy in its smokeless powder. You need a gun designed to fire that cartridge in order to get any power out of it at all.
And since when is the .223 considered a high-powered rifle round? I consider it to be rather anemic. If the .223 is high-powered, what should we call the 308, 30-06, or 300 WM??
As my Firing Point Officer was fond of pointing out,
Not Naval guns. 
I’m going to say, Cerowyn, in the spirit of nit-picking, that I did not necessarily mean a rifle. I could have meant a smoothbore weapon. Can we agree on ‘small arms’ as a sufficiently inclusive term?
“High-powered” rifles have to be chambered (machined to use) for high-powered rounds, which the OP referrs to incorrectly as “bullets”. The bullet, strictly speaking, is the lead or copper-jacketed lead bit that is propelled out of the end of the high-powered rifle when it is fired.
As an aside, if you ever have the opportunity to fire a really high-powered rifle, you would not think the rifle to be unpowered. Recoil.
As to " Couldn’t a handgun be made that fires the same bullet as a high-powered rifle, resulting in the same muzzle velocity and therefore the same “power” (energy)?:
Rifles (and especially carbines, which are a sort of shorter rifle) have been made to shoot pistol rounds. But handguns (pistols) that use true high-power cartridges (such as a .30-06) are impractical due to many reasons including barrel length and recoil. The only thing that I can think of that’s close to such a handgun would be the Thompson Contender (and I may have the name wrong there), which was a single shot pistol of rather large size and weight. A revolver (think .357) or a semi-auto (think Colt M1911A1) that fired (say) .308 or .30-06 rifle cartridges would be mechanically dangerous and virtually physically impossible to fire without dislocation the user’s wrist (or perhaps tearing the hand from the arm altogether).
I did once hear of a one-of-a-kind much-shortened H&K civilian version G3 rifle (it fires the .308 rifle cartridge), made like the special police version of the H&K MP5K short submachine gun. It took a very strong grip to hold it, and the muzzle flash (flame from the unburned powder exiting the muzle) was incredible. Accuracy was probably zero.
Pistol “gunpowder” burns faster and with somewhat less pressure than rifle powder; this is intentional. Rifles are biigger, heavier built, and longer to withstand the increased pressures and longer burn. Loading a pistol cartridge with rifle powder and using it in the psitol would result in a catastrophic explosion as the pistol “enegertically disassembles” itself --and its operator. Loading a rifle cartridge with pistol powder and using it in a rifle would result in a much slower rifle bullet that would do little more than make the rifle bullet “dribble” out of the rifle. (Though at one time cartridges were sold for “high power” rifles that had reduced powder charges and very light bullets for use at indoor ranges; these cartridges were called “gallery loads”.)
Johnny L.A., I’m sure that was half his point. He knew I was a Naval officer.
Ach, Trucido, it was meant to be amusing. Of course you are quite correct, but that wasn’t how the Sergeant was correcting me.
There is a lot of powder behind those narrow rounds, which gives them tremendous velocity. Any good marine is going to blow you away at 500 yards with an M16 if he/she wants to.
I’ll search for some cites, but I was certainly taught that the M-16 was not a particularly accurate weapon (ironically, by someone involved with the Canadian Forces’ shift from the FN-C1 to the M-16 as the standard infantry weapon). I can’t claim to have extensive experience with the weapon, but I found the M-16 to be much less accurate than the FN at 120 yards, let alone 500. (In fairness, I’ve fired perhaps 100 rounds with the M-16, vs. thousands with the FN.)
First of all, .223 is definitely not “high powered”. To most people a high powered cartridge would mean at least .308.
Second, there are several types of pistols in .223, including semiautomatics made from (or whose design is based on) AR-15 receivers. They are about as heavy as a large revolver, I guess.
I’ve fired .223 one handed from a lightweight carbine and the recoil is negligible. I seriously doubt the recoil of the pistol would be ‘nasty’ at all, especially since you’d normally shoot it two-handed.
People have been known to shoot short-barrelled folding stock carbines in 7.62x39 with the stock folded, probably two handed though.
BTW - firing carbines one handed is… challenging, but to nose-heaviness, not recoil or overall weight.
The media love bite size buzzwords that have misleading connotations. The only official high power definition I know of is for NRA rifle competition and it means anything other than rimfire. While you could shoot a .22 hornet rifle it would be foolish to do so. .223 is considered marginal by some becuse the light bullet is effected more by the wind. a .308 will typically use a bullet with two to three times the mass but with only a little more lateral area.
You can fire them safely because of the (relatively) high mass of the weapon. I can fire my Mini-14 as a “pistol” due to this reason, although I have tiny little wrists and need to tape them hard to do so, due to the torque of the nose-heaviness of the weapon on my wrists.
You can fire them safely because of the (relatively) high mass of the weapon. I can fire my Mini-14 as a “pistol” due to this reason, although I have tiny little wrists and need to tape them hard to do so, due to the torque of the nose-heaviness of the weapon on my wrists.
-Padeye’s struck the nail on the head. Very, very few actual firearms-related groups or industries use the term “high powered” in reference to anything at all. The mentioned “High Power Rifle Competition” is the single exception, and it was termed thus to differentiate it from both older “gallery gun” competitions using various very small .22 rimfires, and older-still blackpowder rifle competitions.
The media simply cannot say “rifle”. Just as they can’t say “Sen. Smith”- they have to say “incumbent republican Sen. Smith” or some such.
Any military-style rifle is an “assault rifle”- A term the military doesn’t use in any official way, and even if they did, an “assault” rifle would be capable of fully automatic fire.
Any small handgun is a “Saturday night special”, another meaningless term, but this time with ugly racist roots; the original phrase was “Niggertown Saturday Night Special”.
Any small handgun is also typically labelled “concealable”, which is a meaningless modifier; anything small enough to fit inside a trenchcoat (or, if you’re Arnold, inside a large box of roses) is ‘concealable’.
Rifles are never just “rifles”. They’re either “high powered” rifles, or “sniper” rifles. If it’s black, it’s an “assault” rifle, if it has a telecope, it’s a “sniper” rifle.
Long story short, the phrase “high powered” has no official- even unofficial- meaning whatsoever. If you’re used to shooting .22 rimfires, a .223 is a very large step up in power, and so could easily be “high powered” by your definition.
For someone used to shooting .338 Weatherbys, the .223 is a pipsqueak; it might take something like a .416 Rigby to be “high powered” to them. To the guys who shoot .50 BMG single-shots, it might take towed artillery before they consider it “high powered”.
And to anyone who’s been in the turret to fire a 16"/fifty-caliber Naval Rifle on an Iowa-class battleship, ‘taint nothin’ out there they might consider more high-powered. 
Doc and Padeye–
How true! And how sad.
Of course, the OP likely arises due to the DC area sniper attacks. And today (10.9.02) we saw the press screw the case up considerably by releasing data the police wanted to keep secret. So we can add gross irresponsibility to the charges of gross ignorance and deliberate distortion.
(An aside: IIRC, the local press also disclosed key information in the Silva-Lisk child murders a few years ago, enabling the killer to change his MO and remain free to assault further children.)
I beleive “high power” in this case derives from a misunderstanding of “high velocity”. But “high velocity” in this case is also a case of some combination of ignorance, irresponsibility, or deliberate distortion. I don’t know if it was the local radio or TV, but one of them is saying that the .223 bullet enables this killer to do what he or she does so easily because it “travels at a velocity of over 5000 feet per second”. (A quick Google search shows 3100 f.p.s is more like it. )
Kalashnikov: I stand corrected in that I was unaware of AR based quasi-handguns. However, I would still think that a true handgun (a pistol based on traditional semi-auto M1911 type or revolver type design) would be dangerous and unamnageable if used with cartridges designed specificallt for rifles. I concur that the smaller calibers might be OK, but even some of the shorter case rifle rounds like the AK’s 7.62x39 would be too much for a true handgun. Then again, it might be on the edge of physically possible to design something like a mega-desert-eagle to fire the 7.62x39, but such a handgun would not be anything like practical. (For those unfamiliar with the Desert Eagle, it is availaible in .357 magnum and .44 magnum, and is accordingly so large and heavy that some have described it is the world’s only crew-served hand gun.)
Milton, don’t forget that the Desert Eagle comes in a 50 Caliber Action Express round too, which is completely unneccessary, but thoroughly cool.