Race to the Bottom... Long Range Pistol/Carbine Cartridge

I am trying to remember the year I first used a LRF. It was a Bushnell 400 yard LRF. That was in the mid to late 90's I believe.
It was a game changer. A friend at church bought one the year it came out. My first one was a Leica 900 in early 2000 sometime.
Since then, it has gotten out of hand:rofl:
In 2004 or 2005 when Steve and I were killing pd's just under 1600 yards, and then at 1800 yards with my XP-100 pistols, we had to use vehicles and range mid points, because my Leica wouldn't range that far at one shot.

@Varminterror
PM your contact info please, if the two of you are coming to WY-SHOT.
 
Varminterror said:
@fpjeepy05 - you’re fabricating authority here in a subject actual military authorities have staunchly disagreed with you over for more than a century and a half.
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Not fabricating authority, just explaining the logic.

Varminterror said:
And the long range performance of 30-30 is abysmal for a bottlenecked rifle cartridge. Even contemporary for its era of conception, the .30-30 is embarrassingly poor performing at long range.

A lot of eastern hunters like to say the .30-30 has killed more deer than anything else, but historical data really points to this NOT being true, and again, it certainly doesn’t offer any bearing of logical support for crippling a rifle with poor performance and overburdening a handgun with excessive recoil, AND defying established military history by suggesting a soldier should be carrying extra firearms and wasting rifle ammo by firing it from a pistol…

The thought experiment of long range handguns is certainly viable, and a lot of us have actually been doing this for a long time, but I’m not convinced this paradigm makes any sense at all. And yeah, I’m comfortable with the perception that illogical principles are a foundation stone to define what is a “bad idea.” What you’re describing feels too akin to the completely fabricated Cooper Scout Rifle paradigm where poor overall performance from a fun firearm would defy all known battlefield and combat knowledge, as well as civilian realities. Special Ops folks carry multiple firearms, rank and file soldiers don’t. Civilian defensive scenarios don’t and can’t mimic organized military combat where sustained and varying distance fire from a single “soldier” is ever applicable. We’re fighting imaginary dragons here.
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Special Ops folks are in the military. Sorry I wasn't more specific.

Varminterror said:
Revisiting this thread, this line keeps jumping out at me. It’s a Ron Spomer article, so sure, I expect some half-witted boomer-ism like this, but this statement ignores very simple fact:

Long range shooting, including cartridges nearly identical to the 6 ARC, have been around for much, much longer than LRF’s.

Spomer threw out these boomer-ism lines, much the same as the OP here, “race to the bottom,” and “6 ARC wouldn’t exist without LRF’s,” surely just to catch eyebrows and drew readers to yet another of his click-bait articles, but he’s certainly familiar enough with these markets to know he’s lying, just to get likes.

Going back almost a century and a half, the 6.5x55 Swede had sights adjustable out to 1600m, and I’m sure we can agree laser range finders weren’t broadly available before 1900. We saw the 6mm BR released in the 1950’s and the 6ppc, almost identical to the 6 ARC, released in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The 1,000 yard Wimbledon Cup dates back as far as the 1860’s - that’s 18, not a typo. So we’ve been shooting long range for a long, long time.

Alternatively, affordable laser rangefinders capable of true long distance ranging of anything smaller than a compact car, or less reflective, are really only about 10 years old. My first experiences shooting 1,000yrds involved leapfrogging with a 100yrd tape over and over, while a spotter shouted and waved to signal whether we were in line with the target and potential firing position or not. It wasn’t until the late 1990’s that one of my cousins purchased an LRF, which at the time was still only capable of hitting a man-sized object out to ~300 yards, still requiring a game of leapfrog to plant targets. In the early 2000’s, there were a couple VERY expensive models which would range long distances, but a common ~$400-700 model would only range 1000yrds on a truck or building, with their non-reflective capacity only around 400-600yrds, again requiring a game of leapfrog to get out to 1000. It wasn’t until SigSauer released their Kilo2000 in 2015 that the bar was raised. At the time, the “affordable” long range LRF was the Leica 1200b, and the 1600yard model had just hit the streets, which on good days could be used to indicate targets (or at least ground precisely near them) at 1000yrds. But after Sig’s Kilo2000 hit the market, we saw immediate response from the rest of the market, so now we have models capable of 3000-5000 yards, even 10,000 yards on reflective targets (buildings and trucks), and well over a mile on game animals and steel targets of common scale.

So to say the 6 ARC, nearly identical to a cartridge designed in the 1960’s, and mimicking trajectory performance from the 1890’s, would not exist without laser rangefinders, which have only been available broadly for about 25 years, and really only available with true long range capability for less than 10yrs is pretty obtuse.
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I think you missed the point. 6mm ARC is not the first non-magnum that has come out in the last decade. 300 Blackout? It was in the same realm of 30 carbine, 7mm tcu, 7.62x39. Why make a new round that does the same thing or slower? Turns out if you know how far away a target is, accurately, you don't need to launch a bullet at the speed of light. Same concept for 224 valkyrie. If you have a good rangefinder high BC is more important. 223 wssm was introduced in 2003. It chambers in an ar15 and its faster than everything thats more modern. 6.5 Creedmoor is slower than 7mm-08 and .260 Remington. Why?
 
When it comes to killing well, you need a bullet that will perform ideally under a wider impact velocity spread. It is not all about BC. You have to have a cartridge that is not fussy, and that reliably feeds from shot to shot. If you can see it, you can hit it. If you can't, get something bigger.
Many times a bullet needs to perform well on just more than soft tissue, before it gets to soft tissue. Speed kills!
A lot of these smaller cartridges have been tried and have been found lacking in a variety of ways.
I am not saying they are never used on special occasions, but they are the exception and not the rule.
For stretching things out the AR platforms are far more finicky/less reliable/break down more often, less ergonomic, etc... than your bolt rigs.
Depending on what you are doing, a AR platform may be better than a bolt...It all depends on what you are trying to achieve.
 
fpjeepy05 said:
I think you missed the point. 6mm ARC is not the first non-magnum that has come out in the last decade. 300 Blackout? It was in the same realm of 30 carbine, 7mm tcu, 7.62x39. Why make a new round that does the same thing or slower? Turns out if you know how far away a target is, accurately, you don't need to launch a bullet at the speed of light. Same concept for 224 valkyrie. If you have a good rangefinder high BC is more important. 223 wssm was introduced in 2003. It chambers in an ar15 and its faster than everything thats more modern. 6.5 Creedmoor is slower than 7mm-08 and .260 Remington. Why?
Click to expand...

It seems you’re grossly misinterpreting history here.

There has never been a time when LONG range shooting could be done sufficiently better with fast cartridges only for being fast, but without high efficiency bullets. Our industry was dominated at one time by hunting efficacy, which has a short range maxima. That’s it. So we saw a LOT of cartridges developed which offered high muzzle velocities with light for caliber bullet weights and relatively poor aerodynamics. A couple generations of shooters used to think the 270win and 7RM were “long range lasers,” because they had MPBR’s over 300yrds… but there were true long range shooters even within that era which realized we had to “know how far away a target is,” precisely, to do any shooting at any long range distance, regardless of cartridge choice. We’ve just come to an era where we’re realized that Uncle Frank didn’t realize shooting 400 yards wasn’t actually long range shooting…

So let’s take a look at what actually is going on - we had a couple generations of Magnumitis, where unwitting fools spent money on bigger and bigger cases, pushing relatively light bullets to blistering speeds (243win, 25-06, 270win, 7rm, 300wm, 223wssm, 22-250, 264rem, etc etc). But anyone actually shooting long range realized the light for caliber bullets being used flew like wiffle balls, quickly shedding speed, and ending up worse downrange than a heavier, more aerodynamic bullet which started at a slower speed.

We were also stuck with a bullet design challenge - how do we build bullets which hold together at 3200-3400fps, but will also expand reliably at 1800fps? When we start out blisteringly fast and shed speed like crazy, then we put more burden on the bullet design.

Specifically - why is 6.5 creed slower than 7-08 or 260 Rem? Because it’s a smaller case. The 308win case was not designed for bullets as long as those used to achieve high ballistic coefficients as we’re using today, so we end up with rounds too long for magazines when we upgrade to more efficient bullets. The 6.5 creed is a shorter case, which allows longer, more aerodynamic bullets to fit into 2.9” mag boxes, especially without seating the boattail junction below the shoulder junction, and we can get less drop at 1,000yrds with a 140grn 6.5 creed bullet at 2750 than we can with a 140grn bullet from a 7-08 leaving the muzzle at 2850. Pretty straight forward.

As a direct parallel - the 6.5 Grendel really didn’t have the room in a magazine, nor the case capacity to utilize highly aerodynamic 6.5mm bullets in the 140-150 grain class, and we often saw the 120-130grn bullets falling transonic before 1000yrds. Push the shoulder back and drop the caliber so the ballistic coefficient increases and the weight drops (kinda tricky to accomplish), we pick up ~200fps AND 20thou G7 BC… so we hold onto supersonic velocity farther… faster AND more efficient…

223/5.56 versus 224 Valkyrie? Same thing. We run out of room in 2.3” magazines with bullets greater than about 75grn and .2G7 and higher, and typically fall subsonic 800-900, whereas we can push 80-90grn bullets with .275-.3G7’s fast enough from the larger Valkyrie case to hang supersonic past 1100. Faster AND more aerodynamic…

The longest shots being made, and the smallest groups being fired at long distances - not just Uncle Frank’s 400yrds - aren’t being fired with 3400fps cartridges. Rounds like 223wssm didn’t take over the long range world.

And plainly, the 300blk development had absolutely nothing to do with its long range capability, so the argument there is non-sequitur. We can point to rounds like the 300 PRC or 300 Norma which increased in top speed. Same with the Nosler cartridges - and we already mentioned 224 valkyrie adding capacity and speed over 223/5.56. We saw 6.5 Grendel improve efficiency over 7.62x39, we can point to rounds like 25-45 sharps or 6-223 which aren’t as fast as the 6 ARC, which, again, added speed and efficiency over the 6.5 Grendel… 6 creed is slower than 243win, because it’s a smaller case, but I can fit 115grn bullets into a factory rifle, instead of being forced to build custom rifles with fast twist barrels and long throats to utilize high efficiency bullets in 243win (like I did for almost 20yrs before I built a 6 Creed).

But at the end of the day your statement here is non-sequitur: “If you have a good rangefinder high BC is more important.” This has no logical foundation. Plainly, having a high BC and achieving less drop at range makes our rounds less sensitive to range-measurement error. Lower Bc bullets, dropping more per yard than higher efficiency bullets, demand more accuracy in range measurement.

But again, that’s really a trivial discussion - whether I’m dropping 8.6 mils at 1000 with my 6 Dasher or only 6.6 mils at 1000 with my 6 Creed, or only 6.0 mils at 1000 with my 375 Cheytac, or 9.5 mils with my 6 Grendel, I damned well better know the difference between 1010 and 1000 yards. High velocity, or even high BC doesn’t absolve anyone of range estimation sensitivity at long range.
 
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I actually have 4 handgun/rifle pairings, but of the handguns, 3 are single shot specialty pistols, and 1 is a revolver. My “long range” specialty pistol would be my 300 ham’r contender, but I don’t have a rifle to pair it with.

Since we took the tangent of deer hunting pistols I’ll take the opportunity. Where I’ve landed for that is a 35 Remington loaded to about 50-55k psi. The handgun is a magnum research lone eagle with a 14” barrel and the rifle is an NEF handi rifle. At the moment I’m shooting different loads in each by they will share each other’s ammo of you wanted too of course. The lone eagle shoots a 200 gr Hornady about 2200 fps from its 14” barrel and the handi rifle shoots a 180 grain speer at 2600 fps from its 22” barrel.

upload_2023-3-16_21-57-48.jpeg
 
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@someguy2800 , Love seeing the Lone Eagle.
If this thread was about using the same cartridges in handguns, that you could have in carbines or rifles, we would be seeing all kinds of specialty pistols, and revolvers, and semi-autos listed.
My problem...Really not a problem to me, is that I have way more bottleneck cartridges in specialty pistols than I do in carbines and other rifle types.:D
 
Varminterror said:
It seems you’re grossly misinterpreting history here.

There has never been a time when LONG range shooting could be done sufficiently better with fast cartridges only for being fast, but without high efficiency bullets. Our industry was dominated at one time by hunting efficacy, which has a short range maxima. That’s it. So we saw a LOT of cartridges developed which offered high muzzle velocities with light for caliber bullet weights and relatively poor aerodynamics. A couple generations of shooters used to think the 270win and 7RM were “long range lasers,” because they had MPBR’s over 300yrds… but there were true long range shooters even within that era which realized we had to “know how far away a target is,” precisely, to do any shooting at any long range distance, regardless of cartridge choice. We’ve just come to an era where we’re realized that Uncle Frank didn’t realize shooting 400 yards wasn’t actually long range shooting…

So let’s take a look at what actually is going on - we had a couple generations of Magnumitis, where unwitting fools spent money on bigger and bigger cases, pushing relatively light bullets to blistering speeds (243win, 25-06, 270win, 7rm, 300wm, 223wssm, 22-250, 264rem, etc etc). But anyone actually shooting long range realized the light for caliber bullets being used flew like wiffle balls, quickly shedding speed, and ending up worse downrange than a heavier, more aerodynamic bullet which started at a slower speed.

We were also stuck with a bullet design challenge - how do we build bullets which hold together at 3200-3400fps, but will also expand reliably at 1800fps? When we start out blisteringly fast and shed speed like crazy, then we put more burden on the bullet design.

Specifically - why is 6.5 creed slower than 7-08 or 260 Rem? Because it’s a smaller case. The 308win case was not designed for bullets as long as those used to achieve high ballistic coefficients as we’re using today, so we end up with rounds too long for magazines when we upgrade to more efficient bullets. The 6.5 creed is a shorter case, which allows longer, more aerodynamic bullets to fit into 2.9” mag boxes, especially without seating the boattail junction below the shoulder junction, and we can get less drop at 1,000yrds with a 140grn 6.5 creed bullet at 2750 than we can with a 140grn bullet from a 7-08 leaving the muzzle at 2850. Pretty straight forward.

As a direct parallel - the 6.5 Grendel really didn’t have the room in a magazine, nor the case capacity to utilize highly aerodynamic 6.5mm bullets in the 140-150 grain class, and we often saw the 120-130grn bullets falling transonic before 1000yrds. Push the shoulder back and drop the caliber so the ballistic coefficient increases and the weight drops (kinda tricky to accomplish), we pick up ~200fps AND 20thou G7 BC… so we hold onto supersonic velocity farther… faster AND more efficient…

223/5.56 versus 224 Valkyrie? Same thing. We run out of room in 2.3” magazines with bullets greater than about 75grn and .2G7 and higher, and typically fall subsonic 800-900, whereas we can push 80-90grn bullets with .275-.3G7’s fast enough from the larger Valkyrie case to hang supersonic past 1100. Faster AND more aerodynamic…

The longest shots being made, and the smallest groups being fired at long distances - not just Uncle Frank’s 400yrds - aren’t being fired with 3400fps cartridges. Rounds like 223wssm didn’t take over the long range world.

And plainly, the 300blk development had absolutely nothing to do with its long range capability, so the argument there is non-sequitur. We can point to rounds like the 300 PRC or 300 Norma which increased in top speed. Same with the Nosler cartridges - and we already mentioned 224 valkyrie adding capacity and speed over 223/5.56. We saw 6.5 Grendel improve efficiency over 7.62x39, we can point to rounds like 25-45 sharps or 6-223 which aren’t as fast as the 6 ARC, which, again, added speed and efficiency over the 6.5 Grendel… 6 creed is slower than 243win, because it’s a smaller case, but I can fit 115grn bullets into a factory rifle, instead of being forced to build custom rifles with fast twist barrels and long throats to utilize high efficiency bullets in 243win (like I did for almost 20yrs before I built a 6 Creed).

But at the end of the day your statement here is non-sequitur: “If you have a good rangefinder high BC is more important.” This has no logical foundation. Plainly, having a high BC and achieving less drop at range makes our rounds less sensitive to range-measurement error. Lower Bc bullets, dropping more per yard than higher efficiency bullets, demand more accuracy in range measurement.

But again, that’s really a trivial discussion - whether I’m dropping 8.6 mils at 1000 with my 6 Dasher or only 6.6 mils at 1000 with my 6 Creed, or only 6.0 mils at 1000 with my 375 Cheytac, or 9.5 mils with my 6 Grendel, I damned well better know the difference between 1010 and 1000 yards. High velocity, or even high BC doesn’t absolve anyone of range estimation sensitivity at long range.
Click to expand...

Well Said!
 
xphunter said:
If this thread was about using the same cartridges in handguns, that you could have in carbines or rifles[…]
Click to expand...

That's really the twist here - compounded by the complications of the cartridge 1) offering performance making it viable for "long range" use, and 2) being limited to ~1.6" to allow use in a grip-borne magazine, presumably to enable use in a semiauto repeater. And for me, it seems to get rather un-interesting, as we end up watering down cartridges so we end up with a rifle which acts like a handgun much more than we have a handgun which acts like a rifle, and neither of them end up actually very useful for long range.

Take away the grip-borne DBM requirement and give access to longer, more potent cartridges, then things get much more interesting.
 
Varminterror said:
The 308win case was not designed for bullets as long as those used to achieve high ballistic coefficients as we’re using today, so we end up with rounds too long for magazines when we upgrade to more efficient bullets.
Click to expand...

This is certainly true. My example is Sierra’s Gamechanger. I imagine they were attempting to win a BC race with Hornady’s ELD-X. On paper it makes sense. Who wouldn’t want a more aerodynamic hunting bullet.

However, I ran into a fatal flaw when I tried their 165gn 30 cal for a .308 load. The only way they would fit in my magazine was to seat the ogive well past the case mouth. As a result, accuracy flat sucked. Not much use for a high BC bullet that can’t hold 3 MOA

For a laugh Sierra still recommends a seating depth to the standard SAAMI COAL of 2.800”. That’s a real head-scratcher for me because I assume they had to realize the impracticality of this in development and testing.
 
Varminterror said:
That's really the twist here - compounded by the complications of the cartridge 1) offering performance making it viable for "long range" use, and 2) being limited to ~1.6" to allow use in a grip-borne magazine, presumably to enable use in a semiauto repeater. And for me, it seems to get rather un-interesting, as we end up watering down cartridges so we end up with a rifle which acts like a handgun much more than we have a handgun which acts like a rifle, and neither of them end up actually very useful for long range.

Take away the grip-borne DBM requirement and give access to longer, more potent cartridges, then things get much more interesting.
Click to expand...

Pretend I never said long range. I would like a Keltec CMR-30 that shot 6x35mm. Apparently I'm the only one and I'm fine with that.
 
fpjeepy05 said:
Pretend I never said long range. I would like a Keltec CMR-30 that shot 6x35mm. Apparently I'm the only one and I'm fine with that.
Click to expand...

I don't think you'd be the only one. But it's a pretty big ask. 6x35mm is just a 221FB necked up to 6mm, and I recall 221 has a case length of ~1.4xx", and most 6mm bullets will have a nose length longer than ~0.6xx", meaning COAL will be over 2.0"... While the Kel-tec mags, grip, and action will only get us to ~1.4-1.5"... Even if a Desert Eagle and a Keltec had a baby, we'd be .4" short.

Solve the magazine issue, and the rest is actually much more simple. For whatever reason, finding people to build a firearm is a LOT easier than finding someone to build magazines (tooling set up, of course).
 
Varminterror said:
That's really the twist here - compounded by the complications of the cartridge 1) offering performance making it viable for "long range" use, and 2) being limited to ~1.6" to allow use in a grip-borne magazine, presumably to enable use in a semiauto repeater. And for me, it seems to get rather un-interesting, as we end up watering down cartridges so we end up with a rifle which acts like a handgun much more than we have a handgun which acts like a rifle, and neither of them end up actually very useful for long range.

Take away the grip-borne DBM requirement and give access to longer, more potent cartridges, then things get much more interesting.
Click to expand...

I’ll just say I’m completely uninterested in such a pistol. It would be an interesting novelty to shoot at the range but I would have no other sporting use for it and it would be completely impractical for self defense. A 6mm-221 rifle would be kinda fun to play with. Like a big 22 k hornet. For what I’d use it for I’d rather have either a 6mm arc or a 22 k hornet though.
 
Varminterror said:
Revisiting this thread, this line keeps jumping out at me. It’s a Ron Spomer article, so sure, I expect some half-witted boomer-ism like this, but this statement ignores very simple fact:

Long range shooting, including cartridges nearly identical to the 6 ARC, have been around for much, much longer than LRF’s.

Spomer threw out these boomer-ism lines, much the same as the OP here, “race to the bottom,” and “6 ARC wouldn’t exist without LRF’s,” surely just to catch eyebrows and drew readers to yet another of his click-bait articles, but he’s certainly familiar enough with these markets to know he’s lying, just to get likes.

...
Click to expand...

I completely agree. The article caters to a certain crowd that thinks a 100 year old cartridge is still better than what is being introduced today.
 
Walkalong said:
Or a wrong velocity
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Admittedly - I did give my son data last season at a PRS match for 3 stages from my 73grn ELD 223 load profile instead of my 105 Hybrid 6 Dasher profile. "Spot and adjust" worked, and he found his way onto targets almost as well as he would on most stages with the proper data, but was more challenging than usual, haha! I really only caught my mistake because when I was writing the data card for the next stage, I recognized the 1100 yard drop was WAY too much...
 
Varminterror said:
Admittedly - I did give my son data last season at a PRS match for 3 stages from my 73grn ELD 223 load profile instead of my 105 Hybrid 6 Dasher profile. "Spot and adjust" worked, and he found his way onto targets almost as well as he would on most stages with the proper data, but was more challenging than usual, haha! I really only caught my mistake because when I was writing the data card for the next stage, I recognized the 1100 yard drop was WAY too much...
Click to expand...

I have not done that, YET.....
But I have written down the wrong drops (Drops for 600 yards and put it beside the 700 yard data). I did that for about a couple hundred yards, till I caught it....Everyone makes mistakes!
 
Varminterror said:
I don't think you'd be the only one. But it's a pretty big ask. 6x35mm is just a 221FB necked up to 6mm, and I recall 221 has a case length of ~1.4xx", and most 6mm bullets will have a nose length longer than ~0.6xx", meaning COAL will be over 2.0"... While the Kel-tec mags, grip, and action will only get us to ~1.4-1.5"... Even if a Desert Eagle and a Keltec had a baby, we'd be .4" short.

Solve the magazine issue, and the rest is actually much more simple. For whatever reason, finding people to build a firearm is a LOT easier than finding someone to build magazines (tooling set up, of course).
Click to expand...
Push the shoulder to 40 degrees, and/or push the shoulder back, and trim the case. Seat a 65gr hornady vmax at max depth and trim the ballistic tip back to 1.68" Design a semiauto pistol grip fed carbine around that.

someguy2800 said:
I’ll just say I’m completely uninterested in such a pistol. It would be an interesting novelty to shoot at the range but I would have no other sporting use for it and it would be completely impractical for self defense. A 6mm-221 rifle would be kinda fun to play with. Like a big 22 k hornet. For what I’d use it for I’d rather have either a 6mm arc or a 22 k hornet though.
Click to expand...

I think as a carbine it would make a good coyote gun. Also I think it would be a decent self defense weapon. Particularly for women, younger people and/or those less experienced with guns. Without a fair amount of practice nearly everyone will shoot a lightweight rifle with a reflex site more accuracy than a pistol. Light recoil helps reduce trigger twitching and allows for quicker follow-up shots. And two or three 6mm 65gr pills to the chest @2400fps is going to kill most humans. I guess it depends on the scenario. If the perpetrator is 5 feet away with a knife, a 45 judge is better. If they are 30 yards away shooting at you over the hood of their car, I'll take the 6x35 carbine.
 
Varminterror said:
It’s certainly fair to acknowledge most Specialty Pistols, like your Lone Eagle pictured above, aren’t designed for defense applications.

Hammers don’t usually make very good socket wrenches.
Click to expand...

That is certainly true but I took the OP to mean that would be the intended purpose of said pistol.
 
I submit that there are different roles for different guns. With all guns you have to be able to see, identify, and be certain of the target before pulling the trigger. Hunting and self defense require very positive ID and that usually means relatively close distance, unless you deliberately choose to hunt from a certain type of fixed position (say, a stand overlooking a bean field) in which case you’ve probably previously determined ranges, safe angles of fire, etc. Simply put, the game of punching paper or ringing steel at longer ranges than a human can readily see is just that -a game. It is popular today but it’s a relatively new thing, generally speaking, and I’d be hesitant to paint all calibers designed for other applications as less enlightened, just because those calibers are pretty lousy at the sport of long-range sniping. It originated for military use of course. It is also, of course, theoretically possible for someone to extend this to hunting… using high powered binoculars in a wilderness area to find game beyond easy sight, using techniques practiced on the thousand yard target range to hit the animal in the vitals… but that’s another sport in itself really. And for self defense anything beyond speaking distance would probably be hard to defend in a court of law. There’s not a lot of crossover here. .30-30 is designed for an entirely different purpose than the ballistically similar .300blk, which itself has almost no crossover with .243 or 6.5cm, except insofar as any of them are popularly known and will do ok to dispatch common game or varmints within visual range and so are probably often bought as first/only guns.

Any one of them is a defensible and viable choice. But a long range rapid fire carbine is basically …a rifle. We could answer the question old-west style with a .44mag lever action.
 
Mosin77 said:
And for self defense anything beyond speaking distance would probably be hard to defend in a court of law. There’s not a lot of crossover here. .30-30 is designed for an entirely different purpose than the ballistically similar .300blk, which itself has almost no crossover with .243 or 6.5cm, except insofar as any of them are popularly known and will do ok to dispatch common game or varmints within visual range and so are probably often bought as first/only guns.
Click to expand...

Self-defense and defending yourself from court are two different things. If someone and trying to kill me and I shoot them first I might go to prison, but I'm alive. According to our legal system the right thing for you to do in some situations is be killed.

6.5 CM as a first and only gun? Why because it's the best cartridge you can buy for deer in north america and therefore there is no need to buy anything else?
 
fpjeepy05 said:
Actually having a pistol that shoots the same ammo is just kind of an add-on. In apocalyptic scenarios it is nice to only have to stock pile one ammo and interchangeable mags adds redundancy. For the military a soldier only carrying one ammo makes sense.
Click to expand...

I think it’s one of those things that sounds nice as long as you ignore the fact that you are handy capping your rifle choice by making it imperative that it’s ammunition function in smaller, weaker, short range, pistols.

Probably why it’s not more popular in the military.

I guess you could go the other direction and use a very powerful pistol like this 50 BMG. 6D2B8FCB-5CDD-4816-BC5B-DB6B130320D7.jpeg

but then you have a “side arm” that’s not very good for that use.

Kind of like hammers. If I need to bust off concrete from a post, I use a 20 lb sledgehammer. If I need to drive tacks, a .5 oz tack hammer. That’s not going to make a 2lb ball peen hammer a universal tool great for both jobs. Even if it seems like a good idea.
 
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