7 ms·

Bullets: Sizes, Calibers, and Types (2020)

91 points by poundofshrimp 5y ago

giantg2 5y ago
I actually thought this might be about bullets in documents, like different styles and fonts.
- kkdaemas 5y ago
  Wait, it's not about game development??
hellbannedguy 5y ago
Second pop-up wants an email. (I've noticed a lot of cheap stuff on Craigslist. I'm pretty sure they are placed their to collect emails. There's one in the bay area yesterday. It was a mill, and a lathe, for $100. And yes--I emailed him. In the back of my mind, maybe they just wanted it gone?)
ur-whale 5y ago
From an engineering perspective, I've always found fascinating how complicated ammo taxonomy is and how weird the various units used are. I get the historical aspect that led to this giant mess, but ... at the end of the day, there's not that many parameters to define what a bullet is and does. In particular, wrt physical dimensions, my - probably naive - take is that (radius x length) seems to go quite a long way in describing a bullet. Anyone more knowledgeable care to explain why things are so complicated and haven't been normalized / simplified over time?
- collegeburner 5y ago
  Because there's a ton of organic growth over more than a century and a shitton of holdovers. Think of it like really old legacy systems in computing. Like look just at naming: old stuff was often named based on caliber and the number of grains of powder back in black powder days. Like the .45-70 is a .45 bullet and had 70 grains of black powder in a standard load. But then this carried over when they named the .30-06, which had a .30 bullet and 6 grains smokeless. Some handgun rounds are "ACP" because they were developed for new (at the time) auto-loaders instead of revolvers. Now cartridges are mostly named by caliber. Then there's stuff where cartridges were slightly tweaked, like for NATO. .223 is mostly the same as 5.56 and .308 is mostly the same as 7.62, but the latter are both NATO rounds re-named and changed a bit from their predecessors. Oh and by the way, .308 rifles can typically fire .308 or 7.62, it's not safe to fire .308 from a 7.62 rifle though. Oh but for .223/5.56 it's the other way: You can fire .223 from a 5.56 chamber but not vice versa. Every country developed its own rounds for a long time, just look at the number of 9mm cartridges there are. Different bullets, different nomenclature, etc. There's a ton of variety in how you make a bullet, even beyond "broad" varieties like hollow point vs jacketed vs semi-jacketed vs wadcutter vs semi-wadcutter... or the actual metal composition of the bullet, jacket, etc. Different rounds are also loaded differently, you can have some under-pressured for subsonic if you're running suppressed, there's usually some variation in what's "standard" and bodies like SAAMI and CIP are voluntary and typically define max pressure only. Plus there are overpressure (+p) and over-overpressure (+p+) rounds... Lots of complexity from over 100 years of a lot of people developing their own ideas than merging them only sort of.
- bjt2n3904 5y ago
  > there's not that many parameters to define what a bullet is and does There's a surprising amount of parameters that define what a bullet is and does. Consider this article, which describes the difference between secant and tangent ogives. From an engineering perspective, long range shooting is FASCINATING! http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2011/03/tangent-vs-secant-vs-hybrid-ogive-bryan-litz-explains/ http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2011/03/tangent-vs-secan...
- 0x7E3 5y ago
  For the bullets themselves, in addition to the diameter and length you've got mass, material and shape (round nose, hollow point, ballistic tipped, etc.). For the cartridge as a whole you're also going to be concerned with powder capacity, shape (necked?, rimmed?), and to a lesser extent material. These are just a few examples and all are significant.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  I was once called an expert in external ballistics, this may have been an overstatement but I did spend quite a lot of time writing simulations for the ballistics of various bullets. There are three phases that are important for bullets: what happens inside the barrel, what happens outside the barrel, and what happens when it strikes the target. There are a lot of parameters effecting that characteristics of all three. (not just 2 dimensions of size) Shape, muzzle velocity, reliability, ease of manufacture, etc etc. are all quite important. There is also long history, a gun is a thing that can be around for decades; you can't so easily throw away the past and start over. There is also a strong consideration for the design process. Fulfilling a set of requirements can conflict with the desire for standardization. Also when standardization is an idea, using an existing standard rather than making a new one has been the pragmatic response. NATO though has done quite a lot in standardizing American rounds. There are many almost-equivalent NATO standard rounds with things like metric measurements instead of the more historical American measurements. But also, things are just complicated. When talking about an airplane you might as well say that length and wingspan might "go quite a long way" in describing it. I mean, in some sense sure, but a very long way from fully describing one. There's a book "American Rifle" which goes through quite a bit of the history of the development of guns in the US.
- sigstoat 5y ago
  > In particular, wrt physical dimensions, my - probably naive - take is that (radius x length) seems to go quite a long way in describing a bullet. that doesn't describe much of a bullet, and nearly nothing about a caliber. you can take a look at the SAAMI specs and get a sense of what goes into such things. https://saami.org/technical-information/cartridge-chamber-drawings/ https://saami.org/technical-information/cartridge-chamber-dr... the popular name of a caliber is exactly that, a name, and describes the caliber about as well as "John" describes a human being.
- akerl_ 5y ago
  What would the upside be in “simplifying” it? At present, there’s a known set of standard ammo sizes in use, and millions of guns in existence that use them. Sure, the nomenclature is weird, with a mix of imperial, metric, and just plain weirdness, but it doesn’t seem to be negatively impacting anything.
- paisawalla 5y ago
  I think this is yet another area where large budgets and low accountability creates "innovation" primarily in how to spend public money. Large police and military budgets create incentives for manufacturers to innovate away from the standard and introduce "high performance" proprietary form factors. In some cases a new round size/weight does actually produce better performance for the desired application. In many cases, IMO, those advantages are academic and achieved in highly controlled environments, i.e. they are nullified by the high variability of other factors, in real world situations. I am just an enthusiast and not any kind of professional though.
  - sigstoat 5y ago
    > Large police and military budgets create incentives for manufacturers to innovate away from the standard and introduce "high performance" proprietary form factors. extremely few of the calibers out there have ever seen military/LE use, and fewer of them started out with military/LE use.
    - paisawalla 5y ago
      If you're considering the full history of ammunition going back over 100 years, then yes. But if you limit yourself to the most commonly stocked ammo types that you would see in a store today, which would include - 9mm - 10mm - .357 - 40 S&W - 308 winmag - 5.56 - 7.62 then no, these are most (all?) cartridges that began life with LE or military application. Even many of the less common ammo types that are still not unusual to see stocked, or seen at the range, like 300 blackout or 6.5mm Creedmore also start life as RFPs from military or LE operators.
- nataz 5y ago
  You have to go one layer deeper and think beyond the projectile (bullet) and include the cartridge (bullet, accelerant, primer, case). Basically how fast some thing shoots (how much accelerant) is just as important as what you are shooting (bullet characteristics). Each of those variables also have weight and dimension penalties which determine how much you can reasonably carry. An interesting relatively recent example is the development of small caliber armor piercing rounds. NATO needed something to deal with the rise of body armor. Same requirements, two different solutions to get there in the fn 5.7 and hk 4.6x30 (simplifying enormously here). Basically these are engineering and manufacturing challenges.
  - collegeburner 5y ago
    For anybody who hasn't heard of them and wants a rough overview of the differences, the 5.7 and 4.6 mostly work on being smaller-caliber at higher velocity. 9mm parabellum usually has muzzle velocity anywhere between 1000 and 1500 ft/s where 4.6 is closer to 2300 ft/s. The 5.7 is closer to 2800. They're also usually steel core.
    - ggreer 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure all the steel core 5.7x28mm is considered armor piercing handgun ammo and is therefore limited to law enforcement.[1] I've never seen steel core versions of it sold at any gun store. 1. https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/open-letter/national-jan2005-open-letter-fabrique-nationale-fr-57-pistol/download https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/open-letter/national-jan20...
      - collegeburner 5y ago
        Sadly yeah, it's one in a massive list of stupid laws but FOPA states anything that "may be used in a handgun" if I'm remembering the wording right. I believe they submitted the duty round for the NATO RFP tho and that's steel penetrator. If i remember right blacktip .223 is similarly banned because of AR pistols, you can basically only get AP in full rifle rounds (.30-06) or something like .50 BMG.
neither_color 5y ago
This is a nice overview of common types but I still don't understand the "why" of some of their names, such as the difference between a .38 and a .380 (It's the same number!)
- ptomato 5y ago
  the full name of .38 is .38 Special, and the full name of .380 is .380 ACP. IIRC, .380 ACP was so named to distinguish it from an earlier related design, .38 ACP. In common use, if somebody says .38 they're referring to .38 Special as that's by far the most common cartridge with .38 in it, and if they say .380 they're definitely referring to .380 ACP, though it's also sometimes referred to as 9mm Browning. ETA: and in the case of both these rounds, .38" is actually the approximate diameter of the _case_ not the bullet; the diameter of .380 ACP bullet is 9mm, and the diameter of .38 Special is .357".
- collegeburner 5y ago
  Because there's a lot more than caliber that matters. If you think about it, a .45 ACP is close in caliber to a .50 BMG. But there's hella powder behind a .50 and not so much behind a .45. The bullets themselves make a big difference also, there are at least a half dozen you can read more about here: https://gunvault.com/types-of-ammunition/ https://gunvault.com/types-of-ammunition/ If you think having 2 cartridges that both have .38" caliber bullets is confusing, take a look at all the 9mm ones. Just in the ones that are actually called 9mm and not just caliber equivalent, there's 9x19, 9x25 mauser, 9x57 mauser, 9x39, 9mm winmag, 9x18 makarov, and a ton more I can't remember. Some of those are rifle cartridges, some handgun. They have different bullets with different characteristics and different bullet lengths and different bullet weights. And the shape of the cartridges behind them, the guns they fire from, and the amount of propellant each one has is all different.
mikewarot 5y ago
One day I hope to get some range time with a Browning .50, just because. My shoulder will be sore for a week, but it'll be worth it.
swayvil 5y ago
"Stopping power". "Wound channels". Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. Now don't get me wrong, I own a gun. But still. Also, I hear that birdshot is actually better for home defense because it doesn't go through walls so much. And can you imagine firing a shotgun inside your house without hearing protection? Goodbye ears.
- trutannus 5y ago
  Former gun owner myself as well back when I lived in the sticks. Would carry on walks in my "yard" because of injured, hungry, or otherwise dangerous wildlife. > Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. This is the sort of thing that gives firearm owners a bad rap. Especially those who advocate for self-defense rights. Everyone already thinks firearm owners are gung-ho cowboys with itchy trigger fingers. The majority are not.
  - 0x7E3 5y ago
    > Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. >This is the sort of thing that gives firearm owners a bad rap. You're not wrong, but I do think it's unfair and a little odd. After all software engineers are almost exclusively depicted as engaging in unethical and outright criminal activity in pop culture, regardless of whether they are the 'good guys' or 'bad guys'. Many beginning training materials focus on things that are implied if not outright trumpeted as giving you the ability to commit illegal and immoral acts. We certainly don't (well someone probably does, but we shouldn't) consider that as a reflection on all software engineers.
    - trutannus 5y ago
      > After all software engineers are almost exclusively depicted as engaging in unethical and outright criminal activity in pop culture Right, I agree for sure. I think the reason why we don't consider this a reflection on software engineers is that no politician has thought using freedom to engineer software as a wedge issue in a campaign. It's absolutely unfair and a little odd. But, after all, I've yet to see a political wedge issue arise that isn't unfair, and viewed as a little odd by other cultures.
drewm1980 5y ago
Guns are like COVID... but cool.
nataz 5y ago
I think hn and tech culture in general is sleeping on the rise of popular gun culture. Even with some significant headwinds on social media, gun culture influencers have huge audiences, slick media production, and run the gambit from highly technical to meme fueled gif parties. It's a long way from the old stereotype of an old white Vietnam vet waxing poetic about 1911 .45s. Something else that has been interesting to watch has been how much video game culture acts as an on ramp to gun culture. The influence that games like modern warfare have on the real life gun community is fascinating. It makes sense since there are way more call of duty players than actual high speed operators, but still... If you think about it, it makes sense. Unlike a lot of other gear orientated technical fields, it's almost impossible for people to regularly employ their toys outside of a range setting. Everyone and their brother wants short barreled ARs, but how many people are actually clearing rooms. Same goes for recce rifles. How many folks out there on patrol? It's the equivalent of the guy who buys a land cruiser with a roof top tent and hood mounted jack, but just drives it to the mall on the weekends (and yet look how much the overland community has exploded over the past few years). This is very much an underserved hobby driven by culture and entertainment. It's almost entirely disconnected from actual military needs/requirements/drivers. I think there is a lot of growth in the industry, surprised it doesn't come up more often.
- collegeburner 5y ago
  Yeah fudds haven't made up the bulk of the gun scene since the 90s really. I hope that since people in video games can use use a wide variety of weapons we get some push back against banning specific gun types. Opening the MG registry would be really good and maybe this is a way to encourage it, same for removing suppressor and SBR regulations. Btw there is some intersection between the two, a lot of the guys behind the 3d-printed gun movement are moving to decentralized technologies for chat, video hosting, etc. because the gun-grabbers running mainstream platforms don't like them.
  - dole 5y ago
    The 3D printed gun movement is fascinating in itself as far as the potential influence on the gun industry, society and legislation. I feel like there’s no way entities like the ATF (and Justice Dept) will be able to keep up in about 10 years as guns like the FGC-9 evolve and become more ubiquitous.

91 points by poundofshrimp 5y ago

giantg2 5y ago

I actually thought this might be about bullets in documents, like different styles and fonts.

kkdaemas 5y ago
Wait, it's not about game development??

hellbannedguy 5y ago

Second pop-up wants an email. (I've noticed a lot of cheap stuff on Craigslist. I'm pretty sure they are placed their to collect emails. There's one in the bay area yesterday. It was a mill, and a lathe, for $100. And yes--I emailed him. In the back of my mind, maybe they just wanted it gone?)

ur-whale 5y ago

From an engineering perspective, I've always found fascinating how complicated ammo taxonomy is and how weird the various units used are. I get the historical aspect that led to this giant mess, but ... at the end of the day, there's not that many parameters to define what a bullet is and does. In particular, wrt physical dimensions, my - probably naive - take is that (radius x length) seems to go quite a long way in describing a bullet. Anyone more knowledgeable care to explain why things are so complicated and haven't been normalized / simplified over time?

collegeburner 5y ago
Because there's a ton of organic growth over more than a century and a shitton of holdovers. Think of it like really old legacy systems in computing. Like look just at naming: old stuff was often named based on caliber and the number of grains of powder back in black powder days. Like the .45-70 is a .45 bullet and had 70 grains of black powder in a standard load. But then this carried over when they named the .30-06, which had a .30 bullet and 6 grains smokeless. Some handgun rounds are "ACP" because they were developed for new (at the time) auto-loaders instead of revolvers. Now cartridges are mostly named by caliber. Then there's stuff where cartridges were slightly tweaked, like for NATO. .223 is mostly the same as 5.56 and .308 is mostly the same as 7.62, but the latter are both NATO rounds re-named and changed a bit from their predecessors. Oh and by the way, .308 rifles can typically fire .308 or 7.62, it's not safe to fire .308 from a 7.62 rifle though. Oh but for .223/5.56 it's the other way: You can fire .223 from a 5.56 chamber but not vice versa. Every country developed its own rounds for a long time, just look at the number of 9mm cartridges there are. Different bullets, different nomenclature, etc. There's a ton of variety in how you make a bullet, even beyond "broad" varieties like hollow point vs jacketed vs semi-jacketed vs wadcutter vs semi-wadcutter... or the actual metal composition of the bullet, jacket, etc. Different rounds are also loaded differently, you can have some under-pressured for subsonic if you're running suppressed, there's usually some variation in what's "standard" and bodies like SAAMI and CIP are voluntary and typically define max pressure only. Plus there are overpressure (+p) and over-overpressure (+p+) rounds... Lots of complexity from over 100 years of a lot of people developing their own ideas than merging them only sort of.
bjt2n3904 5y ago
> there's not that many parameters to define what a bullet is and does There's a surprising amount of parameters that define what a bullet is and does. Consider this article, which describes the difference between secant and tangent ogives. From an engineering perspective, long range shooting is FASCINATING! http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2011/03/tangent-vs-secant-vs-hybrid-ogive-bryan-litz-explains/ http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2011/03/tangent-vs-secan...
0x7E3 5y ago
For the bullets themselves, in addition to the diameter and length you've got mass, material and shape (round nose, hollow point, ballistic tipped, etc.). For the cartridge as a whole you're also going to be concerned with powder capacity, shape (necked?, rimmed?), and to a lesser extent material. These are just a few examples and all are significant.
colechristensen 5y ago
I was once called an expert in external ballistics, this may have been an overstatement but I did spend quite a lot of time writing simulations for the ballistics of various bullets. There are three phases that are important for bullets: what happens inside the barrel, what happens outside the barrel, and what happens when it strikes the target. There are a lot of parameters effecting that characteristics of all three. (not just 2 dimensions of size) Shape, muzzle velocity, reliability, ease of manufacture, etc etc. are all quite important. There is also long history, a gun is a thing that can be around for decades; you can't so easily throw away the past and start over. There is also a strong consideration for the design process. Fulfilling a set of requirements can conflict with the desire for standardization. Also when standardization is an idea, using an existing standard rather than making a new one has been the pragmatic response. NATO though has done quite a lot in standardizing American rounds. There are many almost-equivalent NATO standard rounds with things like metric measurements instead of the more historical American measurements. But also, things are just complicated. When talking about an airplane you might as well say that length and wingspan might "go quite a long way" in describing it. I mean, in some sense sure, but a very long way from fully describing one. There's a book "American Rifle" which goes through quite a bit of the history of the development of guns in the US.
sigstoat 5y ago
> In particular, wrt physical dimensions, my - probably naive - take is that (radius x length) seems to go quite a long way in describing a bullet. that doesn't describe much of a bullet, and nearly nothing about a caliber. you can take a look at the SAAMI specs and get a sense of what goes into such things. https://saami.org/technical-information/cartridge-chamber-drawings/ https://saami.org/technical-information/cartridge-chamber-dr... the popular name of a caliber is exactly that, a name, and describes the caliber about as well as "John" describes a human being.
akerl_ 5y ago
What would the upside be in “simplifying” it? At present, there’s a known set of standard ammo sizes in use, and millions of guns in existence that use them. Sure, the nomenclature is weird, with a mix of imperial, metric, and just plain weirdness, but it doesn’t seem to be negatively impacting anything.
paisawalla 5y ago
I think this is yet another area where large budgets and low accountability creates "innovation" primarily in how to spend public money. Large police and military budgets create incentives for manufacturers to innovate away from the standard and introduce "high performance" proprietary form factors. In some cases a new round size/weight does actually produce better performance for the desired application. In many cases, IMO, those advantages are academic and achieved in highly controlled environments, i.e. they are nullified by the high variability of other factors, in real world situations. I am just an enthusiast and not any kind of professional though.
- sigstoat 5y ago
  > Large police and military budgets create incentives for manufacturers to innovate away from the standard and introduce "high performance" proprietary form factors. extremely few of the calibers out there have ever seen military/LE use, and fewer of them started out with military/LE use.
  - paisawalla 5y ago
    If you're considering the full history of ammunition going back over 100 years, then yes. But if you limit yourself to the most commonly stocked ammo types that you would see in a store today, which would include - 9mm - 10mm - .357 - 40 S&W - 308 winmag - 5.56 - 7.62 then no, these are most (all?) cartridges that began life with LE or military application. Even many of the less common ammo types that are still not unusual to see stocked, or seen at the range, like 300 blackout or 6.5mm Creedmore also start life as RFPs from military or LE operators.
nataz 5y ago
You have to go one layer deeper and think beyond the projectile (bullet) and include the cartridge (bullet, accelerant, primer, case). Basically how fast some thing shoots (how much accelerant) is just as important as what you are shooting (bullet characteristics). Each of those variables also have weight and dimension penalties which determine how much you can reasonably carry. An interesting relatively recent example is the development of small caliber armor piercing rounds. NATO needed something to deal with the rise of body armor. Same requirements, two different solutions to get there in the fn 5.7 and hk 4.6x30 (simplifying enormously here). Basically these are engineering and manufacturing challenges.
- collegeburner 5y ago
  For anybody who hasn't heard of them and wants a rough overview of the differences, the 5.7 and 4.6 mostly work on being smaller-caliber at higher velocity. 9mm parabellum usually has muzzle velocity anywhere between 1000 and 1500 ft/s where 4.6 is closer to 2300 ft/s. The 5.7 is closer to 2800. They're also usually steel core.
  - ggreer 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure all the steel core 5.7x28mm is considered armor piercing handgun ammo and is therefore limited to law enforcement.[1] I've never seen steel core versions of it sold at any gun store. 1. https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/open-letter/national-jan2005-open-letter-fabrique-nationale-fr-57-pistol/download https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/open-letter/national-jan20...
    - collegeburner 5y ago
      Sadly yeah, it's one in a massive list of stupid laws but FOPA states anything that "may be used in a handgun" if I'm remembering the wording right. I believe they submitted the duty round for the NATO RFP tho and that's steel penetrator. If i remember right blacktip .223 is similarly banned because of AR pistols, you can basically only get AP in full rifle rounds (.30-06) or something like .50 BMG.

neither_color 5y ago

This is a nice overview of common types but I still don't understand the "why" of some of their names, such as the difference between a .38 and a .380 (It's the same number!)

ptomato 5y ago
the full name of .38 is .38 Special, and the full name of .380 is .380 ACP. IIRC, .380 ACP was so named to distinguish it from an earlier related design, .38 ACP. In common use, if somebody says .38 they're referring to .38 Special as that's by far the most common cartridge with .38 in it, and if they say .380 they're definitely referring to .380 ACP, though it's also sometimes referred to as 9mm Browning. ETA: and in the case of both these rounds, .38" is actually the approximate diameter of the _case_ not the bullet; the diameter of .380 ACP bullet is 9mm, and the diameter of .38 Special is .357".
collegeburner 5y ago
Because there's a lot more than caliber that matters. If you think about it, a .45 ACP is close in caliber to a .50 BMG. But there's hella powder behind a .50 and not so much behind a .45. The bullets themselves make a big difference also, there are at least a half dozen you can read more about here: https://gunvault.com/types-of-ammunition/ https://gunvault.com/types-of-ammunition/ If you think having 2 cartridges that both have .38" caliber bullets is confusing, take a look at all the 9mm ones. Just in the ones that are actually called 9mm and not just caliber equivalent, there's 9x19, 9x25 mauser, 9x57 mauser, 9x39, 9mm winmag, 9x18 makarov, and a ton more I can't remember. Some of those are rifle cartridges, some handgun. They have different bullets with different characteristics and different bullet lengths and different bullet weights. And the shape of the cartridges behind them, the guns they fire from, and the amount of propellant each one has is all different.

mikewarot 5y ago

One day I hope to get some range time with a Browning .50, just because. My shoulder will be sore for a week, but it'll be worth it.

swayvil 5y ago

"Stopping power". "Wound channels". Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. Now don't get me wrong, I own a gun. But still. Also, I hear that birdshot is actually better for home defense because it doesn't go through walls so much. And can you imagine firing a shotgun inside your house without hearing protection? Goodbye ears.

trutannus 5y ago
Former gun owner myself as well back when I lived in the sticks. Would carry on walks in my "yard" because of injured, hungry, or otherwise dangerous wildlife. > Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. This is the sort of thing that gives firearm owners a bad rap. Especially those who advocate for self-defense rights. Everyone already thinks firearm owners are gung-ho cowboys with itchy trigger fingers. The majority are not.
- 0x7E3 5y ago
  > Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust. >This is the sort of thing that gives firearm owners a bad rap. You're not wrong, but I do think it's unfair and a little odd. After all software engineers are almost exclusively depicted as engaging in unethical and outright criminal activity in pop culture, regardless of whether they are the 'good guys' or 'bad guys'. Many beginning training materials focus on things that are implied if not outright trumpeted as giving you the ability to commit illegal and immoral acts. We certainly don't (well someone probably does, but we shouldn't) consider that as a reflection on all software engineers.
  - trutannus 5y ago
    > After all software engineers are almost exclusively depicted as engaging in unethical and outright criminal activity in pop culture Right, I agree for sure. I think the reason why we don't consider this a reflection on software engineers is that no politician has thought using freedom to engineer software as a wedge issue in a campaign. It's absolutely unfair and a little odd. But, after all, I've yet to see a political wedge issue arise that isn't unfair, and viewed as a little odd by other cultures.

drewm1980 5y ago

Guns are like COVID... but cool.

nataz 5y ago

I think hn and tech culture in general is sleeping on the rise of popular gun culture. Even with some significant headwinds on social media, gun culture influencers have huge audiences, slick media production, and run the gambit from highly technical to meme fueled gif parties. It's a long way from the old stereotype of an old white Vietnam vet waxing poetic about 1911 .45s. Something else that has been interesting to watch has been how much video game culture acts as an on ramp to gun culture. The influence that games like modern warfare have on the real life gun community is fascinating. It makes sense since there are way more call of duty players than actual high speed operators, but still... If you think about it, it makes sense. Unlike a lot of other gear orientated technical fields, it's almost impossible for people to regularly employ their toys outside of a range setting. Everyone and their brother wants short barreled ARs, but how many people are actually clearing rooms. Same goes for recce rifles. How many folks out there on patrol? It's the equivalent of the guy who buys a land cruiser with a roof top tent and hood mounted jack, but just drives it to the mall on the weekends (and yet look how much the overland community has exploded over the past few years). This is very much an underserved hobby driven by culture and entertainment. It's almost entirely disconnected from actual military needs/requirements/drivers. I think there is a lot of growth in the industry, surprised it doesn't come up more often.

collegeburner 5y ago
Yeah fudds haven't made up the bulk of the gun scene since the 90s really. I hope that since people in video games can use use a wide variety of weapons we get some push back against banning specific gun types. Opening the MG registry would be really good and maybe this is a way to encourage it, same for removing suppressor and SBR regulations. Btw there is some intersection between the two, a lot of the guys behind the 3d-printed gun movement are moving to decentralized technologies for chat, video hosting, etc. because the gun-grabbers running mainstream platforms don't like them.
- dole 5y ago
  The 3D printed gun movement is fascinating in itself as far as the potential influence on the gun industry, society and legislation. I feel like there’s no way entities like the ATF (and Justice Dept) will be able to keep up in about 10 years as guns like the FGC-9 evolve and become more ubiquitous.