This article makes a number of interesting points, and I want to share them with you.
As a preface, I need to correct, or at least modify a term the author (mistakenly?) uses: High caliber.
Furthermore, of the weapons that proliferate amongst the armed public, an increasing number are high caliber weapons (the weapon of choice in the goriest shootings in recent years).
The gruesome problem our nation is presently facing has little to do with gun calibers. Caliber refers to the bore size, meaning the inside diameter of a gun’s barrel, and thus the diameter, or size of the bullet. The caliber of weapons used in the most grisly shootings in our history have been, relatively speaking, small caliber. And against human targets, that doesn’t make much difference.
Forgive my waxing pedantic, but I believe the author means high power/high capacity when he actually uses high caliber. Military weapons, by necessity, are designed to kill soldiers on a battlefield, and they use high power, jacketed ammunition and high capacity magazines in that deadly pursuit, but they are not all (relatively) high caliber guns. For that matter, the U.S. military standard-issue rifles and carbines, (all M16 derivatives), are considerably smaller caliber weapons than their Russian/Chinese counterparts, which are derivatives of the AK47 and are the weapons of choice for dozens of nations throughout the world.
When jacketed in a hardened metal and propelled by a high-pressure explosive, (i.e. all military-grade ammunition), bullets — regardless of caliber — possess greater lethality than their non-jacketed, less explosively propelled variant. That’s why soldiers use them.
One of the Emergency Room physician’s who treated the few students who survived long enough to make the ride to the hospital said this:
. . . an assault type bullet that explodes inside the body, it doesn’t go through a straight line, it goes in and then it opens up, that, that, that’s not a survivable injury
Again, that’s why soldiers use jacketed, high-powered bullets on the battlefield. It’s not primarily the caliber of the bullet that creates all the horrific destruction. Rather, it’s the combination of velocity and the bullet’s explosive disintegration inside the body.
To be sure, all things being equal, the higher the caliber, the greater the potential lethality. But the point to be made is, the recent and horrific mass killings in our country have been committed (mostly) by men using relatively small caliber, but high-capacity, military style weapons and high-powered, jacketed ammunition.
Because of the nature of this particular discussion, I think extra care should be taken to ensure the terms being used are accurate.
