Garner, your own posts show the damage that several different .22LR bullets do to an apple, versus what a .223 will do to an orange.

Yes, the .223 will tumble in a body causing more damage, but it's not like it's "blowing up" the groundhog. The .223 is not some super bullet as you've been implying. It does NOT have more stopping power than a Toyota. A Toyota moving at 60mph has impressive stopping power. In TN, it would be illegal to hunt deer with a .223 as it's not considered large enough.
Legal/Illegal Hunting Equipment and Methods

And here's yet another group of people who actually hunt saying that a .223 is a bad deer round, because it doesn't kill fast enough.
What gun do you use for deer hunting? [Archive] - Military Photos

It sounds like a fine varmint round to me.

Er, yes... but no. Not what I was saying at all, Brad. Now, if I were to go deer hunting, I'd either want a large rifle (.30 or higher) or a shotgun. However, I dislike anything with more recoil than a .38 pistol, so I wouldn't actually go deer hunting.

Also, and let me make this clear because this is the point of my complaint about gunning down prairie dogs with an assault rifle, deer hunting these days consists of sitting a tree house and waiting. If you don't wanna wait that long, you can cover yourself in deer piss extract and cover the trees in female deer hormones and then start blasting once they show up.

I've known hunters who still use a bow and arrow... because bow hunters are allowed to start the season earlier and this way they can get a few extra kills.

I've heard of, but never met, people who actually go deer hunting with nothing more than a knife. Deer can, eventually, be outrun by a fit person, and a cornered buck can put up a fight. Now *that* strikes me as hunting as it should be. You want some trophy to put on your wall? Then you damn well better earn it.

Now, let's go back to the prairie dog hunting... let us, however, take out any potential emotional attachments to cute little yipping things. Let's pretend we're hunting rats. Beady eyed, bald tailed rats. Ugly little fuckers.

There's a big field of em, just full of the bastards, and, for some ungodly reason, that field's going to be turned into a children's park in a week. Called Rat-world. So we can't just poison the whole place in case a kid gets sick later. So we've got ugly critters that need dying, and we've got a valid reason why we can't use poison.

So let's sell a packaged holiday for rednecks to come sit around in a lawn chair and shoot them. Bring a minimum of 500 rounds of amunition, and pay 500 bucks for the privledge. I dunno, I mean, if that sounds like your idea of a good time, then there's not really any point in debating it. To me, it's not hunting, it's just combining target shooting with killing things. I like shooting.

At inanimate, lifeless targets. Wood, paper, tin cans. Etc.

Cause, you know, "whatever you do to the least of my creatures, so you do unto Me"

I really can't pretend to know anything about guns, so have little to add to this discussion. But isn't there quite a big difference in size between a deer and a prairie dog? I wouldn't have thought it necessarily follows that a bullet too small for deer is not too big for an animal no longer than a cubit.

Mrs G
The Garner who cares.

*shrug*

A 5.56 would in fact be an extremely humane round, if your intent was to kill the prairie dogs quickly. If poison's not an option, then at least let it be a one-shot case.

A smaller bullet is just as likely to do the trick, mind you. It doesn't really require that much powder to take down something the size of a rat.


As for hunting anything else with it... It has stopping power. And little beyond that. It's chief advantage would be that it would likely stun what it hits.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. - Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon

It's true. But, I was disputing the assertion that a .223 had more stopping power than a "toyota". Speaking in those terms likens a .223 to a .50 (which can kill by passing close enough to a person). It's not some super round. Many US Army people don't even like it for people. It doesn't explode the animal, sick as this imagery is. It's not too large. There's video out there, although unless you're into watching animals get killed over and over I would't recommend watching it. I've tried to avoid referencing it because it is nauseating, but it does show a praire dog being shot with something larger.

can we, for a moment, pretend i didn't make any comparisons to japanese cars, lest "toyota" take on some mythical significance in the annals of these boards - equivalent, perhaps, to a deliberate misunderstanding over who told whom to suck what and when.

can we, once that's done, perhaps move back to the original point of the appropriateness of an assault rifle for a prairie dog, and the response to criticism of same by the american gun lobby.

No your explaination was fine. I was thinking short term.

My brother has a deerstand that has a microwave oven, a propane heater and a loft with an airmattress. He can wait a long long time. He also uses a bow and arrow and so does his wife, this year she was talked into using a gun and she got 4 deer. Hunters around here can purchase several permits because there are so many they have reached the status of vermin. I have hit three myself in the last four years.

() ()
( ' ,') "don't eat green potatoes"
(> >) Last words of Mrs. Bertha Sperling
@( )_ )_

You know, when it comes to population control issues, I start to lose objections even to sport/trophy hunting, but a microwave on a deer stand still strikes me as... well... cheating.

What happened to the thrill of the hunt, the satisfaction of knowing that after all that suffering you went through it was worth it because you have this dear's head under your arm and your wit and skill won the day...

Hunting isn't suppose to be comfortable or easy.

Believe me it isn't that comfortable, they didn't build any railing on the two flights of steps up to the deerstand and I had to creep down like a two yearold. He has electricity out there because he has one of those positive airflow mask things for his severe sleep apnea, I don't really know why the microwave got out there except for they had one laying around. I don't even know if they actually have shot anything from the deerstand,it is really more of a little cabin up on stilts where you can watch the deer then anything. They do walk out to various areas of the woods and sometimes they do drives, put some people out in various places and have others walk toward those places hoping to herd deer in the general direction and not get shot. I have never hunted deer, but I have cut them up and cooked them. The three I hit, I don't think I killed them, at least not outright. I do try to stop if I see them, usually they come in multiples and I wait for the stagglers when I can , but they do surprise you sometimes.

() ()
( ' ,') "don't eat green potatoes"
(> >) Last words of Mrs. Bertha Sperling
@( )_ )_

Okay then. My original point was that an M16/AR15 is not a huge super weapon.
What makes an assault rifle (see the def)?
What makes an assault weapon?

Technically, the prairie dog hunters most likely don't use "assault rifles".

What makes it wrong to use a pistol grip rifle to kill a prairie dog?

Is hunting the only reason to own a firearm?

What makes an AR15 a "terrorist rifle"?

If your original point was that the M16/AR15 was not a huge super weapon, then why did you raise it, as I don't recall that being the point of the thread.

The point of the thread was two fold, as i saw it: an outdoorsman columnist criticised the use of 'assault rifles' to hunt prairie dogs, and the gun nut community rabidly responded, destroying that man's career.

The only person here who's raised the question of 'pistol grip rifles' is you. I haven't seen anything anywhere that suggests 'pistol grip rifle' has anything to do with the issues in question or even tangental issues.

If you wish to object to a third party website's definition of an assault rifle, why not do it on their website?

Incidentally, let's go with your link to the wikipedia article on assault rifles. Nevermind that Wikipedia is the greatest collection of plagerism and misconception currently going on the 'net. The definition of an assault rifle, which you asked me to look at:

Note the absolute lack of the words 'pistol grip'. Let's read on a little bit though.

Now, having established that 1) the pistol grip is not a manditory requirement of an 'assault rifle' and 2) that brad can't actually read...

If we accept as givens that it is essential to even kill the prairie dog with a gun in the first place, I see the shape or design of the gun as irrelevant to the situation entirely. I don't care of it's got a pistol grip or if it's just a metal tube and chambering block that can only be fired by telekinesis.

The point i raised was that any assault rifle, automatic rifle, machine gun, submachine gun, or battle rifle (weapons commonly featuring protruding pistol grips) would be over kill to gun down a creature that's not much bigger than a squirrel. (side note: some species of prairie dogs ARE larger than squirrels, but i've only ever seen the black tailed ones)

Now, having, to my mind, demonstrated that brad's a strong contender for the Dragonmother Debate Trophy, I'll move on from this point and tackle the next award winning question.

"Is hunting the only reason to own a firearm?" Let us for a moment disqualify the notion of 'collectors', people who just like to own stuff. Let's assume that if you own a firearm, you own it to USE it. 'Is hunting the only reason to USE a firearm?', well, no. absolutely not. but let's look at the three other uses that would cover most situations:

To protect yourself from violent crime.

To commit violent crime.

To shoot non-living/non-sentient targets.

Now, ignoring the NRA's own entries in the Dragonmother Debate Demonstration competition, if folks didn't have guns, there'd be a lot less gun related crime and thus a lot less impetus to protect one's self through similar forms of violence. This leaves target shooting as a valid reason to retain the right to own guns. Why one would *need* to privately own a firearm for this purpose is beyond me, as plenty of shooting ranges will rent time on any number of firearms at extremely reasonable prices, and even allow for free trial demonstrations of weapons you're considering to purchase. if that aint good enough for you, i'd suggest the issue is less to do with gun control rights and more to do with compensating for something.

And, lastly, "What makes an AR15 a terrorist rifle?"

I'm sure it terrorizes the hell out of small furry woodland creatures, and anyone who's ever been threatened with one, but let's face it: 'terrorist' is a loaded word. the meaning isn't as important as the emotional impact these days.

similar to 'fascist' or 'commie' a generation or two ago.

Um, Clay? Brad was actually addressing some points mentioned in the article you originally posted. His points are valid, because he replied to arguments raised by Jim Zumbo, which he disagrees with.

I think Brad's mistake was that he assumed you support Jim Zumbo's views entirely, to the point of having the exact same arguments as him. Your mistake was that you didn't make your own view all that clear when posting the article, and actually didn't notice at all that Brad was addressing the article and, by deciding that he was addressing you personally, ignored most of his arguments because they didn't apply to you personally.

So you both win the Dragonmother Debating Award, because both of you were debating with yourselves rather with each other.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. - Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon

Um, roman? I knew brad was replying to the article :-p

Mind you, i had to go back and run a search through the first page for the word 'terrorist' to find out where the hell that came from, but doing so clued me in a bit.