I think hn and tech culture in general is sleeping on the rise of popular gun culture.<p>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.<p>It's a long way from the old stereotype of an old white Vietnam vet waxing poetic about 1911 .45s.<p>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...<p>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).<p>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.
From an engineering perspective, I've always found fascinating how complicated ammo taxonomy is and how weird the various units used are.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Anyone more knowledgeable care to explain why things are so complicated and haven't been normalized / simplified over time?
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!)
"Stopping power". "Wound channels".<p>Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust.<p>Now don't get me wrong, I own a gun. But still.<p>Also, I hear that birdshot is actually better for home defense because it doesn't go through walls so much.<p>And can you imagine firing a shotgun inside your house without hearing protection? Goodbye ears.