223 vs 308

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 1/14/2019 | R Chastain

[w1n1]

Heres What to Use it for
Debates between different cartridges superiority is always a big discussion for gun enthusiasts at every gun club. Sometimes views from die-hard .308 users or .223 followers can be too one sided to reason with.
Both cartridges have valid points to support their case. Lets take a comparison perspective between the .223 and the mighty .308 and see what its good for. Just to let you know this comparisons is not to be technical for the gun nut but for the layman’s gun enthusiasts.

General Comparisons
For the most part, the .223 Remington has a flatter trajectory than the .308 Winchester out to 500 yards. However, the typical .308 Winchester load has more than twice the muzzle energy than the .223 load.
Also, the heavier bullets with a higher ballistic coefficient used by the .308 retains more energy and velocity than the lightweight .223 bullets.
So basically, the typical .308 load usually has as much or more energy remaining at 400-500 yards as the .223 does at the muzzle. Which makes the .308 Winchester a much better choice for long range shooting.

With that in mind, the .223 Remington has a flatter trajectory at short range, and the recoil is less than the .308 Winchester. Felt recoil will vary from shooter to shooter and rifle to rifle, but free recoil energy is still a useful way to compare the two cartridges. Read the rest of 223 vs 308.

[Chainmail]

Here's what I remember: the ranges in Vietnam were either very close or very long and the enemy was usually in heavy cover. The M16 may have made the contractors feel great but it was horribly unreliable and mostly ineffective against the enemy. The early version with the lighter bullets were essentially a .22LR against anybody further than 200m.

The M14 however, penetrated heavy vegetation, concrete gravestones, sandbags, and of course, people. Every single man I hit with my M14 went down and stayed down.

I will always despise the people who forced the idiot M16 on us when our lives depended on it.

[MrEdd]

Depends on how far away the coyotes are.

[bk1000]

So all that .556 I had been saving for SHTF should be upgraded to .308, 6.5 Creedmore or 6.8 SPC. But,...which one? If truly SHTF, probably .308 which is more widely available.

[lgjhn23]

Me? I’m weird. I love both cartridges but for other “things”....like combining them!
Yeah. I take .223/5.56 cases, cut em, resize em and shoot .308 bullets of varying weights out of em....LOL . Yep. It’s called 300 Blackout and for up about 100 yards, it’s about like a 30-30 or 7.62X39 round. Fun to play/experiment with and great for close quarters defense if one is so inclined.
I’ve also taken .308 cases and necked em down to take 6.5mm bullets, or what is known as .260 Remington. I was doing it before the .260 Remington became a commercial cartridge by utilizing custom-made barrels. The BC is a tad better, recoil is a tad less and for long range shooting, I’ve found it it be a pretty nice long range combo.
Of course, I still shoot the “originals” quite often as well. For prairie dogs, I’m somewhat fond of the .223 loaded with a 50gr Nosler Ballistic Tip and some 4198. It creates the “pink mist” quite nicely without too much of a loud report.

[null and void]

Get one of each and you will be able to salvage rounds from fallen bad guys.

"Best" mix in my admittedly humble opinion for scavengable availability is 7.62 NATO, .223 NATO, .45 ACP, 9 mm, and of course the ubiquitous .22LR.

The mix changes based on the most likely opponent of course...

...but factors in the more than a billion rounds recently procured by the physically closest.

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” Barack Hussein Obama, 7/2/2008

They don’t call it a Civil Defense force, that would imply we need (or perhaps that we deserve) defense. The official name is National Civilian Community Corps.

I think of it as the NatCCC, or more simply, as the NatCs...

[Delta 21]

Not if your splattering them from 400yrds away.

Aim small, miss small.

[ßuddaßudd]

a freeper once said ..
“nothing says hate like the .308”
and i will never forget that

[Vaquero]

The manufacturer specified certain things , like which powder to use lined chambers etc. the defense department has sweetheart contracts with Ammo makers and wanted shortcuts in the building of the M-16. The original AR-10s and AR-15 built by Armalite were very reliable. Politicians screwed up those firearms. Then bandaids were applied to allow the firearms to use the ‘wrong’ Ammo. People lined their pockets.

Talk about crappy ordnance … ever hear of the Mark 14 torpedo used in WW2. It cost many American lives.

. The Mark 14 was central to the torpedo scandal of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Submarine Force during World War II. Inadequate production planning led to severe shortages of the weapon. The frugal, Depression-era, peacetime testing of both the torpedo and its exploder was woefully inadequate and had not uncovered many serious design problems. Torpedoes were so expensive that the Navy was unwilling to perform tests that would destroy a torpedo. Furthermore, the design defects tended to mask each other.[35] Much of the blame commonly attached to the Mark 14 correctly belongs to the Mark 6 exploder. These defects, in the course of fully twenty months of war, were exposed, as torpedo after torpedo either missed by running directly under the target, prematurely exploded, or struck targets with textbook right angle hits (sometimes with an audible clang) and failed to explode.[36] Responsibility lies with the BuOrd, which specified an unrealistically rigid magnetic exploder sensitivity setting and oversaw the feeble testing program. Its pitiful budget did not permit live fire tests against real targets; instead, any torpedo that ran under the target was presumed to be a hit due to the magnetic influence exploder, which was never actually tested.[36] Therefore, additional responsibility must also be assigned to the United States Congress, which cut critical funding to the Navy during the interwar years, and to NTS, which inadequately performed the very few tests made.[37] BuOrd failed to assign a second naval facility for testing, and failed to give Newport adequate direction.

[Vaquero]

Weren’t billions of rounds purchased by the USPS? I mean the Post Office?

You couldn’t readily get .22lr Ammo for 4-5 years. I, like many, bought and hoarding it when I could. Primers were real hard to get too for a long while. I’d go in with people to buy case lots when I could.

The Trump administration should surplus all the bogus ammo Obama bought, back out to the general public. Monies to go to build the friggin wall.

[null and void]

Hmmm. I like the way you think! The left would squirm every time they thought of us in possession of all that ammo they intended to use on us...

[Rio]

typical .308 load usually has as much or more energy remaining at 400-500 yards as the .223 does at the muzzle

That's all you need to know right there.

[joma89]

.308 and here is why. It is highly unlikely one will be shooting at 400 or 500 yards. It will be close combat and one will need single shot stopping power.

JoMa

[JoeFromSidney]

I carried an AR-15 in SEA (we were testing them and they hadn't yet become the M-16). I'm not convinced it would be suitable for in-house defense. The time a burglar broke in while I was asleep, my 1911 was a lot more suitable. I still keep one at my bedside, and another beside my reading chair.

[Chainmail]

Oh, I am quite familiar with the travesty of the Mark 14 torpedo - and the even worse part played by the navy at Newport who even after months of reports of torpedoes failing, refused to even consider that the design had serious flaws.

As with BuOrd, the M16 was raced through the Operational Testing phase and sent in huge numbers and they still had significant flaws. I suspect that a bunch of people's pockets were lined in the process.

I was in the "beaten zone" when they fielded those things and besides the catastrophic double-feeding and jamming the chamber - caused by the wrong powder - we had safeties jamming on "Safe" (bad detents), ridiculous sights, fragile stocks and the wrong lubricants.

The M16's basic design is lousy because the chamber is inaccessible from the outside and it is a crazy routine to strip one down, clear the jam, then reassemble it and resume fighting. We had to carry assembled cleaning rods and drilled a hole in the handguard to carry it, to try reduce the deadly time when you had to clear it. I saw many, many dead Marines with their broken down rifles by them.

The people who rushed the field the M16 have blood on their hands - they did more for the enemy than even Jane Fonda.

[sarge83]

I had a older guy I was friends with who was in Vietnam and he said he was in a firefight and an NVA solider was charging him at fairly close range and he was hammering with his M16 and getting hits but he kept coming. Finally an old guy in the platoon had an M1 Carbine that had a selector on it, 3 rd. burst and full auto. He cut loose with the M1 on 3 rd. burst and he said it was like someone poleaxed the NVA goober right into the ground.

For most critters in North America the .223 should work, but if you want to absolutely make sure on them the .308 and the .308 for the two legged variety of critter.

[Chode]

.308, there's no substitute