[AnAmericanMother]

I disagree. It's a lightweight cartridge and it doesn't need all that massive a receiver. (nothing like a Mauser action, for instance.) The notorious M-16 is not particularly heavy in the receiver department.

One pretty hot varminter load on a .223 with a 52 gr Sierra bullet is about 20 grains of IMR 4198. Compare that to the .308 Win pushing a 110 gr Hornady with 38 grains of the same powder (also a hot load). About 3,000 fps. I use the 165 gr BT match bullets in .308 mostly though, and powder's correspondingly less.

I'll acknowledge that it's a fast bullet, but lightweight. I don't care for it. . . would prefer .25'06 for varminting myself, but it does tend to eat barrels.

Of course, reloaders are the most opinionated people on earth . . . ;-)

[Robert_Paulson2]

I like reloading.
lots of adjustments can be made.

And I understand your preferences. But to each his own.
I am more interested in if you suspect these were custom loads? I read around today and gathered some found a rather LARGER exit wound than was expected...

I would suspect that terrorists, MIGHT prefer loading their own items, so as to NOT be detected immediately by law enforcement reviews of ammo purchases. And .223 components are rather easy to obtain.

I expect the antigunners crowd will try and turn this into another gun panick... of course if all guns were outlawed, only the military and the terrorists would be armed... and the citizenry would, or will be held hostage...

As long as we have a second amendment, best wishes for your continued, and happy reloading.