Ditching 5.56 discussion

[LittleLebowski]

I'm considering ditching 5.56 (I'll keep what I have, maybe stockpile a little more, and definitely not sell anything off). Here's my reasoning:

• 5.56 doesn't suppress very well and has lots of back pressure
• .300Blackout (or .300BO) does suppress well and I can go from subs to supers with a mag change, sans fiddling with AGB (adjustable gas block) and/or buffer weight
• .300BO is WAY easier to reload, got a buddy on 10 reloads of his brass with no trimming
• .300BO is cheap to reload with cast and coated bullets. 5.56 is a pain in the ass to reload for
• there's a plethora of pistol cans that are rated for .300 supers (list to follow) and the HK 3 lug rocks as an attachment method
• 5.56 is not legal for hunting in my state

[LittleLebowski]

Some of the aforementioned pistol cans rated for .300BO

• Omega 9k
• Dead Air Wolf

[mtnbkr]

I have different motivations, but I'm not interested in adding to my 5.56 collection either.

For me:
Not legal for big game hunting in VA.
Kind of barky for recreational shooting (suppressor would help that, but I don't have a centerfire suppressor).
Reloading is fiddly due to small components.
Based on anecdotal evidence in multiple classes, it takes multiple shots to stop a threat.

I may consider a 300bo at some point. It would solve a number of the issues above.

Chris

[LittleLebowski]

I have different motivations, but I'm not interested in adding to my 5.56 collection either.

For me:
Not legal for big game hunting in VA.
Kind of barky for recreational shooting (suppressor would help that, but I don't have a centerfire suppressor).
Reloading is fiddly due to small components.
Based on anecdotal evidence in multiple classes, it takes multiple shots to stop a threat.

I may consider a 300bo at some point. It would solve a number of the issues above.

Chris

Good reminder on the hunting bit.

[ASH556]

How do you address the zero issues? I've found enough trouble through the years with 5.56 and .308 and zero shift (and corresponding dope) just shooting suppressed and un-suppressed with the exact same ammo. I can't imagine and it sounds to me like a logistical nightmare switching between suppressed and un-suppressed, while also accounting for sub-sonic and super-sonic loads. Kind of kills the whole, "just slap in a different mag and rock and roll" vibe.

But maybe I'm missing something.

A slight side rant, but as I get older I've learned to appreciate hunting with classic hunting guns again. Sure, I still shot a deer with a suppressed 5.56 AR last year (legal in my area), but I also enjoyed taking a deer with my 1976 Ruger M77 in 30/06.

Having the "capability" to "do everything" with one rifle/system, and actually "doing everything" with one rifle are 2 different things.

[TCinVA]

At some point I may have to get myself an AR for hunting.

I'm thinking maybe a 6.5 Creedmoor setup with a nice piece of glass since the 6.5 is supposed to be capable of doing all the .308 things.

[Casual Friday]

I'm considering ditching 5.56 (I'll keep what I have, maybe stockpile a little more, and definitely not sell anything off). Here's my reasoning:

• 5.56 doesn't suppress very well and has lots of back pressure
• .300Blackout (or .300BO) does suppress well and I can go from subs to supers with a mag change, sans fiddling with AGB (adjustable gas block) and/or buffer weight
• .300BO is WAY easier to reload, got a buddy on 10 reloads of his brass with no trimming
• .300BO is cheap to reload with cast and coated bullets. 5.56 is a pain in the ass to reload for
• there's a plethora of pistol cans that are rated for .300 supers (list to follow) and the HK 3 lug rocks as an attachment method
• 5.56 is not legal for hunting in my state

I can't argue with that.

I haven't shot a deer with a traditional hunting rifle in years and have no desire to go back to one either. I kept my Dad's rifles and shotguns, but I dumped the wood stock and blued steel hunting rifles that were my own several years ago. I just couldn't rationalize keeping a rifle that is just taking up space in my gun safe 50 weeks a year and only gets used for a couple weeks in October.

Minimum caliber for hunting in WA is .240 or 6mm so 5.56 is out for me. The woods here where I live are thiiiiiiick. Every deer I've taken has been 200 yards or less, most being between 75-150. My AK with a red dot fills that role nicely. I don't care for 7.62x39 ARs, so if I were to use one it'd be in .300 BLK, but I don't need another caliber, especially one that I'd only use for hunting. I like the Hornady 123 grain SST, it shoots 1.5" MOA out of my 14.5" Romanian AK. I zero the red dot for the SST prior to hunting season, leave the irons alone, then re-zero for Wolf after hunting season is over.

If I planned to shoot suppressed a lot and was interested in reloading, .300 BLK would fill a lot of roles for me. But, since I'm not interested in either, I just keep pluggin away with 7.62x39 and 5.56.

[Mike C]

I'm considering ditching 5.56 (I'll keep what I have, maybe stockpile a little more, and definitely not sell anything off). Here's my reasoning:

• 5.56 doesn't suppress very well and has lots of back pressure
• .300Blackout (or .300BO) does suppress well and i can go from subs to supers with a mag change
• .300BO is WAY easier to reload, got a buddy on 10 relaods of his brass with no trimming
• .300BO is cheap to reload with cast and coated bullets. 5.56 is a pain in the ass to reload for
• there's a plethora of pistol cans that are rated for .300 supers (list to follow) and the HK 3 lug rocks as an attachment method

Having spent a decent amount of time only shooting 300 BLK I would agree with most of what you have to say.

* I would say your first point is very true along with all the fun replacement intervals that come with short 5.56 guns.
* .300 does suppress really really well, only caveat with switching between supers and subs is really knowing your holdovers but that only takes some time and ammo to learn.
* .300 SUBS are very easy on brass.
* Subs were cheap to load
* The point about hunting is spot on. If your running an SBR length carbine it's awesome inside of 150 yards, (I zeroed to 125 Yards with 110 barnes) and feel it would still be ethical to 300 if you stick to thin pelted White Tail and use a longer barrel, (past 200-300). I've dropped a few with the Barnes up to 175 yards and they were instant show stoppers.
* Being .30 Cal does allow for uses in many places as previously noted.
*Other things that have been brought up in past threads is that they are excellent in pistol configurations so travel wise they are awesome, they can be covered under a CWP barring any weird state laws/feature bans for guns.
* In pistol configuration no stupid travel paperwork.
* .30 Cal tells intermediate barriers to fuck themselves as it rips right though.
* Repair parts, gas tubes, bolts, just about everything minus barrel is interchangeable with 5.56 brethren which is awesome because for OCD reasons I've gotta have tons of parts to fix crap laying around.
* .300 so long as everything is tuned proper really are soft on components and parts and I have few reservations about longevity, YMMV but I have more reservations about the short 5.56mm guns for certain.
* noise level unsuppressed is also better than anything 5.56.

Only thing I am unsure of is how 3 lug will handle supers, I pretty much ran direct thread through an Omega 9K. Have you been running supers through a 3 lug? If so is there anything to note?

Negatives as I see and experienced them are:

* supply for factory ammo is definitely better than it ever has been, but not anything like 7.62 or 5.56
* factory ammo costs the earth
* super components cost the earth (fuck you barnes)
* limited duty style projectiles, Barnes pretty much owns this caliber still in this department.
* Supers aren't cheap to roll in comparison to 5.56, (something like 147's are cheaper than 110's but still costly).
* I've had issues with components drying up near me.
* I also had issues with sizing of projectiles from some of the sources I was using for subsonic components, fun issues with key holing and terrible accuracy. If you can get decent components for reasonable prices then absolutely it can be reasonable to load cost wise and is crap ton of fun to shoot.
* Supers matching factory 110 stuff were hard on brass but if you're not using 110's or loading to 2100-2150 FPS then this isn't an issue.
* More lubrication intensive than anything else I've run. I think this was mainly a powder issue for me and the fact I only ever ran it suppressed. I eventually when to cycling 1 mag of supers through my gun after a session of subs to blow excess crap out.
* Oh and screw cleaning the mags out. I ended up switching to Mag Pul 300 Blackout mags because I did have issues with some long sub rounds not feeding well due to internal mag dimensions. Combined with them being filthy lead to reliability issues, YMMV on this a bit.

[mtnbkr]

At some point I may have to get myself an AR for hunting.

I'm thinking maybe a 6.5 Creedmoor setup with a nice piece of glass since the 6.5 is supposed to be capable of doing all the .308 things.

Except it'll never be as nice looking as a Winchester 70 Featherweight in 6.5x55.

Chris

[Mike C]

How do you address the zero issues? I've found enough trouble through the years with 5.56 and .308 and zero shift (and corresponding dope) just shooting suppressed and un-suppressed with the exact same ammo. I can't imagine and it sounds to me like a logistical nightmare switching between suppressed and un-suppressed, while also accounting for sub-sonic and super-sonic loads. Kind of kills the whole, "just slap in a different mag and rock and roll" vibe.

I will say that this is a thing but it is ammo and gun/barrel dependent. Less so if you just mount a suppressor and don't screw with it. In my experiment I had two guns setup identically. One gun had very little in differences of windage, (predominantly in vertical point of impact differences), the windage deviation was less than 1/2"-1" at my zeroed range of 125 yards using an 8x scope. Dependent on your accuracy requirements and the scope of usage it could be fine. The second gun I had both windage and elevation variations that were significant, even after unmounting and remounting the barrel and handguard, it tightened things up a tiny bit but didn't make the gun unusable as it was too much of a deviation from gun #1. I ended up going through 3 other barrels to find one that was close to gun #1's POA/POI across the same ammo and zero. The bottom line is if you put the time in and are willing to tinker you can get something that is usable but your usable range will be effected and you can't screw with mounting and unmounting a can from the gun I don't give a crap what some suppressor companies claims are. More rigid barrel/heavy barrel also helps.