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It's. Welcome to another edition of Old School Guns, the podcast that tells you exactly like it is. And ah, this is episode number 221. 221. And here we are five days before Christmas 2025. And well before I get into that, we'll just say, hey, if you got any questions or comments, send them to me. Kb m a k e l o l.com and also you can leave them in the comments section on podbean, which is where we originate this podcast from. That's our platform. It's wonderful holiday season. I've never been one of those ones that gets all upset about Happy Holidays because I remember the kind of the Bing Crosby song Happy Holidays. But I do say Merry Christmas. And I, to me Happy Holidays always meant have a happy holiday season which included Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Hanukkah. If you deserve any other, any other thing. And even in my, my reformed thinking, if somebody wants to celebrate Kwanzaa, have at it. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy holidays. Happy, you know, just have a good time of the year. You know, when you look back at a certain point in your life, you'll say you'll remember the holidays. And you know, it's, it's good times. And it's also a good time to kind of like if you got family members that are PO'd at you because you voted for Trump or something else, it's a good time to extend an olive branch and say, hey, you know, there's, there's a lot of things that are more important than, than politics. Yeah. So there's a lot of things kind of going on. You know, it's, it's amazing to me. One of the memes I saw this week was, you know, if this Nick Reiner had murdered his parents, Rob Reiner and his, his wife with a, with a gun, they'd be screaming about gun control. But the fact that he did it with knives. Nobody's talking about knife control because they realize it's ridiculous. Just as gun control is ridiculous, only they won't see it. It's just absolutely, you know, it's, it's a horrific kind of murder. Nobody likes seeing that. Even if you ve vociferously disagree with Rob Reiner, which I did, I personally thought he was a, an arrogant and very small minded kind of guy. I never thought of him as an intellect or anything. I really didn't. I really, I didn't. First of all, I didn't even pay that much attention to him because you know, he was meathead on, on all in the family. And that's, that's kind of who he was his whole life. So anyway, though, seeing somebody killed like that for the rest of the family, it must be horrific and just terrible. It's, it's very unpleasant, especially this time of year. There was also the crazy Brown University shooting. And apparently this guy was, I guess a Portuguese immigrant who tried to go to Brown but didn't, didn't do so well. So he hated the school. And he also murdered an MIT professor who was a classmate of his and came from the same area in Portugal, but was a very accomplished man and was a professor at mit. So, you know, this only goes to what I tell you, which is a difficult thing. It's like if you go to a university, you are very vulnerable. I mean, it's, it's. There are other places that are just as vulnerable, and those places are ones that prohibit law abiding people from carrying firearms. Now, I happen to think that a university is a good place where there really shouldn't be anybody maybe carrying firearms. You know, it's a learning environment, it's a school. We don't really think of students as carrying firearms, but they should have a robust police and security presence. And, you know, the fact that this guy just sauntered onto to the university, killed a couple of people and then sauntered off was ridiculous. You know, and the other, the other thing is, don't think that cameras are not security. You can't think a camera can document what happened, but it will not prevent security, will prevent what happens to you. The rest of these things are just investigative aids. And, you know, if there'd been a guy walking around on more, more armed security walking around on the campus, they could have prevented the whole thing. They could have looked this guy and said, hey, excuse me, who are you? You know, just not really stop and frisk, but just anybody who looks out of place. You can go ahead and get anybody, you know, carrying a duffel bag or carrying, you know, something that looks suspicious. You know, the Charlie Kirk shooter was apparently wandering around with his rifle either disassembled or assembled kind of in a blanket, wrapped up in a blanket roll or, you know, shoved down his pants. You know. Now anybody who gets kind of near the guy, you can tell if somebody's got a bolt action rifle stuffed in their pants. You know, it's just ridiculous that we don't scrutinize things enough. However, it's always amazing to me that when an incident does happen, the amount of emergency vehicles and responders and Everything. I mean, I just kind of. Where I work, occasionally something happens. Not, not anything really violent, but everybody responds to it. And it's like we jokingly call it, you know. Terrorists have taken over the Nakatomi Plaza as a reference to the movie Die Hard because that's what it looks like. There's, there's sirens and lights and they're, you know, 20 vehicles or, or more are, you know, stopping traffic, stopping everything, you know, just, just isolating the area. But that only occurs after something's happened. There needs to be a more proactive type of security that prevents things from happening. And also this whole thing. Well, it was exam, so we left the building unlocked. You know, man, if you can lock it for classes, you can lock it for exams. It might be a little less convenient. But so what. Anyway, I'm, I'm off. That, that's, that's just terrible. In another weird thing, it appears that, you know, in range TV has gone completely off the rails the last couple years. Everybody, everybody knows it. I guess the guy who runs it, Carl Carsada, he's alleged to really have, you know, been involved in the Church of Satan. He's had. Some of his co hosts have been Antifa 2A for all. All these kind of strange organizations. They found posts of his where he's talking about, you know, death to the white race. I don't know, it's really weird. Really, really weird. And you know, I, I mean he's just gonna. Fortunately, I think he will pass out of popular popularity pretty quickly. He's not really doing. I don't watch his videos. As a matter of fact, I boycott them. But they still pop up on my feed for YouTube. And I don't, I don't watch YouTube very much since, since they banned me. And you know, I, I'm just not into. I've seen some of the titles, you know, like the Spencer Carbine, the Gun that killed racists. You know, I, I just, I'm just not into all that. He wants to do politics, hey, it's a free country. Go do politics. Don't mix a lot of that kind of politics with my guns. I don't want it. And, and I don't, I don't approve of, I don't like. And I don't want anything to do with these anti, you know, these anarchist rebels that are out there just trying to destroy the country. Attacking. He. Attacking ICE and some of these other things that, that have been going on. So keep away from in range is what I tell people. Just, just keep away from it. There's some. There's some bad things on there. All right, One of the things. Oh, I'll go into the. Yeah, I understand YouTube. Allegedly, if I reapply, they would reinstate my account because my two offenses were I violated community standards. Like YouTube has community standards. If they want, if they want to have community standards, they need to take off about 80% of their videos that are put up by idiots and people who have no business making a video because they're boring and they're crappy and a lot of the information is incorrect. So if they had community standards, I would recommend to them that they start there. But anyway, I violated their community standards because I said two things. Two, only two things. And I repeated them because I don't care if I'm on YouTube or not. Not enough people listen to this podcast for me to, you know, care about any of that. But the first thing I said was the 2020 election was rigged. And even now there's, there's little bit tidbits that come out about it that they were illegally certified ballots and, and you know, it'll. It'll eventually come out, I suppose, but the 2020 election was rigged. And COVID 19 came from a lab. It came from a lab in China. Whether they deliberately unleashed it as a tool of social engineering or whether it just escaped due to incompetence and they had some sort of spillage, I do not know. I do not know the answer to that. But I do know one thing. They were weaponizing this stuff and it got loose somehow and it created a world war's worth of death around the world. Killed 7, 8 million people. That's, that's basically what a world war would, could do. So. And. And there are so many, many more people got it. If you took everybody who had Covid as kind of a casualty, it would be more than a world war. It would be almost, you know, it just, it boggles the mind to think how bad it actually was. And so if they want to kick me off YouTube for saying those two things, have at it, have at it. But now I'd like to talk about something that's gun related and even more cool. There's AR myths, and I like to. I like to kind of revisit these. I did one of these a few years ago, but I don't think I had as many, many ones. But I want to go over a couple of the AR myths. The first one, I got about seven, eight of them here. The first one is AR means assault rifle. And as we know assault rifle was just a term that kind of came out of the Second World War. Allegedly. Allegedly. Hitler coined it, you know, Sturmgewehr, which is German for assault rifle. Allegedly he did that. I have no. I've never seen proof that he did it. It's like a lot of. A lot of quotes and things that get attributed to famous people. Sometimes when you look, you just. You can't find where they actually said it. So, yeah, AR does not mean assault rifle. It does not mean army rifle. A lot of people thought it meant army rifle. It does not. It means Arma Light, which was a division of Fairchild Aircraft, and Fairchild made some fairly good aircraft, you know, kind of World War II, Cold War. I think they got. Eventually, like most companies, it got devoured by General Dynamics or somebody. I think the A10 was the last aircraft they put out. The, you know, the really. The really good tank killer that we still have that the Air Force keeps trying to get rid of. But the Armalite just. And it was just a kind of a side business for them. They said we could probably revolutionize the design of weapons by using modern materials. You know, we could just make these things three times lighter. The 1. The 1 criticism of the M1 Garand that did come out of World War II and Korea was that it's a heavy weapon. It is not unduly heavy, but all battle rifles are weighing in over £9. Between like £9 and £10. And by the time you, you know, the bayonet is big and heavy, the, you know, on and on and on, ammunition's heavy, everything's heavy. So in order to try to lighten the soldiers, load and fit in with what they kind of envisioned as the next battlefield might be a nuclear one, where you can't really get weighed down with a lot of equipment. And so I also think that, you know, you could also decontaminate, you know, some of these, like an AR or M16, a lot easier than you can. Something that's wood, where it's going to sink into the wood. So anyway, they were going to take modern materials, make modern guns, and they did that. They started with the AR10, which was 7.62 NATO. And it got some interest. A few of them, yeah. Got some small contracts. The U.S. army turned it down because, number one, it was late, and number two, there's no way they were going to adopt it because they were going to adopt the M1 Garand as a. As a replacement. No, it's not the M1 Garand. The M14 is a replacement to the M1 Garand. So that's what they were going to do. And you know, all the, all the guys who talk about the FAL and everything else, they just, they just don't understand how military procurement kind of works. They know what they want and they're testing it up against other things to make sure especially back when you had the old armory system, they're testing it up against other things so that you, so they can see if they're, you know, on the right track. So anyway, and to see how it compares with the kind of, the late, the latest things that are out, out in the world. So anyway, AR means Armalite. The next one is a really interesting myth. There are a lot of myths saying that the AR M16 was a self cleaning gun. And that I have never found in writing. And I've looked in every, everywhere I can old the first manuals that came out, everything. I've never seen anything saying it was self cleaning cleaning. And I've always seen the, you know that the cleaning kit has always been detailed in this early literature. So the fact that if they didn't have cleaning kits it wasn't because they didn't exist or didn't think they, or thought they didn't need them. It was because they just somehow didn't catch up. Somehow the rifles and the cleaning kits didn't wind up at the same place at the same time. But yes, the very early M16AR M16s that did not have the chrome plated chamber and bore. Yeah, that, that was a problem because you know, residue draws moisture which starts pitting. So you know that's, that's completely understandable. That that's, that's kind of how that was. Also when you have it, when you have a chromed barrel, you also have really good barrel life. That's something that not a lot of people are aware of. But yeah, they, they, it, it helps your barrel life quite a bit. All right, self cleaning. Now one other point I did see something where it was said that Colt had advertised that the gas tube itself was self cleaning. That the gas tube on the AR15 it goes from the front sight post back to the chamber that that would self clean. And that's essentially the way we treat it today. A lot of people don't go in and try to clean that. It basically if there's any residue in there, the next shot will blow it back into the bolt key and out those two side holes that are in the bolt. So you know, it is, it's always kind of one shot, dirty if you will. And there's never been a tool or anything that would clean the length of that. So. So they did. They did. They may have said this tube is self cleaning, but it certainly did not mean the whole rifle. Certainly did not mean that at all. Another one that always comes up is the M16 was meant to wound, not kill. That's why it's small caliber, intermediate cartridge that if you shoot one enemy, two other guys have got to, you know, carry him off the battlefield. So you've taken three guys out of the fight. This is complete poppycock, complete garbage. And the reason, here's the reason we know it's complete garbage, because when it was adopted, there were still guys in the army and the army was the proponent to adopt the new shoulder arm. There were guys in the army and I'm sure there were guys in the Marines who had lived through banzai charges and human wave attacks in World War II in Korea. Now I have obviously never lived through one of those things, but I can tell you that when you look at the tactics of those, when either of them are charging your position and they just try to overwhelm it quickly, you know, kind of the way Custer was overwhelmed at the Little Bighorn, really, really, in many ways kind of the same theory. Enough guys just flood it overwhelm them and it's over. What happens is when you shoot one of those people who's coming at you, his friends don't stop to pick him up and take him off the battlefield. That just never happened. That was just not the way that worked. If you shot one and knocked him down, he just stayed there until, you know, somebody somewhere either policed him up or, or he expired from his wounds, whatever, whatever it was. But there were no, there was no thing of, you know, I shot a hundred people and now 300 are out of the battle because 200 are carrying those hundred back. No, that's, that's not a calculus that was, that would ever have been seriously considered. It would have been laughed at by anybody who heard it. So the fact that the M16 is designed to wound and not kill is a, is bad. The M16 is a very lethal weapon. It is very lethal. And it's one of those things where that cartridge is tailored to hit that, you know, that 200 pound and lower enemy soldier. It hits them, it does significant damage and gets them. I would say any, any, basically any two legged animal is gonna, gonna really be, really be smoked. And especially at closer range, especially at closer range. So it was never Designed to wound and not kill. Another myth is that it was made by. By Mattel, Mattel Toy Company. And I think there used to be a slang term for an M16 calling them Mattel toys, because Mattel did make a toy that, that superficially resembled an M16. And they actually made it really back in the mid-60s. And some of these were used in the movies, you know, especially, you know, guys in the background don't need something that looks completely authentic. They just need something that looks close. I think the most famous use of one is in the movie the Green Berets with John Wayne. John Wayne takes one of these things and smashes it against a tree because they want to deny it for enemy use. And it's one of the toys. It's not one of the, it's not a genuine rifle. So that's, that's about as close as it gets to stardom. But neither the rifles nor the furniture. A lot of times I'll say, well, it wasn't the rifles, but the furniture was made by Mattel. And that's just not true. They, they never made any of that. They don't have any of the. On. I can't remember the names for them now, but, you know, there's certain cage codes and certain manufacturer identification numbers. All these things that the Department of War, now it's. The Department of War gives it's, it's vendors so it can keep track of them and so, you know, know how much it buys from each one and everything else. Well, Mattel has never had any of those. They've never had any of those. So it would be impossible for them to supply something outside the system when the system was expressly created to procure stuff. So anyway, yeah, Mattel is, it's an, it's, it's a, it's always a fun myth, but there's, there's nothing to. It never happened. Another one is that it's inaccurate, that it's just. It wasn't built for accuracy. You know, I kind of let that, you know, your mileage may vary. I find that especially nowadays with all the different variants that you can get superior accuracy out of a AR platform gun. Yeah, even so much so that a lot of guys who do some of this big time varmint hunting where they may be shooting hundreds of rounds a day, they shoot an AR because it just wears them out shooting a bolt action. So, you know, they're, they can be as accurate as any gun. The going back to the M16A1 and M16A2 they're both very accurate. They're not particularly easy to shoot, but you can get combat accuracy out of it. But if you want to get match accuracy, they're a lot more difficult. And the A1 is. Is much more difficult than the A2. The A2 is such a good gun, I mentioned this last time, such a good rifle that they would just take the off the shelf as issued rifles and issue that with service ammunition. And you could go out and shoot the national match course with it and do very, very well. You could. You could even win the thing. So, you know, very, very accurate and very, very good weapon system. Another one is always the. The 556 can't do the job well in the last 60 years, which is as long as we've had these things in use, it's done the job exceptionally well. It's done the job so well that any other country worth a hoot has adopted 556. Or they've adopted the Soviet 7 6, not 762545 by 39, which essentially tries to mimic the performance of the 5.56. So if it were so bad, not everybody would go to it. It just. They just wouldn't. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of older weapons around, but it's. Nobody is really. Nobody is really making these except the United States, which has gone to 6.8 by 51 in kind of a retro move. But 5.56 has been doing very, very well. It's a little bit light for. It's. It's fine for a squad automatic weapon, but it's a little bit light. The. The deficiency in the Iraq war was it did not do very well against vehicles, and you wouldn't expect it to. It was designed to shoot people, not vehicles. So heavier weapons like the M240 machine gun in 7.62 NATO were a much better fit to counter that. The next Myth is the 1 in 14 twist was more lethal, and there was no real good reason to Change it to 1 in 12 in the original M16 and M16A1. From what I understand, it did poorly in Arctic tests, which, where you can have cold temperatures and other environmental factors. And I don't think you would see a difference between 1 in 12 and 1 in 14. I wouldn't bet that That's a huge deal. The bullet just needed slightly more stability, and it got it. So that's it. And here's the next one. The bullet tumbles as soon as it leaves the bore. Okay. It does not it just it flat does not. It will tumble when it changes from air to another medium. And you can see countless tests on YouTube where that is indeed the case. Whether it's gelatin or people do replica replicating human torso with various types of target medium. You know, you can see where it kind of drills a hole in and then the bullet will start to yaw and tumble. So you'll see that. But that does not just happen in the open air. The only time that you could say it happens in open air. There's one case and that is if you shoot heavy bullets in a 1 in 12 inch twist rate bore. If that happens, yeah, you will get some keyholing and other anomalies on the target because it's not. But that is not a deliberate weapons effect. That is not something that we don't give people a 1 in 12 inch twist rifle and, and the heavier bullets because we know it's going to start tumbling because accuracy beyond 25 yards is going to take a drastic, it's gonna, it's gonna just fall off the cliff. So that never, it never really happens that the bullet was never designed to start tumbling as soon as it leaves a bore. So there are the myths that I was able to dig up and, and basically those, you know, when you actually hear them you say yeah, that doesn't really make any sense. The only other one I can think of this just came to me is they used to say that that ammunition was that our ammunition could fire in AKs, but their ammunition of course could not fire in a, in an M16. And that's completely untrue. And so if you have to explain that to somebody, you probably need to put them on to some educational material and they'll, they'll come around. You know, another issue with the, this is not a myth. But you know, a lot there's a lot of confusion over battle site zero with the M16A1 AR15 or the AR15A2 M16A2 and I'm talking really iron sights here. And also the same can be used for like your dot sights, the M68, the Eotech. And some of these, some of these sites that you know, don't magnify anything, just kind of put a single aiming plane dot up there. But the old battle site zero that I, that I grew up with was 250 meters. And when you study battle site Zeros you will find that they're confusing. They always confuse yards and meters. I will tell you that the difference is probably so minuscule. That with iron sights you, it won't matter. So we can use yards and meters here interchangeably. But the old one was hey, you went, you fired it at what they called a Canadian bull which had a little cutout in the top that where you, you put your sight when you were sighting down the rifle. And your, your impact point of impact should be an inch below your point of aim at 25 meters. And that would put you on at 250. Okay. Theoretically that works perfectly. And the other part of that was you had to flip your sight up to the. This is with the A1. You had to slip. Flip. Flip your sight to the L. Long range reticle. Not reticle but long range aperture. Excuse me. So you had to do that. That worked fairly well. When the A2 came out, it came out with a rear sight that was started at 300 meters and went to 800 meters. You know that dial on the rear, the rear sight. So consequently we went to a 300 meter zero and that was basically point of impact at 25 meters will have you on at 300. And then you use your elevation dial to go at ranges beyond that. Works pretty well. Works pretty well. The only problem with it is that you have to aim low at between at the 100, 150, 250. And even the 250 meter. If you have targets that pop up there, you have to aim a little bit low. That's just, that's just the way it works. It just, it just. That's the way that particular zero works. You have to aim a little bit low and then you'll be on at 300 and then you'll be on ranges beyond that as you dial it into your site. And I'll go over all of these. The L is for long range on the A1s, not limited visibility or low visibility. That's another rumor that's been out there. 300 meter battle zero sights. That's with. You can do that with the. The A1 and the A2. There's a better sight though. The 300 meter was that 25 meter. That's the one that A1, A2. That's the, the standard army. That's the standard army zero the Marines have. Actually what I think is a better idea and that is you zero point of aim and point of impact at 36 meters and that gives you a 300 meter zero. However, the trajectory is a lot lower. So you can be in the a zone from zero to about 350 meters. You can be in the a zone that's a really good zero. That's a zone of an IPSC target. That's a really good zero. They're of course strung vertically as all of these are, but, but there's less distance between them so you can use the same point of aim. And when you're using iron sights, you know, face it, different lighting conditions and all those other wonderful variables that pop in are really going to kind of be in there. So you will have some, some variation, but you'll be, you'll basically be center mass with that. And that's a really good zero to have shooting schools like to do the 5200, which if you're a civilian and for there's reasons that a 5200 makes sense, you zero at 50 and then you are basically right on at 200 because they're saying that as a civilian you're not really taking long shots. And so therefore being up close, being at essentially point of aim up close, out to 200 meters is a better deal. And that's, that's something you have to decide on depending on the terrain. If you live in close terrain, that's probably the best way to go because you're not going to be shooting long range anyway. So what do you, what do you need the other 0 for? And this gives you a more compact point of aim at the different, you know, you can use the same point of aim at every range. So that's out to 200 yards, out to actually to 250, because that's, that's how that works. So that's a really good one. The last one is special operations units use a 100 meter zero. And that's because direct action guys are doing a lot of cqb. They're not taking out people at long distances. And if they need to do that, they have other weapon systems that are tailored to do that. So they're, they're long arms or standard long arms are really meant to, for a much closer, much dirtier type of fight. They're not, they're not trying to pick somebody off at longer range. So that's a really good one too. If you live in a city, that's probably. And you're not going to have any long shots, that's probably a really good zero to use also. So those are the ones. And you can Google these things and there's some very, very good references out there on exactly how to do it. I can't give you the tutorial over the, over a podcast, although I'd like to, but I would waste the entire podcast by, you know, trying to describe to you the knobs and how to, how to turn your knobs, how to, you know, battle site, zero your sites and all the rest of it, how to mechanically zero your sights. You know, you can, you can look that stuff up if you're going to be using your iron sights or, and the same theory goes, if you're using the Aimpoint, the non magnified combat optics. So those are, those are really good if you're using optics. What I would say is a lot of optics have, you know, they have built in bullet drop reticles and things and you might just want to match it up with those. But the final thing to know is just because you're on at 25, 36, 50 or 100 meters, if you've done your zeroing at those distances, make sure that you go out to your maximum distance, that you're going to shoot at the hundred. It doesn't really matter. You're kind of doing it already. But if you zero in at 50 meters, put a target out at 200 and fire it and make sure that you're in there, you could be a click or two off both in windage and elevation. Now the military does not do that and now maybe the special operations guys do, but again, they're just shooting at 100 yards and they're gonna, they're gonna call that good. But you know, the regular, your regular infantry and support troops and you know, combat arms, non combat arms, doesn't matter. You zero at 25 for the Army, 36 for the Marines. And then I don't believe that they go out and actually confirm the zero at distance. They don't do that, but that's something you should do. So that's, that's basically a lot of AR stuff. It's really a good weapon system and it's a really good system to use, to use for any kind of, you know, defensive purpose that you have. There is. And I have seen this, but I haven't seen this in a while. And part of it is because I don't, I don't look anymore. But back in the late 60s, to help night fighting, they had something called promethium sights for the M16. And that was a large aperture rear sight, a regular rear. So you know, it had the flip rear sight and then it had a front sight post that you would put in. And it had what was known as promethium, which was a, like what? Tritium? That kind of stuff. It glowed in the Dark, essentially. And I think they, they had some on that ring too. They had a, that kind of stuff. And that was so you could see your sights at night. I never saw a complete set of those sights on a rifle. But a lot of times, you know, this is one of the things about doing arms room inventories and inspecting. You'll, you, you know, you know kind of what to look for. And you'd look and you'd see this giant rear aperture and you'd say, hey, armorer, what's, what's up with this? And they would kind of, you know, sheepishly look at it because they kind of knew, yeah, this needs to be changed out to, you know, when you take the, when you take the promethium front sight out, the rear sight has got to be changed out too. And sometimes that didn't happen for whatever reason. And then the next guy who comes into the unit gets issued that weapon. He's, he's. And some. And a lot of times they don't know any better. You know, some of your young, your younger troops just don't know any better. Some of your NCOs and, and officers don't know any better. This, it's an M16 rear sight. I mean, they have no idea that these other things even existed. So they don't, they're not looking for it and they're not going to find it or see it. But yeah, you can, you could probably buy them or something similar to them if you, if you so desire. But I personally wouldn't have anything to do with them. They're just more trouble than they're worth. But you can find those, those, those rare sights were kind of hanging around a lot longer than they needed to be. So that's about it for ars. We covered a lot of love space there. And that kind of gets me to this one question. Is there a rifle that could have been adopted before the AR M16 that would have prevented the AR and M16 from being adopted? And I want, there's a lot of different answers. It's all alternative history. But I think if, if the United States army had adopted the fal, we would have stuck with that a lot longer than the M14. I think because other countries had it, we would have used it. It would have been a kind of a, a big heavy rifle to use in Vietnam, but I think they would have used it, they would have stuck with it. And eventually something, something like 556, the need was there. So something like 556 would have come in but because it was, it would have been pretty standard among NATO and even countries like Australia and you know, the, the British Commonwealth, we would have stuck with it a lot longer. We might have just adopted something else. Whether it was the AR15, perhaps the AR18 or even in weird alternative history, a mini 14 type type rifle in 5.56 just for the Vietnam. Just kind of as well, we're gonna, we need a jungle rifle. So that's what we're going to adopt. And it could have been any, any of those three. If the, if the AR15 had not been on the scene or if it had been just hung up in development and too late, if the AR18 had gotten there first, that might have been seen as a very attractive alternative to using either an M14 or an FN FAL. And especially if we'd stuck with the, if we'd adopted the M14 and if on some weird way the Ruger Mini 14 had appeared before the AR, when there was a need for lightweight jungle gun that could have been developed into, into some sort of a substitute standard service rifle, it shared the same action style as the M14, the M1 Garand, and even the M1 Carbine. So it would have been a very familiar weapon. Most, most people, if you're trained on an M14, you could pick up a mini 14 and it would. You transition to it in minutes. So that would, that would have been, that could have happened. But you know, the, it none of those things mitigate the fact that the AR15/M16 was essentially 30 years ahead of its time. I mean just 30 years ahead of its time. I like the HK93 and 5.56. It's cool gun. But you know, in fact of the matter is it's in no way shape or form is it better than an AR 15 and 556. It just isn't, you know. So that's the, that's the story on that. One other question here is can you explain the difference in barrel twist rates and why they're important? I'm just going to give this the short story. If you're shooting, if you have a 1 in 12 inch rifle, really the only ammunition that's worth shooting in it is the 55 grain FMJ. And that's what it was designed for, that's what it shoots and that's what everybody was happy with until they developed the 62 grain. And it actually wasn't even us. I think it was a Belgian design, the SS109 and that became the 855. And essentially then you needed a faster twist rate. A 1 in 8 or 1 in 9 twist rate will stabilize it just fine. But as the army had to have something that a tracer in 556 is a very long cartridge to get the, the bullet is very long so you can get the trace compound in there. So they needed something that could stabilize that very long bullet and that's why they went with 1 in 7. 1 and 7 is not necessary for even the 77 grain match bullets that people shoot. Now you, you can shoot those out of a 1 in 8 or 1 in 9. You can do that. So. And again your mileage may vary because every barrel and every rifle are individuals and it seems like sometimes they have their own personalities but. And so they may not like it, but as a rule of thumb that's pretty much it. Anyway, that's the story on twist rates and why they're important. So longer bullets need a faster twist rate. That's, that's what it means. Next question is what AR15 magazines do you recommend and why? Well, I recommend any of them that work and what works for you, works for you. I've got some that date back to the 1960s and they're working, they work just fine now. I'm not using them every single day, shooting thousands of rounds a year through them, so perhaps it would wear out. But the GI magazines I found have worked great. Anti tilt followers are. There's nothing wrong with them. I've never found that I really needed them. So I don't, I don't really go crazy on that. PMags I care for a little bit less simply because they don't, at least in my guns they don't really like to drop free. So now that could be an advantage in some places. You may not always want them to do that. So you know, it's Fielder's choice on all that. But there the PMAG is very good quality and I do believe the military has either purchased some or at least at the very least allows their use. So, you know, good deal there. There's probably a lot of, I've seen a lot of kind of sketchy, I don't want to say sketchy but what really look to me like opportunist magazines on the market, especially polymer ones. I'd be careful with those. I mean they may be fine for range work, but if you're going to do something serious with your rifle, I would go with either GI or P mags. That's, that's just me and that's just the best advice I can give you. Next question is, do you find that there's a difference between 5.56ammunition and 223ammunition when they're both loaded with 55 grain FMJ bullets? Well, the answer is everybody will tell you there's a difference. But I have found that there's no difference other than what you would find in between different manufacturers and different lots of ammunition. So I'm sure that there, you know that you can find the anecdotal thing where somebody chronographs each type and one type or another is going to turn out to be hotter and faster. But I have not found that to be, to be the case. That, and that's one of the reasons I really like 55 grain FMJ. There seems to be a very reasonable quality manufacturer given to those things. They seem to have very little variance. I don't find some, I don't find some lots to be significantly different than others. They, they have a lot of really consistent quality in between both. So I think sometimes it's just a packaging thing. But I have known though that you, with 5.56, you do generally see where the cases have been annealed. You know, you see that kind of annealing mark on the case as opposed to the shiny brass of the, of the 223. Whether that means anything, I don't know. So but to me they perform identically. So I don't even, I don't even worry about it. Whatever I can get the best deal on. If I can save $2 a box by buying something that's stamped 223, I buy. Next question. Do you prefer 16 inch barrels or 20 inch barrels on your AR? Well, I hate to, I hate to sound like, like I'm, like I'm a dinosaur. But I'm a 20 inch barrel guy. I mean to me 20 inches, it's short enough that it's handy and I like the additional sight radius is a big thing. Plus you're going to get a little bit more velocity out of it and th. Flatter trajectory. So I'm, I'm on board with it. I like a 20 inch barrel. That's just what I like. Now I don't, I don't know anyone with an 18 inch barrel gun. I've never really tried one out. Maybe that is the optimal compromise. I don't know. I have a lot of experience with the M4 with a 14.5 and so you know, they're, and they're very handy. But I prefer 20 inch barrel. And that was the last question in this edition of Old School Guns. So again, if you have any questions or comments, feel free kb m a k e l aol.com or in the comment section of Podbean. And you know, again, have a good holiday season and Merry Christmas, a happy new year and a happy anything else. But definitely it's been a great year, great year for the country now that we have adults back in charge in Washington, D.C. it's been a great year for a lot of things. And you know, one of the beautiful things is ammo prices are coming down. So I don't know if you've noticed, but they've been steadily declining, which is a good thing. Now is the time to buy. I'm telling you, you were only one incident away from, you know, another horrible panic. So anyway, this is Old School Guns out.