Complete Rifle Ammo Guide

[Godfather]

This is crazy!! How are there soooo many types

[Teh One Who Knocks]

That's not even all of them

There are a ton of 'wildcat' cartridges out there too

[KevinD]

Yep, not even close to all. My fav rifle I own is a 44-40 Winchester lever action. Can't get the ammo at wal-mart hahaha.

[DemonGeminiX]

There doesn't seem to be much of an industry standard, now does there?

[Teh One Who Knocks]

There doesn't seem to be much of an industry standard, now does there?

Yeah, not so much

A lot of the calibers got their start as wildcat cartridges and they just caught on because they were so good and popular. Then they moved into the mainstream and became a 'standard' caliber. There are hundreds and hundreds of wildcat calibers that just failed to catch on and faded into obscurity.

[Godfather]

I'm still just dreaming of getting a cool .22

Kinda fits my budget, and some of the really cool AR-15 style .22's are really affordable and fun.

That and an SKS and I'll be good to go!

[beowulf]

the thing with rifle calibres being 'standardised' is that until the advent of NATO and the Warsaw Pact it didnt really happen.................Commonwealth favoured .303....US was the 30.06.....Germany was 8mm Mauser......Soviets was 7.62 Russian..............and everyone else just made it up as they went along!......think the Japanese had 3 or 4 official rifle calibres..........and when things got going it got more confusing.......imagine the logistics problems early on when america supplied rifles and MG's to the UK which were 30.06 ..................at least SMG and handgun calibres were a bit more sensible...US used .45 colt, Russians used 7.62 Tokarev and everyone else pretty much used 9mm para (cept for our affection for .38 s+w) apart from some oddballs here and there............but even then it wasnt simple.....US introduced the shite .30 carbine round, germany introduced the 7.92 short (which ended up as the AK round later on of course)

once NATO and WP kicked off they settled on 7.62 NATO (.308 winchester) for us and 7.62x39 for them.....................when downsizing became fashionable it became 5.56 nato (almost the same as .223 remington) and 5.45x39 for them.....................and they are just about standard worldwide these days

dont forget that one of the driving forces of the last century was soldiers coming home from the war wanting a rifle in civvie street would want something in a calibre they were familar with......even better if it was in a surplus firearm they knew about and surplus ammo was cheaply available...so that meant military calibres were extremly popular

if you are still looking at a weapon then you really cant go wrong with a .22rf to start with..handgun or rifle.....cheap to shoot and have fun with and become familar with..............if you want to upgrade go for .38sp/.357maggie for revolver or 9mm for pistol cos they are cheap to reload yourself to keep costs down...................rifles would all depend on what sort you want......i always liked the .25-06 remington, the .257 Roberts and the .270 winchester for bolt action, 5.56 NATO for semiauto (thanks to Her Majesty )....................but hey...im used to using .577 when it comes to rifles

[Griffin]

I have 4 #1s, a #4,#14,#16(.223),#22,#32(.308),#41and a#59/60.

Pistols 2 #5s, a #44,#48,#63,#73.

[Hugh_Janus]

This is crazy!! How are there soooo many types

That's not even all of them

There are a ton of 'wildcat' cartridges out there too

so that's the partial complete rifle ammo guide?

[beowulf]

#12 is a winner

[Teh One Who Knocks]

#12 is a winner

Bwahahahahaha....I didn't even notice that one

[Teh One Who Knocks]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_Beowulf

[beowulf]

Bwahahahahaha....I didn't even notice that one

do you want to get your eyes tested?