Blowback .223

One can’t help but empathize with the shock felt at the horrifying sniper killings that have been occurring around the Beltway since late last week.  The diabolic sniper’s shot at a child will no doubt be one among many low milestones in the annals of serial killing.  Many LRC writers have done a good job at pointing out how many international problems currently finding their way to the U.S. doorstep are actually the result of what is known as blowback (the law of unintended consequences applied to foreign policy).  While the valuable lessons of foreign-policy blowback remain as foreign as ever to Beltway elites, their small culpability in the recent sniper attacks is sure to escape their notice as well.  Let’s connect some dots.   There’s more than a little irony in the disgust of career politicians, bureaucrats, and law enforcement officials in their reaction to the grotesque damage being wrought by the .223-caliber bullets that have hit seven civilians in the sniper attacks (so far).  Once upon a time in the early 1960s, the military-industrial complex centered in Washington D.C. was the very institution that initiated the practice of using relatively small, high-speed projectiles (like the .223-caliber bullet) in infantry small arms.  The embodiment of this initiative was the Colt AR-15 (later M-16), which came of age and was first widely used by U.S. infantry in the Vietnam Conflict.  It was developed from prototypes created by small-arms designer Eugene Stoner while he was employed at the Armalite Corporation.  Previous infantry issue (the M-1 Garand prominent in World War II, the M-1 Carbine, and the M-14 prominent in Korea to name a few examples) fired relatively large, .30-caliber full-metal-jacket bullets which (under "humane" conventions of war–the oxymoron!) entered tissue and exited with relatively moderate damage provided that vital organ areas were not closely broached.  [Use of soft lead or hollow-point bullets that were designed to hit a target, greatly expand, and rip away ounces to pounds of bone, tissue, and internal organs was (and still is) largely avoided and has been since international agreements at the Hague in 1899 and 1907, though these have recently been undermined by 1985, 1990, and 1993 opinions of U.S. armed forces judge advocates general.  See here for a debunking of some common gun myths.]  This all changed with the production, distribution, and infantry use of Mr. Stoner’s Black Rifle.  As a standard, it was hated by many troops in Vietnam.  The small, speedy bullets (muzzle velocity approx. 3300 fps for a 55-grain bullet) bounced off of the thick vegetation of the Vietnam jungles.  The silly looking rifle with the built-in carrying handle and toyish, elongated plastic hand guard was contemptuously dubbed the Mattel Special and the Boy Scout Blaster by troops for its poor performance in hitting Viet Cong hiding in thick undergrowth.  Thus some troops left their Mattel Specials in the undergrowth and used old M-14s left over from Korea or AK-47s captured from the Viet Cong.

The military establishment stuck with the .223 round.  Though problematic in thick jungle conditions, it was useful in open field (snow to desert) and some urban conditions in that it was very accurate, but better yet, when it hit human targets it tumbled forward into tissue and shattered creating large, internal wounds.  This was confirmed in later tests on special gels that simulated the consistency of human tissue.  Another "nice touch" was that the bullet would sometimes ricochet off bone and bounce around inside the body, shattering in tiny hard-to-remove fragments (which promoted internal bleeding) and ripping sizable hunks of internal tissue away (for good measure).    Thus what was nominally a full-metal-jacket bullet had in effect roughly the same destructive capability as some hollow- or soft-point bullets.  The letter of the Hague agreements (at least until 1985) was technically followed although the spirit of the agreements seemed to have been violated.  With the U.S. leading the way, it was only time before the rest of the world followed.  Inspired by the .223 (or 5.56 x 45mm), the Soviets converted their famed AK-47 in 1974 from the 7.62 x 39 mm. round to the 5.45 x 39.  The new rifle became known as the AK-74.  The Germans (Heckler and Koch HK-93 rifle), British (L85 bullpup), Austrians (Steyr AUG), Italians (AR-70), and Israelis (Galil) all later jumped on board as well.  The militarization of what was essentially a varmint hunting round was now complete.  Actually, the .223’s use as a varmint round can be said to be more "humane" (cringe!) than its use as a military round.  A prairie dog or ground hog is ripped apart and dies quickly.  A human being can die a slow and horrible death from internal bleeding.  According to Bob Tuley: For a little bullet, the 5.56 bullet produces quite dramatic wounds.   While the traditional 30-06 caliber bullet of the M1 Garand and 7.62 bullet of the M14 rifle would immediately knock a man down, the 5.56 bullet instead enters the body, quickly turns sideways after passing through only 4" of flesh, then breaks in two major pieces, as well as many smaller fragments.  During the Vietnam War, soldiers reported that shooting an enemy soldier with the M16 did not kill as quickly as the old 30 caliber weapons. Instead soldiers would follow a massive trail a blood a few feet away from where the enemy soldier had been hit to find him dead from massive blood loss. The fragmentation capacity of the.223 round was seen in the Beltway sniper’s second most recent victim, a thirteen-year-old boy.  Surgeons usually don’t attempt to dig out the tiny bullet fragments, as invasive surgery can produce even more damage to the body’s vital internal structures.  Thus surgeons attempted and were successful in removing fragments from the recent boy victim to help further the current investigation.      It would be the height of absurdity to speculate that the current Beltway sniper would be using more "humane" ammunition in the absence of the .223.  But there’s no doubt that part of the Beltway played a large role in standardizing the international use of this horrible round against human targets and that the Beltway sniper has at least partly learned by example.  In fact, his delusion that he is "God" is eerily familiar (in deed if not rhetoric) to many seasoned and perpetually wary Beltway watchers.  (Also familiar is the blatantly uninformed to biased news coverage.  An "assault rifle" is a fully-automatic weapon.  Chances that the sniper is using such a weapon are close to nil since such weapons have been so highly restricted as to be de facto illegal since the passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934.  Nevertheless, the technically misleading term "assault weapon" has been ubiquitous in current news reporting of the incidents just as it was during the debate over the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994.)    So the .223 round (like our former allies the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein – we can really pick ’em can’t we?!) is just another tool that has come back to haunt us.  Let’s pray the evil Beltway killer is quickly nabbed and that Beltway elites decide to quit playing God with us and the rest of the world.  

October 11, 2002