Excalibur crossbows

[Mortblanc]

(20 December 2018, 01:49)LAC Wrote: Interesting posts. I don't own an air gun but wondered how powerful one would need to be in ft/lb to be as equivalently powerful (if that's possible) as a real firearm, say like a 22 rifle?

Very simple LAC,

A .177 pellet of 8 grains traveling at 820 fps gives you your 11.95 ft/lb legal limit.

My PCP air gun pushes an 18 grain .22 pellet at 950 fps for 36 ft/lb energy. That is 3x your legal limit with an air gun and still is dwarfed by the .22lr.

A .22LR of 38 grain bullet weight traveling at 1100 fps (a standard load not high speed) gives one 102.5 ft/lb energy.

The high speed loading of 1295 fps gives more than 140 ft/lb energy.

(As one can see that is 4x the power of the air gun that was 3x over your legal limit. 12X the power of a 12lb air gun!!!)

Most shooters in the rest of the world) will consider the .22lr barely adequate for hunting and that is why most shooters consider the 12 pound air gun less than adequate for most hunting.

But consider this, the 12 bore shotgun, or the 20 bore, with a one ounce shot load pushed at 1200 fps (which is considered a target load) creates 1400 ft/lb energy!

Possibly one can see why most people recommend the 12 bore over the .22 for general purpose use and the .22lr over the air gun!

I shoot air guns for practice. When I hunt I skip the .22lr except for squirrel, rabbit and pigeon. Anything larger than that and I jump directly to my shotguns or center fire rifles.

But I always look at history and how people have reacted to SHTF in other eras. Over here we had a world event depression during the 1930s the Great Depression. The financial system collapsed, as is presently predicted for the past 70 years by some book sellers.

If one did not live on a farm and own their land outright things were very bad. Even for those that were prepared for anything 10 years of depression and another 5 years of rationing for WW2 pretty much eliminated all the canned goods and beef jerky!

Your farm animals were your wealth and you did not eat them, you milked them or sold them for beef to raise the little cash they would bring (you still had to have cash to pay your taxes, power, clothes, ect.). That made foraging for wild game very important to the protein supply.

Out of that situation my two grand fathers walked in possession of two firearms each. They lived 1000 miles separated and did not know each other.

Each of them owned a 12 bore repeating shotgun.

Both of them owned a .38 caliber pistol.

Those two firearms were the necessities of survival of SHTF.

There was not a .22lr or air gun of any caliber in sight. And yes air guns were around back then.

They had fed and protected their families with those two firearms for 15 years of SHTF, and continued to do so until their deaths many years latter. When they died they still owned the same firearms.

I got one of the shotguns as inheritance and still use it. I bought a copy of the other and enjoy owning that also. I have others but those two will never leave me.

That is the reason I generally stress that everyone that qualifies for a SGC should have one. You can not own a pistol legally, but you can own a shotgun, the most versatile of firearms, and there is no reason why anyone that calls themselves a prepper, that qualifies to own one, should not.