Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Whats the best cartridge developed in last 20 years.

Actually there are quite a few new cartridges designed to work in standard length AR15 (not AR10) actions. Some of these take liberty with thinning the part of the bolt that encloses the cartridge head (I have learned). Some use rebated rims.

Another new cartridge is the .300 Blackout or Whisper, for those desiring to use subsonic rifle cartridges with suppressors.

The quote from Doc didn't include my main point: Most supposedly "new" cartridges provide essentially the same basic ballistics as older cartridges, but in a different case-shape to fit in different actions. Even the 6.8 SPC basically provides .250 Savage ballistics in a round fitting in AR-15's, though with slightly larger-diameter bullets.

Even the .300 Whisper/Blackout isn't very different from many older cartridges, including the 7.62x39 and the 7.9x33, both introduced during WWII. The only meaningful difference in the .300 is the rifling twist, allowing the use of heavier bullets at subsonic velocities. Which is actually more creative than merely changing case-shape so a .300 H&H will fit in a "short" bolt action.

I had mine built, on a Single Six, many years ago. A great little piece that I load 220 gr SWC's over 6 grs of Universal. I have never clocked it but am guessing 45 ACP equivalent velocities.

I completely divorced my mind from chasing new cartridges. The darth of everything in the last 8 years has driven me to consider logistics above all else. Hence; a new 270 two years ago. Midway is calling winchester-30-06 brass "seasonal" and have been out for about 2 months now. Go figure...

[quote=OlongJohnson]6.5CM and .260 don't shoot all the same bullets equally well. When you get into the really long-nose, heavier bullets developed for long-range shooting, the CM works just a little better. And since competition is all about stacking up tiny advantages, once the idea existed, the reality had to be created.

OLong,
Care to explain how the 6.5 CM works better than the .260 Remington? We've had barrels on and off of Accuracy International AW and AX receivers and I'll dance at your wedding if you there is ten cents worth of difference. Aside of ending up with a piece of Lapua .260 Rem Brass versus a piece Hornady with the 6.5 CM. I see it making sense to a guy who does not hand load in spades, however, if you shoot enough you are likely to hand load. That said I am dumping both and dropping back a performance rung and having my next Bartlein 5R tube chambered 6.5x47 Lapua. I even ordered my latest short action AIAXMC with the small primer pin/hole to give the small rifle primer a touch more support. The AI team has nothing but praise for them...

Regards, Matt.

fwiw & imho,
Very little new in the world of cartridges. We COULD use better launchers and glass...


Regards, Matt.

It's all about a new wizbang that makes a fella thing what he's been doing all along isn't working. Schit is more similar than different.

I believe that the best cartridge since the 30-06 was/is the 280 Remington. The 7x57 was previous to the 06 and is a cartridge hard to improve on...
I've had a couple 7x57's and that is an excellent cartridge if the Mauser action isn't soft, the free bore matches the magazine length, the barrel on the Mauser action wasn't made during a major war, etc.

My present 7x57 is a Classic 700, which I like as much a my 7mm-08 and my 280's.

The only rifle with a new cartridge is a 204. I wouldn't have bought that if it wasn't on my brother's estate sale.

When I was a kid I shot a lot of squirrels, grackle's and bunnies. Don't do that much anymore. So the smaller cartridges don't shine that much for me. I might get a 17 rim fire though.

And/or because there is .17HMR ammo on the shelves. Any other rimfire ammo has been very scarce.

There used to be an older gun writer who often stated that he believed XYZ cartridge would be a lot more popular IF ONLY the ammo companies offered more loads, and produced more ammo. He had it backwards. Demand drives ammo production, not the other way around--which is why there's so much .17 HMR ammo available. The cartridge became instantly popular and has remained so ever since.

Could the emphasis on which cartridge to manufacture have anything to do with .17hmr ammo being $15 for a box of 50 and 22lr ammo being $3? There is a huge demand for .22lr ammo yet finding it on shelves is hit and miss. I'm guessing the margin is a bit higher for the .17hmr and emphasis is to make what sells and makes the manufacturer the most money takes priority. I like the hmr and 22lr and currently have my eye on an old Anschutz 22mag. They all have a time and place.

There's far more .22 Long Rifle being made than .17 HMR--and in every rimfire factory I've visited they're made on separate assembly lines anyway.

The reason .22 rimfire ammo isn't seen on shelves is some shooters (not all, but some) keep buying it whenever they see it, just as some (not all) shooters feel compelled to post on the Campfire anytime they find any in a store or on an Internet site for what they consider a "reasonable" price.

There must be thousands of people with hundred of thousand of rounds of 22LR ammo in their closets. Just imagine the fire departments whenever one of those homes catch fire!

I don't know about best, as that is pretty subjective, but the 40S&W had a pretty big impact and is probably around 20 years old.

HMR would be my first vote.

I'm not up to speed on the AW and AX receivers, but I do know AI is all about rifles optimized for long distance work. Wouldn't be surprised if they come with nice, long magazines well-suited to the long-nose projectiles. The difference comes in if you are limited by magazine length. The CM case is just a bit shorter, so you can fit just a little bit longer ogive in the same COAL. My understanding is that's the reason for its creation - when you're up against a wall, a little bit of space can be a big deal. A rifle built from the ground up to shoot the long-range bullets just might be built without the limitation the CM was created to address.

Distribution is also uneven. From what I've seen, most of the production goes to larger chain stores. When you place bigger orders, you get your orders filled first. These stores tend to be in populated areas, but they also have a very limited footprint in certain very densely populated regions, such as California. The result is that people living in small towns tend to have a hard time finding it, and people in the regions that gun-friendly big box stores don't bother servicing well are nearly SOL. As long as this situation persists, people will resort to going online, and that will keep the scalpers sucking it off the shelves where it's plentiful.

Smaller stores are also partly to blame. If I ever see 22LR in a non-big-box store, it's marked way the heck up to a price you'd only pay if you were truly desperate. They move minimal volume and can't get their next order filled in anything like a timely manner, so they still think it's scarce and keep their prices high, so it moves slowly.

Olongjohnson,

Yep--but all those things are the results of shooters buying up .22 LR ammo wherever and whenever they find it, not the cause.

The cause of all the so-called shortages is the longest-lived shooter's buying panic ever. It turned some of us into automatic buying machines, grabbing whatever we imagine we might need off shelves, in hopes of collecting a “lifetime” supply. It doesn’t matter if only some people do this: If enough grab-and-buy it’s impossible to keep store shelves reasonably stocked.

I refused to play the game at first, because I had a pretty good supply of ammo and loading components on hand, and thought that like previous buying panics it would ease after a year or so. But when it didn’t I sometimes couldn’t get ammo or components needed for magazine articles, even directly from the powder companies and bullet makers, because they couldn’t make enough to fill demand. As a result, a couple years ago I turned into a “hoarder” too, just to have stuff when it was needed for my job, but I know others who started doing the same thing, even though they didn’t panic-buy at first.

Other factors have helped extend the panic, notably smart phones (which allow us to instantly inform other people when we find rimfire ammo on a store’s shelves, often by sending a photo so they know exactly what’s there) and the Internet, which has fundamentally changed the way many shooters shop, because big Internet companies can indeed order more stuff than small local stores. But even Internet shopping often turns into a variety of panic buying: Every time a bunch of “affordable” rimfire or hard-to-find powder shows up on a website, somebody posts it on an Internet forum, and the stuff’s gone within a day or so.

All of this has become so systemic I doubt things will change much even if a Republican is elected president next November. We just keep buying ammo and components whenever and wherever we find them, whether in stores or on the Internet—and telling everybody else where we found them.

Around here, it's abated. The big stores always have Mexican and premium stuff available. They get cases of standard-level domestic stuff in, and bricks sit on the shelf for days. I only buy if it's something I like that's particularly hard to find, or there is a sale that's an especially good deal on high quality stuff. I've actually worried that my stash may depreciate below what I paid for it. On the other hand, I don't like buying less than a brick, and I'll go back for multiple bricks if the price is right. If it turns out that a rifle likes a lot #, I want plenty of that # in the stash.

One of my buddies thinks the sales of 22LR firearms have slowed due to the unavailability and increased cost of the ammo, which may be a drag on the growth of shooting sports generally. New shooters who haven't yet become loonies are deterred by the high cost of centerfire and haven't figured out how to buy it cheap online.