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I still live in the area and work in Detroit) since 67'of a tank dislodging a sniper from the second floor of an apartment building by putting a round into it, don't know if it's true or not . . .

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Not. No cannons were fired. After the 1968 series of riots there was a presidential commission created to study the unrest. I guess there had been calls to use tank guns, heavy MGs, artillery, and even flamethrowers (!?!) by various law enforcement agencies, but the commission calmly analyzed the incidents and showed that heavy weapons were unnecessary and flat out rejected the use of such things in domestic law enforcement.

KL

Wayne, the M16 used a different twist to the barrel and used ammo that was optimized for the twist. I am only passing on info our combat arms people told us afterwards. I think the original one used a 1 in 14 twist with four grooves while the newer weapons our CE folks carried used a 1 in 7 twist with six grooves. A2 ammo would tumble out of the barrel. It had nothing to do with what we were told at the time we were given the ammo. The mistake was actually caught after we came home.

Regards,

Eric

Similarly, I volunteered to deploy to New Orleans post Katrina. I am in the California Air National Gurd. We deployed with about 200 people in my unit's KC-135s. We carried M16A0s but had ammo we couldn't use because it was for the A2. We patrolled for two weeks in and around the airport in NO. The 82 AB came a week later. Because of the restrictions on active duty in the US, the 82 could only carry ammo for their sidearm. They all wanted to see our M16s because they were brand new from the crate and had very low 00 serial numbers. I heard later they were turned in for destruction because it would cost too much to convert them to A2 standard. Our armorers put safety restrictors on them so we could only fire them on semi after a few days. That was a tense couple of weeks. The people of NO who had lost everything wanted out and they were given one way rides to any city who would take them. There weren't any riots but the people were tested every day. Disorganization ran rampant. It was an experience I'll never forget.

Regards,

Eric

Regardless of bullet weight, it is still the same 5.56 x 45 cartridge. It could be fired in any weapon chambered for it.

Accuracy now, well that's "subjective".

G

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Regardless of bullet weight, it is still the same 5.56 x 45 cartridge. It could be fired in any weapon chambered for it.

Accuracy now, well that's "subjective".

G

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I believe that the later 5.56 ammo designed to be fired from the M-16A2 and M-16A4 is also a more powerful round. Although an M-16 or M-16A1 can fire it, the round is a bit too robust for them, shortening weapon's life and reliability. In general you don't want to use the later more powerful rounds in an M-16A1 if you can help it. That's probably why the armorers modded Eric's unit's M-16A1s to fire only semi-auto.

As an aside, my neighbor who recently got out of the USMC, said they were using early 5.56 ammo for training in their M-16A4's as recently as 2 or 3 years ago.

A2 uses a 62 gr bullet where the earlier versions use a 55gr bullet