AR Pistol

[Guest usmcgriff]

Anyone out there have and ar pistol or carry thing or in there cars. anyone out there gotten any crap the the cops about it. what are your thoughts on the gun.

[Dolomite_supafly]

Personally I think they are a waste other than a noise maker. The velocity is in the 22 magnum range out of the short, 7.5", pistol barrels and even some 10.5" barrels depending on ammo. With AR's you need either enough velocity to disrupt the bullet upon impact or the bullet needs to tumble in order for them to be effective. By slowing down the bullets they will not have enough velocity to cause the bullet to disrupt or come apart. And with most guns having faster twists the bullet will be over stabilized to a point they will not tumble, even at these reduced velocities. This will cause the bullet to pass right through. This is what is causing all of our service members problems overseas, too much twist and not enough velocity.

As you reduce velocities from a starting point of where the bullet disrupts the penetration increases. That is say you have a 30 caliber bullet travelling at 3000 fps. The bullet disrupts as normal and has normal penetration. Now take that same bullet and drop the velocity by 1000 fps to 2000 fps. The penetration will increase substantially because the bullet no longer comes apart because it is no longer going fast enough. Bullets that would normally only penetrate 12" are now going to penetrate over 3 feet because they no longer come apart as designed. The same can be said for 223/5.56, if you don't have enough velocity the bullet will not disrupt or tumble.

Here is an intersting read on the subject. Notice how almost all the bullets increase in their penetration as the velocity decreases. These findings mimic my personal testing I have done while doing work on subsonic loads.

http://stevespages.com/jpg/bestbullet.jpg

I would post the picture but it is huge because of the amount of data.

If it were me I would just carry a full size rifle in your vehicle. If you have a HCP you can legally carry a long gun in your vehicle so long as a round is not in the chamber. I say either lock the bolt to the rear or leave it forward then insert a magazine. It could be made ready rather quickly and with the additional barrel length it would be more effective. Or if you must have a short barrel use a caliber that would work better with the shorter barrel like 7.62x39 or even a pictol caliber.

You loose too much by using a short barrel with 223/5/56 in my opinion.

Dolomite

[Guest 6.8 AR]

I built an AR pistol in 6.8 and use a 85-90 grain bullet. It probably is a less effective method.

I built it for versatility without a tax stamp. A rifle would be more effective. It's a standoff

weapon, but primarily fun to shoot. Mine is a 12" with a Noveske Pig flash suppressor. I might try

some 100-110 grain loads in it.

Cops don't ever bother me. I don't give them a reason. What's in my trunk never becomes

a problem.

[Steelharp]

Link says forbidden. Interesting post, though, Dolomite. You've given me pause to think about the usefulness of my PLR-16...

[Dolomite_supafly]

I'll try to host the link above as well as a few other very informative pieces. I'll try when I get home.

Dolomite

Do not hot like this but copy and paste it into a new browser to open it:

http://stevespages.com/pdf/5_56mm_military_info.pdf

This is the penetration based on velocity:

http://stevespages.com/jpg/bestbullet.jpg

Again DO NOT HOTLINK. Open a fresh browser and copy the above URLS. The host has had issues with people hacking his erver so he has disabled a lot of differnt stuff including hot links.

Edited November 12, 2010 by Dolomite_supafly

[kesava]

Just get a .458 socom ar pistol.

[Dolomite_supafly]

One more thing, if you are going to use an AR with a short barrel at least use a bullet that is likely to come apart at the reduced velocities because they are not going to tumble. Any of the polymer tipped bullets, like the Hornady TAP, would work better than most hunting or FMJ bullets. Hunting bullets were designed to be fired out of a full sized gun, not our shorter carbines and as such they do not perform well. Most bullets are designed in a lab under ideal conditions and fired out of a firearm optimized for the ammunition being developed. This is the reason we rarely see real world data match factory claims. Real life is rarely ideal and for most a firearm is a series of compromises in order to fit our individual needs. The ammunition we choose is the same, a series of compromises to meet our needs.

Dolomite

[Steelharp]

Wow... awesome info... gonna share that with my Marine when he comes home.

[Guest usmcgriff]

I feel the ar pistol has it place short barrel or not. it is a hi cap very maneuverable weapon that has it place. in your car would be a good place. i drive an f250 but i could not swing and ar rifle around inside my truck but the ar pistol i can and the .223 round will penetrate a car door and the person behind it. i guess it is all on what you want. is it over kill to carrying a glock no if it where they why own and ar rifle. if you want to extra fire power and ammo cap in some thing that you can carry and is easy to maneuver in your house your car. this is the way to go. now we have to remember that we all have opinions and opinions are like but holes they all smell.

[Dolomite_supafly]

All I was saying is a 223 regardless of bullet weight is at a significant disadvantage when you shorten the barrel. The bullets will not disrupt or even tumble. There are better choices than 223 when you are going to be using a barrel less than 10.5". And when firing from inside a vehicle a short barreled 223 is going to be very disorienting to say the least. Personally of you wanted a high capacity firearm for your car that is maneuverable I would grab a few high cap pistol mags for your weapon of choice. A 32 round mag for your Glock would fit the bill. It would carry more energy thru a car door than a short barreled 223 launching a 55 grain pill at 2200 fps.

I am talking about short barrels not 16"+ guns. I have carried 10.5" guns as part of my work on numerous occasions. Towards the end I started using the longer guns because i preferred the advantage of the longer barrel over the convenience of a shorted barrel. Even today I prefer at least a 16" barrel.

Dolomite

[Guest 6.8 AR]

I heard the same when I was making

my pistol, and stayed away from the

real short barrels. The data for 6.8

is better in the 12-16 inch barrels.

I am going to mount a leather sheath

in the trunk of my car specifically for

a rifle. If you're in your car, the pistol

is just to get to the rifle, anyway.

But I'm amazed the people who see

my AR pistol and have to have one.

Built two others for friends.

Dolomite, I use mostly Barnes 85 gr and Speer TNT's for most of my 6.8

loads. They're the best ones I've found. Which do you think are better

for the pistol? Barnes also has a 95

grain copper bullet I'm going to load

up and try. From what I've read and

seen, it's like apples and oranges

between 5.56 and 6.8. I just shoot

the pistol out to the 50 yd target.

I doubt I could hit anything past that

with my pistol.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Dolomite_supafly]

6.8 is better suited to shorter barrels than 5.56. The 5.56 was designed to use a longer barrel and needs it in most cases to get adequate performance. Now if you were to load the 5.56 with faster powders to make use of the shorter barrels you could improve performance but then you would run into other problems. The 6.8, by design, needs less barrel to perform well.

I am a fan of fast over heavy because velocity quads the energy while weight doesn't. That is if you double the weight the energy only doubles while if you double the velocity the energy increase is inreased by a factor of four. Now energy is only used for comparisons because there is a lot more that goes into the ability to injured or kill.

[Mason]

The closest thing to an AR pistol I have had was a Kel-Tec PLR-16. I bought it thanking it would be better than an AR-15 because it was a pistol.

That was one of the two guns I have ever sold. I tried about 8 types of ammo and none would feed through the 6 types of magazines I tried.

Like others have stated, there is no real use for a combat rifle cut down into a pistol package. What looks like the best of both worlds is not any good at anything.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

My PLR-16 feeds fine with the factory 10 round mag and 30 round PMAGs. It was a jam-o-matic with a no-name 30 round steel mag the dealer threw in fer free. I only tried that steel mag the first time out and gave up on it. On a Keltec forum, the users were reporting good results with PMAG, so that is why I got PMAGs. Monkey see monkey do.

It is fun but not necessarily practical except making lots of noise at the range. It is about as accurate offhand as my Ruger mark II slabside at comparable pistol distances. A little more accurate in my hands than 9mm pistols. Haven't done bench-rest evaluations. Perhaps it isn't "naturally accurate" but just happens to be easy for me to shoot.