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Comment by cdjk | Hacker News Reader

Until someone figures out a way to make plastic bullets (pedantic edit: and cartridges) I'm not going to worry too much about it.

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http://wideners.com/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=8699

Plastic 308 rounds. Those are real projectiles, not dummy rounds.

I do not know if the entire cartridge is plastic, though. That primer definitely looks like metal. And I'm going to assume steel for the cartridge body (wow, it was hard to think of another word than 'brass').

Now, a fully plastic gun is another story...

Thus are military training rounds. The bullet are plastic, but the cartridge is brass. They are generally not deadly, and are sometimes used to fire at people with (as a form of paintball, but that is ill advised).

They are meant for training with outdoors. They are cheaper then normal bullets, less pollution then lead and don't goes so fare (a normal 7.62mm bullets can be deadly for upwards to 3.5 kilometers, making random shouting in a simulated setting outside unsafe).

More info about this bullets are available at http://gunlore.awardspace.info/rifledarms/ammunition/dag762b...

However caseless ammunition also exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caseless_ammunition . Thus could probably be made without any metal.

The IDF uses rubber bullets extensively as a non-lethal form of ammunition. I think during the Nth intifada there was a story about plastic bullets being used, with them being actually worse than metal since they wouldn't show up on x-ray, although they would shed energy and momentum really fast compared to metal.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/29/world/us-protesting-israel...

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/29/world/israeli-army-lawyer-...

Huh, very interesting. Those would definitely be deadly (considering that even "blanks" can be). I think the cartridge body might be plastic too, if I am reading that page correctly (probably not too odd, that is how shotgun shells are often made I think).

Of course those rounds don't have enough recoil to cycle a semi-automatic rifle so I'm not sure how much of an advantage having a high-capacity magazine for those would really give anybody.

I think the cartridge is mostly plastic too, since it says "plastic case cartridge... steel base...." And if it were steel why would they bother painting the cartridge blue? The primer is definitely steel, however.

In any event, the barrel at least has to be metal, so this seems similar to the risk of someone bringing gunpowder into a secure area.

"And if it were steel why would they bother painting the cartridge blue"

Do distinguished them from other rounds. When I was in the Norwegian military we had at list bullets painted:

Red: Blanks.

Blu: Plastic bullets for training. Cheap and less pollution then lead.

Yellow: Tracer rounds.

Never head of those before. Very odd. Looks like the whole base is metal, which you would expect, as I'm not sure plastic would be durable/stiff enough for extracting the spent cases reliably.

Still trying to figure out what on earth these things are used for. Seems too dangerous to be used off a proper firing range. What good are they?

Bullets are not the only thing which can kill even a compressed air canister which expels some sort of projectile can be lethal.

A lot of people don't realize that Lewis and Clark used an air rifle. There's a great little movie about it on Youtube[1].

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pqFyKh-rUI

That really has nothing to do with plastic magazines anymore does it? I'm sure they don't allow spear guns, slingshots, and potato cannons (not metallic!) in court houses already.

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