Home AR-15 The power behind AR-15 style rifles

The power behind AR-15 style rifles

681
29

Cynthia Bir shows Scott Pelley the difference between bullets shot from an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun using specially-formulated gelatin targets that were designed to represent soft tissue in the human body.

#60Minutes #News

“60 Minutes” is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen’s Top 10.

Subscribe to the “60 Minutes” YouTube channel:
Watch full episodes:
Get more “60 Minutes” from “60 Minutes: Overtime”:
Follow “60 Minutes” on Instagram:
Like “60 Minutes” on Facebook:
Follow “60 Minutes” on Twitter:
Subscribe to our newsletter:
Download the CBS News app:
Try Paramount+ free:

For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, social media, internet forums. etc.

29 COMMENTS

  1. OK now try A 308 or 762 by 63 that's 3006 you're gonna see more massive and that's considered a hunting around Comparing handgun rounds to rifle round is like comparing a knife to a fist fight

  2. To have any kind of gun regulations in America.. have to either shoot a president and has to be a republican one at that.. or get people to believe when is the fire power too much firepower?? And do we want a kids 1st gun to be a 30rd people killer. I'm my day you got bb gun then .22 next shotgun .. deer hunting rifle ! An AR or AK was something you bought as an adult with a job and years of experience.

  3. “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
    That statement doesn't mean what most AMMOSEXUALs think it means.

  4. One point not made is that, paradoxically, the .223 round can be more lethal than a .30-06 deer rifle round (although the latter didn't do Medgar Evers or JFK any favors.) This is because the AR-15 round doesn't pass all the way through the body. When it tumbles inside your Liver, you have chopped liver. You don't even need to get it in the Brain or Heart. True, there is more powder; a gas operated rifle can use a bottlenose cartridge. And, I believe the bullet is longer, and therefore more massive, than the one used in a .22 Varmint rifle. Also, like a semiautomatic handgun, this rifle has a high rate of fire. With mass shootings, that's the BIG one. The Korean at the Virginia college had three handguns, and killed many people, too. But, most of the mass killings have been from this type of rifle.

  5. It is illegal in most states to hunt a deer with a .223/5.56 because it doesn't have enough power and our own soldiers complained about it's lack of power. They claimed that a man could take five or more rounds and keep on running. But yes, it has soooooooooooooo much 'power.' You guys are CLOWNS.

  6. What a dishonest video.

    Comparing a .556 frangible round with a 9mm target round is dishonest. Why not compare two frangible rounds or two jacketed target rounds?

    Notice they don't show a 9mm hollow point round hitting ballistic gel. That would ruin their presentation. Anyone can look videos of that up on Youtube. A good one is "Super Slow Motion – Hollow Points Hitting Ballistic Gel & Food."

    They also imply that an AR-15 somehow relates to "power." Power in a rifle is related to caliber and barrel length, not the "style" of rifle. That's just dishonest.

    What distinguishes an AR-15 "style" of rifle from others is simply that it consists of a separate upper and lower easily disconnected via the use of two take down pins. AR-15s come in all sorts of calibers from .22 all the way up to .308. Other non-AR-15 style rifles also come all sorts of calibers. AR-15 is just a STYLE. It's like a convertible is a "style" of car, it doesn't make the car faster. That has to do with the engine. With a rifle it's the caliber.

    I know 60 Minutes thinks many of their viewers are ignorant and easily manipulated, but that's not true of everyone. If you want to engage in an honest discussion on a subject then at least be honest.

  7. Looks like they probably used a cheap FMJ round for the 9mm gel test. This is not an apples-to-apples comparison as that's a cheap target load not used for human targets. Only a stupid mass shooter would choose such a load. Show us what a 9mm HP Hydra-Shok load does.

    Also, I would bet a milspec 7n6 load or any commercially available ballistic-tipped load from an AK74 would do similar damage. Watch the AK74 Hornady V-MAX gel test vids here on YouTube. Those things go nuts inside gelatin. And don't even get me started on what a 7.62 NATO round from an HK91 or FAL or an ordinary buckshot load from an ordinary riot shotgun will do to a human being. You get shot with one of those and it wouldn't be long until you started wishing your assailant had had an AR-15 (if you were actually alive to be wishing for things.) The ballistics tests are all here on YouTube; watch them.

    The AR-15 is not somehow uniquely evil. As usual, journalists are either sensationally lying or clueless.

  8. OK CBS, now why don't you do the same test with a typical deer hunting round like .308 or 30-30? Or a pre-1950 military round like a 30.06 Springfield that pre-dates this super lethal "AR round" that you're focusing on? Or maybe even use a standard 12 gauge shotgun, you know, the one Biden says we should just get instead of an AR-15? The reason you won't is because it would do far more damage to the gel and it would ruin your narrative that the 5.56 round is so lethal and beyond the pale of what a civilian would ever need.

    The reason the US military picked the 5.56 was because they realized their existing standard battle rifle rounds were overpowered for what they typically needed, at the expense of logistics. The 5.56 is actually smaller. The truth is that virtually any rifle/long gun is going to do a lot more damage than a pistol at short range — but your focus is on ARs because you think you can make them the boogeyman and leverage them for eventual universal gun bans.

Leave a Reply