Sig M338

[BigNate]

Just stumbled on this (old news for some I'm sure) - but as a guy who, many many years ago, humped an M60, the idea of a light machine gun in .338 Norma Mag gives me a big goofy grin. 300 grains supersonic to almost 2000M at 600 rounds/min... Yes please... Sounds like it significantly closes the gap between the 7.62 machine guns and the M2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSDjOM3i5_U

[Suck My Glock]

Supposedly SOCOM adopted it, but I haven't heard anything lately.

[paulgt2164]

Garand Thumb did a fun vid on this not too long ago :

[QuangTri]

Yeah,well, if the government is paying for the ammo.....

[Jack Dupp]

Yeah,well, if the government taxpayer is paying for the ammo.....

[Doc]

Yeah,well, if the government taxpayer is paying for the ammo.....

Quiet tax slave!

[aroyobob]

Yeah,well, if the government taxpayer is paying for the ammo.....

Also would be good if a few taxpayers were along to help hump the ammo.

[aroyobob]

Nikki Haley posed with one of these for the obligatory Republican-candidate-with-gun photo shoot a week ago.

[BigNate]

Yeah,well, if the government taxpayer is paying for the ammo.....

Good amendment Jack... I agree with calling this what it is...

Now - I find it funny (well - not really - more sad actually) that folks get their undies in a bunch over spending on the military - when provision / maintenance of the military is one of the very few constitutional mandates for the federal government. Want to know how upside down things are? We spend more on welfare handouts (which the framers explicitly said were NOT intended under the "general welfare" clause) than we do on defense... in fact its dramatically more. Here is the chart from the Department of Treasury (https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/america ... -spending/) that shows where dollars were spent in 2022. I've put a red box around things that appear to be associated with something that the constitution directly calls out as a federal responsibility. I'm assuming that "other" includes maintaining the federal judiciary and department of state - and I'm begrudgingly agreeing that we should pay the interest on the debt - even if it is debt that we've come to through massive federal overreach and the establishment of all sorts of unconstitutional welfare programs.

In short - at least 45% of federal spending is associated with some sort of social welfare program - government "providing for people" (I'm excluding the 31% that is social security and Medicare - which, although unconstitutional - are at least partially paying money back to people who put money in for that purpose - albeit into a pyramid scheme)... Note that "Health", "Income Security" are split out when these are both just "welfare" - but they don't want these to sum to 26% and make "Welfare" the top line on the graph... they really could include "Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services" in this too - for a grand total of 37% of federal spending being essentially direct handouts to people who make bad choices, or worse, make an intentional choice to simply live off of someone else's work (going back to @Jack Dupp 's clarification that all "government" spending is really "taxpayer spending..."

Anyway - bitching about spending money to give our military superior weaponry doesn't go very far with me. I'm no fan of government waste - I'm all for ensuring that we get the best bang for the buck when buying military gear - but I've got no problem with spending more on better bullets. I'm also convinced that if this weapons system became mainstream, the cost for .300 Norma Mag rounds would go from $3 each to $1 each or less (and certainly less for the orders of 100M rounds) once production ramps up...

Now back to our regularly scheduled drooling over a cool new firearm.