JamesF

I'm just having a hard time picturing us having any sort of fire get out of control during a match with so many hands ready to pitch in. I mean, we're burning trash out there literally every match day. Your range and your fear of fire may vary, but it's literally not even on the radar for us.

Not exactly what I was getting at. Have you ever seen any steel case Tula/Wolf/Barnaul/BrownBear/SilverBear ammo with a steel core? I have not, and it's pretty easy to tell what you're looking at if it has a steel case.

The biggest problem with all the anecdotes of "such and such ammo will put a hole clean through a target, I seent it!" is that you're talking about used steel! It's already got hits, and you can easily put a hole in a used target even with mild ammo if it's beat up enough - especially if your hit lands right on top of a decent crater that's already there. This is the reason why we used a brand new target, and marked all hits with a sharpie instead of painting over them. We wanted to make sure we weren't counting any doubled hits! If we had painted between hits, you wouldn't be able to tell. Haha pretty much. Living in the green part of the midwest, we have zero fire risk at our range and not many rocks to throw sparks. Our berms are dirt and usually covered in green grass. For S&Gs, I brought my 5.45 AR with me to the range and shot the s--t out of one of our newer pieces of AR-500 at 50yd. Probaby put 90 rounds of 7N6 on it plus five of lead core/steel jacket silver bear to clean out the corrosive stuff. When I went downrange to inspect the target, it was awesome how little damage there was. I think Wolf Gold .223 (no steel, will not attract a magnet) does more damage out of my 17" AR than 7N6 does out of my 16" 5.45 AR.

I dunno man, if you can't tell the difference between M855 and Tula/Wolf steel case without a magnet, you might want to find jobs other than checking ammo. If someone's dumb enough to load M855 penetrators with the green paint wiped off into steel cases to try and get a pass, they're also dumb enough to load 28 rounds of M855 into a magazine with the top two being regular brass ammo in order to get one over on you.

Pretty much this, especially once you get inside 100yd. Every .223 round we tested to include the 75gr left a dimple in the steel at 50yd. 7.62x39 however, with a *gasp* jacket of steel left what looked like a 9mm smear at 50yd.

We didn't test 308 ammo. I've never seen anyone bring 308 ammo that attracts a magnet to our match. We use strap hung targets at our match and our max range is 200yd. It works really well for us, when the targets are painted brightly it's easy to call hits at 200yd with the naked eye, even on our 6" target. What I have seen a lot of at our matches is people bringing steel case 223 ammo. We followed the 3GN rules on this in the past and officially didn't allow it, but when people showed up to our match I would give them a pass the first time around. Some of the steel we shoot at our matches is steel that I and the other gentleman in the video lend to the range for matches and I already knew that the steel jacket 223 wouldn't damage the steel. Now that 3GN has officially changed their tune, we're following suit. You can do as you like obviously. We're making an effort to cater to the consumer who ultimately pays for these targets through the match fee.

Wow, dude, You would have thought we made this video to personally attack you and your match by that response. We were going to do this test anyway to see what ammo we should allow at our matches, and decided to film it and share for the benefit of others. If you don't want to learn anything from it, you don't have to learn anything from it. Nobody's going to beat a door to your place demanding to shoot Tula, calm down. If you had bothered to watch the video, our conclusion was that M193 or any hot 55gr (to include Wolf Gold 223 which is steel-free ammo loaded by a Taiwanese plant that makes M193 for the Taiwan military) is a bad idea out of longer barrels. It makes a decent crater at 100yd and a huge one at 50yd. M855 is a bad idea period. And the steel jacketed stuff was nearly indiscernible from lead/copper 69gr and 75gr. Very little damage because it's not moving fast enough. Also, 7.62x39 steel jacketed lead core ammo (which is almost ALL 7.62x39 ammo) doesn't do ANY damage to the targets, not even a little pin prick at 50yd. I'd be beyond happy if everybody showed up to our matches shooting steel cased 7.62x39 because our steel would last forever. But that won't happen. Also, surprisingly (to me at least) 5.45 7N6 surplus ammo had pretty identical effects on target when compared to 69gr and 75gr .223 lead core/copper jacket ammo. We won't be banning that at our matches, either.

Depending on the muzzle velocity, I don't doubt it. The main danger in shooting inside of 50 yards is spall. You get a lot more stuff coming back at you than you do with pistol rounds. That goes for shotgun slugs as well.

Oh you'd think, but if you watch the vid you might be surprised what steel core 7N6 does to the target.

We've had a lot of people that show up to our 3-gun matches wanting to shoot steel jacketed ammo at our rifle steel over the years. I've always known it wasn't a problem, but rules were rules. I don't know how many of you noticed but 3GN altered the rules at some point (I think just this year) seemingly to allow steel jacketed ammo: That part of the rules used to specifically mention steel jackets. Anyway, I've long been of the opinion that what you really need to watch out for is people shooting hot 55gr out of longer (20"+) barrels, especially if you get down to (what's generally considered to be) the minimum safe distance of 50yd. Other disciplines like PRS-style matches where not everybody is shooting a .223 tend to institute a speed limit stated in FPS. We were going to test this just for our club, but we decided to make a video out of it for your enjoyment. We shot M855, M193, 5.45 7N6, steel jacketed ("bimetal") Tula 223, and plenty of other ammo at a new piece of AR500: Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47VrSrlF498

Nice setup!

Nice! Do you intend to do quads? That port looks pretty conservative.

Good to hear!

Able's and other online shops have decent deals on the Franchis. Have one transferred to your local FFL. That sucks about where you're at, not sure what 3-gun matches are local to you. Make sure you check out the "3-Gun Iowa" Facebook group. There's a "USPSA Iowa" Facebook group as well.

Cool! That's about what I did... I looked at them in person, and examined pictures of parts and parts diagrams and compared that to what I knew about my M2. It makes sense that Benelli didn't reinvent the wheel, especially if (as I suspect) many of these parts are made on the same equipment in the same facility. Were I you, I'd wait on another Affinity to go on sale vs. getting the M3K since you'll have more parts commonality. ETA: whereabouts are you in Iowa? We run 3-gun matches in Osceola.