There's little difference between a bullet going 3,000 fps and one going 2,250 fps? I'm actually curious and not trying to be an ass. Why?
No worries. I should've been more clear. I actually had two intended meanings tied up in that.
First, as I said but with more emphasis this time, not a huge difference between NEWER straight walls (eg, 350 Legend, 400 Legend, 41 Great Lakes, 450 Bushmaster) and most (I should've said some or many) TRADITIONAL bottle neck cartridges (eg, 30-30, 35 Remington, 32 Special). You could also lump in other calibers with similar ballistics like 300 BO, 7.62x39, and disallowed straight walls like 45-70 and 444 Marlin.
Second - and I know this will be a more controversial take - although there's a huge difference in the ballistics (talking about the high velocity stuff now), there's not a huge difference in the impact on safety in the local context. In the LFDZ, most of the hunting situations where people have safety concerns are either on very crowded public land, or small parcels that are often semi-suburban (large isolated ag parcels are also a thing, but I feel like people usually have fewer safety concerns in that context). A lot of hunters and small parcel property lines are within easy straight wall range of each other already anyway - if a bottleneck is considered unsafe in that context, so should a straight wall. Under those conditions, most of the firearm related incidents that are not self-inflicted fall into one of the following categories:
- Mistaken identity (eg, joggers start to look like deer when you're drunk enough), and those usually happen at such close range it doesn't matter if you're using a 350 Legend or a 6.5 PRC.
- Short range with no backstop (eg, I didn't see the guy in the bush on the other side of the deer I was shooting at). Again, close enough caliber doesn't matter, and arguably the relative brush-blindness and bounciness (think of like a ricochet from a shallow angle ground impact) of a large slow bullet could present greater risk than a small fast bullet.
- Long range with no backstop (eg, shot at a deer standing on top of a hill and missed, and now that bullet is bound for the next county; or didn't see the other guy in that tree line 800 yards away). This is the situation where I concede the restriction has some merit. But given how flat most of the terrain is, shots at an upward angle are pretty rare. And given that most people now also hunt from tree stands and elevated blinds, most shots are actually at a downward angle anyway, and a miss ends up in the ground. I don't think this edge case is enough justification by itself to have a such a broad caliber restriction.
Hopefully that's more clear. It's just my opinion, and I know there are a lot of edge case not covered, but those seem so into the weeds when you look at the stats on actual incidents that lightning strikes start to seem like more of a concern than whether your neighbor's cartridge case has a shoulder.
Also, I just wanted to add: This is a separate argument, but the number of under educated hunters I've run into who say they like using a straight wall cartridge because they don't have to worry about where it will go - like they think it will just hit a magic wall and drop out of the air at 200 yards - is just scary. Whether the regulation stays or goes, we need to do better at reminding people that their straight wall rifles are lethal at ranges far exceeding the distance you'd actually take a shot at a deer, and you always Always ALWAYS need to be aware of what's beyond your target.
