As you might have guessed, either in reading the definitions themselves or just by looking at the words used, it’s all relative. There is no full-stop point at which a firearm becomes either large caliber or high powered. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “Well, that’s awfully vague.” If so, you’re absolutely correct. 30-06 is a much higher powered rifle than the AR. Consider the AR-15 and the Remington Model 7400 from Firearm Facts and Misconceptions Part I. If two differently sized bullets are flying toward a target at the same speed, the bigger one is almost certainly going to have more destructive power when it hits. Caliber certainly plays a part here as well.

Generally, the faster a bullet is traveling, the higher power it’s said to have. The definition here is considerably harder to pin down than that of caliber. After a shooting, one will often hear that the AR-15 is a high-powered rifle. The other descriptor is most often applied to rifles. Sometimes, people refer to larger caliber firearms as “large bore,” and that just means it takes a bigger bullet. 45 ACP, which has a bullet diameter of 0.452 inches (11.5 mm), is a larger caliber round and pistol than a 9 mm. The larger the diameter of the bullet, the larger its caliber and that of the gun. A 9 mm pistol shoots a bullet with a diameter of 9 mm, which is also 0.355 inches. In the gun world, caliber refers to the diameter of a bullet. Joking aside, the origin of Biden’s “high-caliber” confusion seems most likely to have originated from a misunderstanding of two terms one might hear in firearm discussions: large caliber and high powered. If a gun owner shows you a “high-caliber weapon,” that probably means it’s a favorite – regardless of what caliber bullet it fires. In short, if something is of high caliber, that means it’s of high quality. A High-Caliber Primer on Gun TermsĪ glance at supplies all the synonyms for high caliber anyone could ever need: admirable, exceptional, first-rate, remarkable, etc. “So, the idea of these high-caliber weapons is, uh, there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection, hunting,” Biden concluded. However, what he said next might slide under the radar and mislead even intelligent and sensible people who just aren’t familiar with firearm lingo. For most people with enough cognitive function to reliably tie their own shoes, that lung-removing bullet bit was obvious garbage.

When does high calibre come out