Colt Country | Home of The Almighty Colt

If you live out West here you see thousands of coyotes dispatched every year with .223 AR style rifles.   Most ranchers have one as their truck gun.    Badgers, prairie dogs porcupines and thousands of feral hogs are also taken with AR rifles in .223.   
Ruger has sold millions of Mini 14 and Ranch rifles in .223 caliber.    There may be better choices but .223/5.56 has proven to be a popular varmint cartridge and not just a range toy.

Here's my take on it: I much prefer .38 Special, .357 Mag, .45 Colt, .44 Special and Mag. But, I have a three screw .357 Blackhawk with an additional cylinder for 9mm. I can load it with a home-cast 125 grain flat nose bullet using homemade bullet lube and a small amount of shotgun powder. I generally load it to a very useful power level, in the range of 800-1000 fps. And the brass is free. It is not uncommon for me to pick up 9mm brass until I am tired of picking it up, when I stop at a shooting area during a motorcycle ride. I have a decent amount of .38 brass, but using the 9mm brass allows me to conserve my .38 brass for my better loads.

As for ARs, I like them. I also like lever actions, bolt actions and single shots. Front stuffers too. One does not preclude the other. I am a tinkerer, and the AR is a tinkerer's dream. As for 5.56/.223, I completely disagree about it being a worthless round. I like the .222 round more, but it lacks one quality the 5.56 has: free brass. See above comments about 9mm. I cast bullets for it, too. A 55 grain cast bullet conserves my lead supply, and pretty much any powder I have can give me a useful power level especially if I manually cycle the action (which also makes it easier to save my brass). From standard velocity/subsonic .22 LR power to .22 Magnum and beyond. That, to me, is a more useful power level than full power .30-06, for example.
And then there is .300 Blackout. You can make brass by cutting down some of that free 5.56 brass. I think of it as .32-20 for ARs, but with free brass. 

Mike,

Do you have any moonclips for the 45 ACP cartridge?

Kevin

No Sir,  I don't. 

I have a dissenting opinion on AR’s in .223/5.56 with boring black plastic stocks.  For their intended purpose I think they’re ideal.  Never modded one, never scoped one.  They’re not a sporting rifle, they are for something else.  They do have a rather sinister vibe though and those people who make a hobby (fetish) of them tend to be a worrisome crowd.  I take one for a range workout just once in about every two years but shoot black powder revolvers at least once a week.  BP is my own particular fetish and serves real well as a sublimation, too

The irony is, it's one of my closest friend's favorite close-range (brushy where he hunts) deer rifle, but I prefer his FAL more than any of his hundred-plus guns.

Back to the 9mm in a wheel gun, I subscribed deeply to the 80's era Massaad (sic) Ayoob hatred of a 9mm, then when (ironically the one mentioned above) my friend turned my wife onto a 9mm, for EDC versus the .40 she had, or the .45ACP/10mm I wanted her to move too,  did deep dives into ballistic charts. It's a pretty solid round, these days. And would make for a fun little plinker,  reckon.

 still think it's wrong, on a morally correct basis, lol.

  I’m going to continue to make em. Even if they show up in stores. I guess I’m a contrarian