Subdeacon Joe Posted February 3, 2017 Share Posted February 3, 2017 My wife and I like to watch old Perry Mason movies. The other night the story revolved (no pun intended...or maybe intended) around a guy who decided to murder his wife, using a bolt-action scoped rifle to be fired from a convenient rifle rooftop into her bedroom. He is about to squeeze the trigger (trigger finger inserted into the guard right up to the knuckle. But he changes his mind and doesn't shoot. He deposits the rifle (with a round still in the chamber) in a handy vent pipe. Later, his wife is found shot to death. The bullet however penetrates the body and winds up badly smashed in the fireplace, too badly to get any clear rifling data from. The investigating officer says the bullet weighed 158 grains. Asked if the rifle also shoots that weight of bullet, he says yes! Perry then proposes that any number of .38 Specials or .357 Magnum revolvers could fire a 158 gr. bullet. No mention is made of the barrel groove diameter of the rifle. Now, I looked through the latest Lyman loading book and some others, and the ONLY .35 caliber rifle that is listed for a 158 gr. .35 caliber bullet is the .35 Remington. I suppose there are bolt action rifles chambered in .35 Remington, but for the most part that cartridge was mainly chambered in lever action and pump action rifles. (Turned out the wife committed suicide with a revolver, and there were other, more intricate details in the plot, not important here.) But using a pistol bullet in a .35 Remington rifle... OK, that's getting pretty darned esoteric. Without looking it up, how many of the regulars here know the full gamut of calibers, weights of bullets, etc? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpo Posted February 3, 2017 Share Posted February 3, 2017 (edited) This was a response to Noz. AGAIN I didn't realize we'd turned the page. I wonder how many of the folks complaining about that (and there are bunches) actually SAW the movie, or if they all just saw the previews. The people doing that had extraordinary mental abilities, and were using the power of their brain to cause the bullet to curve around things (similar to Magneto in the X-men movies). The "swinging the arm" was to help them visualize the bullet path. Edited February 3, 2017 by Alpo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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