DeadGator401
Two more things - some of you more experienced gun guys can comment on this as you'd have the knowledge. Is it possible for a .223 round (assuming that is what was fired) to just pierce a part of the ear? I'd think it would cause way more damage once it hit something, like an ear, even if it's a soft part.
Also, JDV is a headscratcher. Feel like if he went moderate, he'd really up the chances of winning. Guess he's going for the Rust belt type blue collar vote?
A .233, or more correctly, 5.56 NATO, very slight difference in case sizes/configuration, was designed during the Vietnam era to wound, not to kill, with the strategy being a dead soldier can lie on the battlefield until it is over, but a wounded soldier takes 5 people, who are no longer engaged in the fight, to remove them.
Now, that is not to say that if hit in the right place, like the head, it will not effectively kill, but a rock will do that. That is why most states, even if they permit AR type rifles for hunting, don’t permit the 5.56 for big game, like deer — they just aren’t that good at it and certainly are nowhere near as “powerful” as the media who had no clue make them out to be.
As someone mentioned, it depends greatly on bullet design how quickly and to what degree they expand or break apart — bullets don’t explode on contact — but rather 1) demonstrate deep penetration with little to no expansion, thus would be a solid point, often referred to as “armor piercing” and is the cheapest ammo available for the 5.56; 2) peel back in a pretty controlled manner to form a mushroom shape, this permits a degree of penetration first before expanding the wound canal for greater damage within the body, often known as “soft point” if the lead core is exposed or “expanding point” if a plastic polymer tip is employed; or to fragment rather quickly after a slight degree of penetration (a few inches of skin/bone/muscle) in order to create multiple wound canals, often known as “hollow points” because of the open cavity at the tip of the bullet which permits flesh to enter and cause the copper bullet jacket to break apart.
None of these would even start to expand on the skin or cartilage of an ear.
Now, that does not mean there’s not a lot of trauma in the immediate area, there is. A very hot, from the expanding gases of burnt powder that propel the bullet, the friction between the lands of the barrel and the bullet, and even the friction of flying through the air, spinning piece of metal traveling at +/- 3,000 feet per second, contacting flesh cause all kinds of damage, particularly in an ear that is very laden with blood vessels (when one of my bird dogs cuts an ear on cover, it looks like a cup of blood got dumped on them). It is also a very long healing process, at least with the dogs.
As for JDV, no idea about him, but if he said things about Trump in the past, which I don’t doubt that he did, there is already precedence for that — “It was just a debate” I believe was how Harris put it when asked how she could be Biden’s VP after calling him a racist over school bussing and then casually dismissing it.
But I’m posting to answer the ballistic question, not discuss politics.