No one is immune to it. It is an all consuming desire in many facets of our lives. Be it happiness, perfection, success, etc. whatever it is, the PURSUIT drives us. The accomplishment of the unachievable, the possession of the unobtainable, the reaching of the unreachable. This is human nature, I believe and it is strengthened by the portrayal that there is or has to be something that is a skosh better than that which already exists.
Granddad’s ol’ fourteen inch, 18 ounce Estwing claw hammer with the big chip missing out of the corner of the hammer face (gotta wonder how that happened) for example. The hammer worked great for granddad. Dad even used it for his building projects around the property. But here you are with a deck project and it’s not good enough. Your neighbor, who is a professional carpenter by-the-way, uses the latest 18 inch, 24 ounce Stanley and says “it is THE tool” for building projects. So for $129 plus tax, you now have a tool to do what man has been doing with rocks for thousands of years.
Grandma’s bread recipe? Oh yeah! Add a skosh of this for a savory loaf. Substitute this for that because someone, somewhere, said it’s better for you. Everybody’s methods get a revision. Brand new vehicles need new rims and stereos, old fishing poles get upgraded and replaced, old model machines get upgraded, etc.
What’s wrong with the old? Funny you should ask. Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all is wrong with the old…it’s just that the newer is better. Right?
Antiquated Irrelevance
In this post, post-modern era everything is deemed antiquated and irrelevant especially if it was in common use in the 20th Century. Anything pre-2000 is a bane to society and continual deterrent to real growth and progress. I for one, would argue that something is not necessarily better because that something is new, and IF something is better (that’s a big IF) it does not necessarily make the previous version obsolete.
I have been shooting the Triple-deuce (222 Remington) nearly as long as I have been shooting the 22 Long Rifle. I started shooting the twenty-two when I was 6 years old and 3 years later the love affair with the 222 began. Over the past forty years approximately 8,000 rounds have been fired from the barrel of my Remington Model 788. The majority of these cartridges were loaded with 19.5 grains of 4198 powder (Hodgdon or IMR) behind a 50-53 grain HP rimfire jacketed bullets. The other primary load used is 23.0 grains of H-335 or WC-844, a Military Surplus powder. Both of these loads can champion 40-55 grain bullets of any configuration.
NOTE OF CAUTION: The above mentioned loads are what I consider medium to moderate loads. None of them run at or approach the super high-velocity which the cartridge is capable. No combination of listed powder charge or bullet recommendation is unsafe in my firearm. All possible combinations have proven themselves on numerous game animals, small and big at ranges of one yard to 400+ yards.
Having deduced the above information and knowing absolutely that the loads work and are efficient, why would I mess around with and change them up in any way? Well for one, I’m human and that’s what we do, fiddle. Second, loads that will be used during the winter months are loaded one grain or so heavier due to velocity loss in extreme cold. Finally, there’s marketing.
Marketeering
We’re all subjected to it whether we like it or want it, know it or not. Television, radio, magazines, billboards, newspapers, social media platforms, internet browsers, etc. the bold, the new, and the greatest is perpetually blasted to our senses all throughout the day. It is the answer to the question you never had, the solution to the problem you never new existed. It’s not all bad though.
For example, new powders and projectiles can ignite a new found interest in an old cartridge (such as the 222 Remington) and increase the cartridges’ ballistic performance, thus introducing new shooters to the fold and keeping old shooters from developing rigor. Granted many ol’ long time shooters (BangBoomers I call em) are beyond this “new hype” and they’re fairly easy to identify in shooting forums and social media. Nevertheless, anyone can get bit by the “new hype” bug and before you know it you’re convinced you’ve been cheated because “ol’ faithful” ain’t doing what someone else says it could be doing.
For the Average Joe “new hype” cartridges can be broken down thus; a new gun ($450 to $900), an optic ($300 to $800) and enough ammo to determine if it’s a keeper (100 to 500 rounds; $150 to $600). So for the “modest” price of $900 to $2300 Average Joe can purchase the experience of having a “boom stick” that fires the latest, greatest, and newest cartridge invented at the time.
The Above Average Joe (Hobby Joe) purchases a barrel ($300 to $500), a die set ($50 to $100), brass ($100) and for the small price of $450 to $700 Hobby Joe can have the latest whizbang cartridge to shoot. The Way Above Average Joe (Shooter Joe) can shave off the $100 brass as they have a knack for repurposing brass. The big savings for Hobby and Shooter Joes come in their propensity to swap optics and have powder and bullets already on hand. The real cost is in time.
Ultimately, Shooter Joe discovers that 85 to 95 grain bullets from a 22 Creedmoor yield little advantage over 95 to 105 grain bullets from a 6mm Creedmoor, 243 Winchester or 6mm Remington. As far as lighter bullets, 50 to 70 grains, Shooter Joe has spent $500 to duplicate his 22-250 Remington which sits in the back of the safe and under perform the afore mentioned 6mms.
But it was fun wasn’t it? You got to experience and experiment with the newest and latest FAD cartridge and admittedly it is accurate, and man does it shoot flat! It just may become a staple in the gun safe. As we all know money spent on a gun is money NOT spent in the bar.
Be Smart About It
Marketing’s sole purpose, I believe, is to make us forgetful and blind. We forget how much simpler some things were and we don’t realize how much harder certain things have become. Our parents and grand parents used to say, “If it ain’t broke, it don’t need fixing.” We all grew up and knew what it meant but we didn’t understand it at the time because there was always some improvement that could be made. It takes a certain amount of time (age) and experience to come to the realization that you only know what you know, all the while not knowing what you don’t know, and sometimes what we know we know just ain’t so.
In the Bible God says, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge” and that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” Hosea 4.6; Proverbs 9.10
Experience and knowledge are the two types of learning necessary to gain understanding. But understanding without the development of a corresponding emotive element such as desire, passion, love, respect, admiration, fear, empathy, etc. just results in an education and not true Wisdom.
When we understand the ways of the world and become wise to the tactics of the Marketeer we will not be tempted by that which is tantalizing to our fleshly desires. It is by wisdom that we discover the “new” exists only to draw us away from our experience and into a “new” knowledge. (Sounds like a story we’ve heard before, yes? Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden perhaps?)
Lest you think I’m poopooing on all things “new” and “potentially” better, I’m not. ALL things hyped as new, better, greater and FADDish have an application, they are just not ALL applicable to me based on my experience and knowledge. To know and understand this is true wisdom. I understand and respect those who’s disciplines experience continual growth; new development and application are necessary to maintain an edge in future progress of any individual within a field.
Experiential Application (Pursue Your Desire)
Here’s a benefit for Hobby and Shooter Joe that even they may not realize with all the “new hype, hipster” cartridges. Many of these new cartridges have identical or similar case capacities as the cartridges of yore. With the development of new cartridges comes the obsolescence of older cartridges. Extrapolation of new powder data can be done between cartridges of the same or similar powder capacity. Thus one can easily come up with a recipe for granddad’s ol’ 6.5 x 257 Roberts, or dad’s 6mm-250 varmint gun.
NOTE OF CAUTION: Extrapolating data for one cartridge from another cartridge is not a recommended practice for those not “wise” to reloading. Bullets of the same weight and profile must be use. Bullet protrusion inside the case must be determined to arrive at case capacity. Case capacities thus approximated must be precise and vary no more than 0.2 grain. If the preceding sentences do not make sense then do not attempt to extrapolate data without guidance from an experienced handloader.
So never mind the naysaying “BangBoomers” when they chide, “The 6.5 Creedmoor doesn’t do anything the 6.5×55 Swede hasn’t been doing for 130 years.” They are knowledgeably correct while being experientially wrong, lacking the applicable knowledge and emotive understanding to be truly wise. Which in my parlance is to say, “They’re educated idiots who are right full of shit.”
Those Who Can't 