Wow, it's been a while since I last posted. Time flies when you're constantly inundated with high profile IT projects... Anyway, on to the topic at hand!
Unless you've been ignoring the gun market in the past decade (or more), you probably noticed a large jump in popularity of "Modern Sporting Rifles" or MSRs, which generally refers to AR-15 and AR-10 style rifles. I'm about as strong-willed as the next gun nut when it comes to new toys, so I couldn't help but become interested in MSRs, too. I assembled my first one a couple years ago in the oh-so-typical 5.56/.223 chambering. Now I'm looking at the other options that promise to take this rifle beyond its "mouse gun" stereotype.
Whenever a certain action type gains enough popularity, cartridge design tends to follow. This happened with the .308-sized "short" action, the .30-06-sized "standard" action before it, and many others before that. What I'm going to look at in this post is three cartridges that push the little chamber to its limit: the .450 Bushmaster, .458 SOCOM, and .50 Beowulf.
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