MAKING elaborate calculations for range and wind, a rifleman aimed at a target of armor steel. His heavy slug went halfway through the metal and raised a bulge on the other side. Another marksman put a small club-shaped weapon to his shoulder and without bothering to correct for the range fired into the same steel slab. His bullet went all the way through, exploding and expanding as it pierced the metal. The remarkable thing about this was that the first rifleman was shooting a standard 30.06 army gun, while the second was using a small 22-caliber rifle. It was an unusual 22, to be sure. The ordinary 22 will hardly knock down anything bigger than a rabbit, yet the new one is a big-game rifle and has been used in every part of the world against all sorts of game. As far as is known every animal hit by it has dropped dead in its tracks. Even when hit in the lower part of a leg ananimal dies at once. There is no record that it has ever merely crippled or wounded. This sounds something like the futuristic ray gun of the comic strips, and in away that is what the little rifle is. It has added an entirely new principle to the science of ballistics. The tiny .22 pellet, weighing about one tenth of an ounce, travels at super-high velocity. It kills by hydrostatic shock. It has the same effective range as an army rifle but has a drop of only 4 1/4 inches at 400 yards as compared to the four-foot drop of service ammunition. It explodes on contact even with a twig, yet it is armor-piercing. Super-high velocity is one of the contributions that “wildcat” gunsmiths are making to their art, and it is having an effect on sporting and military guns. These “wildcats,” the independent gun makers who build fine guns to special order and who charge you $200 to $600 for one, have been experimenting with super-high velocity for-years. One of these is Ralph Waldo Miller. At his ranch at the end of a dirt trail off Topanga Canyon near Los Angeles he will build you a Miller Magnum .22-caliber rifle that will give you a triple advantage in a duel with, say a German or a Jap soldier armed with one of their best military shoulder weapons. At any ordinary distance you could point your gun directly at your victim, while he has to guess your range and elevate his sights. When you pull your trigger you get a light tap on the shoulder. When your opponent fires the recoil batters his shoulder bone and unsteadies his aim. If he hits you the wound may not be serious, but when your first bullet strikes him the fight is over. The terrific speed of the bullet does the trick. The pellet gets its tremendous velocity from an oversize powder charge that would blow the gun to pieces if it were not for the careful shaping of the cartridge which has been designed to direct the expanding gas out through the barrel. Miller’s .22 magnum bullet, spitzer pointed and copper jacketed, weighs 40 grains grains and the powder charge behind it weighs 70 grains, as compared to the 214 grain powder charge behind an ordinary 22 long rifle pellet. An army bullet weighs 150 grains and is propelled by only 50 grains of powder. The army bullet has a muzzle velocity of 2,700 feet per second and the ultra-high-speed .22 bullet leaves its gun at about twice that speed. This accounts for its flat trajectory which practically eliminates the mathematics of sighting, and for its tremendous killing power. The sudden and intense pressure to which a live target is subjected even when the skin is hardly creased disorganizes nerve centers all over the body, resulting in immediate death. If super-high velocity is so good, why doesn't the army adopt it and abandon its present infantry cartridge which hasn’t been improved since 1906? There are several reasons. New guns would have to be built to replace the millions of rifles now in service and there is no time at present for such a change-over. Even though our infantry-man’s gun and cartridges are old-fashioned they are still the best combination now used by any army on earth. Another objection is that ultra-high velocities are hard on gun barrels. The present army rifle is good for upwards of 5,000 rounds while the barrel of a super-high velocity gun wears out within 1,000 rounds. Present super speeds have been possible only since the development of the new chrome-moly-manganese alloys and after more research with alloys a more enduring barrel material may be found. But these objections don’t apply to special service weapons such as tank, antitank, and antiaircraft guns and there is a rumor that super-high velocities already have been adopted by the Germans for one anti-tank gun design. Barrels for such guns can be replaced at frequent intervals, The special cartridges would be no more of a supply problem than the special shells that are now required. Since an ultra-high-velocity bullet is both armor-piercing and explosive it does the same job as a high-explosive shell at less cost. Upon striking an armored surface a super-high-velocity bullet is liquefied and literally flies into dust. But it imparts its tremendous energy to the metal it strikes, blowing out a hunk of it, shattering it into small pieces, and spraying it through the air behind the armor plate in an expanding cone pattern. It is estimated that a 50-caliber ultra-high-velocity machine gun would be more effective than a 37-millimeter cannon of present design and in addition would be cheaper, smaller, more mobile, and easier to aim. Another improvement that custom gunsmiths have made is in reducing the length of a gun without shortening its barrel. The barrel and action are moved back on the wooden stock so that the action is right at the butt of the stock instead of over the trigger, which remains in the usual place. The result is a club-shaped weapon that is about 14 inches shorter than conventional design. Called a butt-action carbine, it has good balance and is as easy or easier than an ordinary gun to aim and shoot. The design is still in a state of flux and additional improvements may be made. The butt-action carbine owes its development to the automobile. A long-barreled rifle is an awkward weapon to handle in and out of a car and for that matter is unhandy when carried in a saddle holster. The new design is much easier to manipulate in close quarters. Because of this, gunsmiths think that the butt-action eventually will be adopted for parachute troops, motorized troops, and for other groups that must operate in confined spaces. Another trend in sporting rifles that is expected to be reflected in military weapons is the increased use of telescopic sights. Military sharpshooters have used them for decades and now they seem to be coming in for more general use. The sighting telescope is mounted above and parallel to the gun barrel. For shooting against fixed targets in competition, scopes of up to 25 power are used, which give the shooter the advantage of examining the target practically under a microscope. At 100 yards range the target appears through the scope to be only a few yards away. This power is too extreme for the field, and for hunting and for military use scopes of about four power are preferred.