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As someone who doesn’t know about guns, what’s the difference? And why not the common 5.56 round?
.223 is just a cheaper generic version of 5.56. .223 is technically a lower pressure round than a 5.56 but they're interchangeable in any firearm chambered for them.
.22 is a small round not recommended for using to shoot at anything bigger than a squirrel. A sniper in particular should be using a deer cartridge like .308(the standard US military sniper round) or 30-06, both of which are substantially bigger and more powerful rounds than a .223 which is more powerful than .22.
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Simplified version: 5.56 is .223, 5.56 uses the same bullet as .22 but throws it a lot faster. Speed makes aiming way easier, and just like in car accidents, speed kills.
We don't know yet. Shooters of this type tend to be shockingly incompetent (generally because there are other things wrong with them)- and making aiming harder in a life-or-death situation and using a round that isn't sufficiently powerful is incompetence.
I think you meant to say .223.
No, .22 and 5.56 use what is, functionally, the same projectile; the simplest explanation for 5.56 is just a .22 with anger issues.
Sure, the projectile for 5.56 needs to be pointier and covered in copper so it doesn't disintegrate due to spinning at ~300,000 RPM, but it's not meaningfully different in terms of weight (from "slightly heavier" at 55-62 grains to "exactly the same" at 40) and identical in terms of diameter.
22 and 556 bullets are not interchangeable. They are shaped significantly differently, despite the similar nominal diameter. One is a little nub like a pencil eraser. The other is a long pointy spike.
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The bullet is very, very, very different. Like twice as heavy for one thing, 30-40 grains vs 55 to 90 grains.
Plus 223s are engineered for controlled fragmentation while your average 22 is, uh, a lead blob with some copper painted on, lightly crimped into a case. The ones I buy in 1k buckets wobble and can be pulled with multitool pliers.
The 90 grain projectiles are memes, though, as they're too long to fit in the most common magazine; 77 grain OTMs are usable but not particularly common. (Interestingly, it's possible to find .223 with 40-grain projectiles as well.) 55 and 62 are the two most common, and ~1.5x a small weight is still a small weight.
Again, this is the simplest version. (Is a Miata with a 500 HP LS1 still a Miata to someone who doesn't understand what a drivetrain swap is?)
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.223 is, essentially, 5.56. There's some variations between the two as .223 specifications were developed by civilians and 5.56 specifications were written by the military, but it's essentially the same round for most practical purposes, and most guns can fire most loadings of the two rounds interchangably.
.22 refers to .22 Long Rifle, an extremely weak round used for hunting rabbits and target shooting. The .22 LR has the same bore diameter as a .223/5.56, but has a significantly shorter and lighter bullet, and fires it at significantly lower velocity; 1000 feet per second, rather than the 3000 feet per second of the later. .22 LR would be an extremely poor choice for an attempted sniper assassination; it's plenty accurate at a hundred yards, but the low velocity means bullet drop, wind drift, and lethal effect are all greatly reduced. A perfectly-centered .22 shot to the head from a hundred yards has a so-so chance of killing the target. Anything less than perfectly centered and it's entirely possible the round would deflect off the skull or fail to penetrate into the brain.
By contrast, a perfectly-centered 5.56 to the head from a hundred yards is a modulo-certain instant kill, and has a decent chance of literally blowing their head apart from the hydraulic force of the impact.
Reminds me how this is a plot point in Day of the Jackal, where the assassin deliberately picks explosive rounds to make up for it.
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To add on to this, @mdurak, 5.56 is basically .223 described in international-standard (rather than American) terms, in order to aid military standardisation among NATO. .223 means "0.223 inches across the rifle barrel, in the rifling grooves" - imperial measurements and the American practice of measuring calibre across the grooves. 5.56 means "5.56 mm across the rifle barrel, not in the grooves" - metric measurements and the international practice of measuring calibre across the ungrooved parts of the barrel (the "lands"). (5.56 mm is, as you might expect, very slightly less than 0.223 inches.)
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