Chris Kyle .300 Win Mag

Below is an excerpt from the Chris Kyle autobiography “American Sniper” available from Amazon

Chris Kyle American Sniper

The .300 is in another class entirely. As I’m sure many readers know, .300 Win Mag (pronounced “three hundred win mag”) refers to the bullet the rifle fires, the .300 Winchester Magnum round (7.62 × 67 mm). It’s an excellent all-around cartridge, whose performance allows for superb accuracy as well as stopping power. Other services fire the round from different (or slightly different) guns; arguably, the most famous is the Army’s M-24 Sniper Weapon System, which is based on the Remington 700 rifle. (Yes, that is the same rifle civilians can purchase for hunting.)

In our case, we started out with MacMillan stocks, customized the barrels, and used 700 actions. These were nice rifles. In my third platoon—the one that went to Ramadi—we got all new .300s. These used Accuracy International stocks, with a brand-new barrel and action. The AI version had a shorter barrel and a folding stock. They were bad-ass. The .300 is a little heavier gun by design. It shoots like a laser. Anything from a thousand yards and out, you’re just plain nailing it. And on closer targets, you don’t have to worry about too much correction for your come-ups. You can dial in your five-hundred-yard dope and still hit a target from one hundred to seven hundred yards without worrying too much about making minute adjustments. I used a .300 Win Mag for most of my kills.

Everyone says that the .50 is a perfect anti-vehicle gun. But the truth is that if you shoot the .50 through a vehicle’s engine block, you’re not actually going to stop the vehicle. Not right away. The fluids will leak out and eventually it will stop moving. But it’s not instant by any means. A .338 and even a .300 will do the same thing. No, the best way to stop a vehicle is to shoot the driver. And that you can do with a number of weapons.

Kyle, Chris; McEwen, Scott; DeFelice, Jim. American Sniper (Enhanced Edition) (p. 135-137). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.