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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has become a bit of a trope. Born in 1869 and popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, the man was an Indian revolutionary and anti-colonial nationalist who famously devoted his life to nonviolent resistance to oppression.
His peculiar pacificist choices amidst a world veritably awash in bloodshed earned him the honorifics “Venerable” and “Great-Souled.” His example went on to inspire many such figures in subsequent years, the most notable of whom was likely Martin Luther King Jr.
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The Beginnings Of Gandhi
Gandhi was raised in a Hindu family in the seaside area of Gujarat. At age 13 he married a 14-year-old girl in a wedding arranged by his family. He later said of the event, “As we didn’t know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets, and playing with relatives.” I cannot really comprehend Indian customs.
The couple had their first child when his wife was seventeen, but the infant died after only a few days. Gandhi finished high school at eighteen and then went abroad. He was trained in London as a lawyer, graduating in the summer of 1891. His Indian law practice failed, so he moved to South Africa to pursue more lucrative opportunities. He lived there for the next 21 years before returning home.
A New Worldview
Gandhi’s time in South Africa shaped his worldview. He returned to India in 1915 as a committed Indian nationalist and what we might these days call a community organizer. At this point in Indian history, his country was still an integral part of the British Empire. Gandhi set out to remedy that. Along the way, he made some powerful enemies.
I lack the historical acumen to accurately capture the state of that part of the world at that point in history. The complexities of geopolitics in a place where folks get married at 13 escape me. However, I get paid to do this, so I’ll give it my best shot.
As a point of personal privilege, we’ve been at this for some years now. There are literally hundreds of these columns in circulation. I learn a little something new every time I pull one together. I simply cannot tell you how much I enjoy it. Were it not for you guys reading this stuff I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do them. No kidding, thanks. Now back to the fascinating struggle for Indian independence…
The British Empire
The British governed much of the world and skimmed the largess for themselves. As you might imagine, this did not sit well with the peons who were digging the wealth out of the ground. This resulted in a groundswell of resistance against colonial rule that more or less continues to this day.
As the British began to relax their grip on their overseas holdings, the world began to fray at its edges. Sticky stuff like determining the borders between independent India and Pakistan ultimately sparked bloodshed that has never fully abated. It was the power vacuum that resulted from the British exit from Palestine that resulted in the bloody horror that is the Middle East today. We can all see how well that played out. Gandhi remained rigidly committed to a campaign of nonviolent resistance throughout.
Unpopular Philosophy
There resulted in uprisings, reprisals, and massacres beyond my capacity to catalog. Throughout it all Gandhi got skinnier, frequently fasting as a form of protest. By the 1920s, Gandhi was a folk hero to his people while being reviled by much of the world’s establishment. In 1931 Winston Churchill wrote, “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace….to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.”
Churchill saw Gandhi as a charlatan who used Indian nationalism as a tool to enhance his personal state. He called him the “Hindu Mussolini” and accused him of trying to spark a race war. While these accusations enhanced Churchill’s standing among the British people who saw their imperial holdings slipping away, they also increased support for Gandhi and his cause in Europe and elsewhere.
Some Rough Consequences
By the middle of the Second World War, Gandhi and his wife were in prison for their resistance to British rule, among other things. His wife died there in 1942. Gandhi was released in May of 1944 at age 75 out of fear that he would die in jail and inspire further uprisings.
After the war, the British were indeed finally ready to call it quits. They had run the world for generations and were now inclined to take a breather. However, now that the Indians had earned their independence they had to figure out what to do with it. That was easy to talk about but tough to do.
Once the British pulled out, the Muslims and Hindus in India began killing each other wholesale. More than half a million people perished in the subsequent sectarian religious riots. Millions more migrated in an effort to settle with folks who shared their worldviews. Throughout it all Gandhi fasted and worked at a spinning wheel as an example of nonviolence to his countrymen. However, by now the streets were strewn with corpses. Such rampant bloodshed, once unfettered, can be difficult to control.
The Assassination Of Gandhi
On the afternoon of 30 January 1948, Gandhi and his grandnieces were en route to a prayer meeting. They were surrounded by the sort of entourage that leaders like Gandhi accumulated. Among this crowd was Herbert “Tom” Reiner, the vice-consul at the American embassy in Delhi. Now hold that thought.
Nathuram Godse was a Hindu nationalist who had actually attempted to assassinate Gandhi on two previous occasions and failed. He was a member of the Hindu para-military organization the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He and his mates were perturbed with Gandhi for having been overly accommodating to Pakistan during the post-colonial partitioning process. As Gandhi walked through the garden toward the meeting, Godse stepped out of the crowd and fired four rounds from a Beretta M1934 pistol at close range. Three of them connected.
The Gun – Beretta M1934
The Beretta M1934 used by Nathaurum Godse that fateful day, serial number 606824, was manufactured in 1934. This particular weapon had been carried by an Italian officer during the invasion of Abyssinia and was subsequently captured by a British soldier as a war trophy. The particulars of how it came to India have been lost to history, but Godse was given the unlicensed firearm by a co-conspirator.
READ MORE: Dr. Dabbs – America’s First School Shooting
The Beretta M1934 was a simple semiautomatic blowback-operated pocket pistol chambered for 9mm Corto (.380ACP). The gun featured the classic Beretta open-slide architecture and fed from a single-stack, 7-round box magazine. The M1934 weighed 23 ounces empty and was produced from 1934 until 1991. 1,080,000 copies rolled off the lines. The M1935 was the same gun chambered in .32ACP. The M1934 saw widespread use among Italian, Romanian, and German forces during World War 2. It was a common war trophy brought back by victorious Allied soldiers.
The Last of Gandhi’s Story
Gandhi was hit three times and fell to the ground immediately. His wounds were described thusly, “The first bullet from the assassin’s seven-bore automatic hit the belly 3.5 inches to the right of the middle and 2.5 inches above the navel; the second hit the belly 1 inch away from middle, and the third 4 inches away to the right.” One of Gandhi’s nieces later described the noise from the gun as deafening. She also stated that there was a great deal of smoke.
Gandhi was taken inside and placed on a bed. There were no medical personnel nearby and only a small first aid kit available. Bystanders attempted to render assistance, but the man bled out and died in short order. Some said it was within moments, others claimed it took half an hour. Regardless, the man so completely committed to a life of nonviolence had indeed been violently murdered.
Aftermath
BBC correspondent Robert Stimpson described the immediate aftermath of the shooting, “For a few seconds no one could believe what had happened; everyone seemed dazed and numb. And then a young American who had come for prayers rushed forward and seized the shoulders of the man in the khaki coat. That broke the spell…Half a dozen people stooped to lift Gandhi. Others hurled themselves upon the attacker…He was overpowered and taken away.” The American Tom Reiner had indeed been instrumental in preventing the escape of the assassin.
Nahuram Godse was convicted in the Punjab High Court and sentenced to death. Gandhi’s two sons Manilal and Ramdas petitioned the government for leniency. The Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was having none of that. Godse was hanged at Ambala Central Jail on 15 November 1949.
Ruminations
Fully half the states in our great republic now allow some sort of permitless Constitutional carry. In my own state of Mississippi, every proper crowd sports a smattering of responsible armed citizens. Much hay has been made over caliber and bullet selection for proper social use. I have harvested a bit of that hay myself.
Most folks would say that a pocket pistol made in 1934 and firing smokey old .380ACP hardball ammo was inadequate for serious use. 78 at the time of his death, Mahatma Gandhi was admittedly both old and thin. However, three of these underpowered little bullets fired from an assassin’s gun still nonetheless extinguished his mortal light in short order. All guns, even old small ones, are clearly still potentially deadly in the wrong hands.
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Why Glocks? Do You Still Care?
The classic .25-06 Remington had exhibited little potential to make the transition to the modern long-range era—until recently.
Long ago, at the awkward age of 15, I slid my hands reverently along the beams of a massive mule deer buck my old shooting mentor Bill Cox had recently taken. “Just” 28 inches wide, the buck’s antlers were massive, long, and deep-forked. Gnarly Coke-can-size bases added visual impact. Already a ballistic nerd, I had to ask, “What did you shoot him with?”
“My old .25-06,” was his response, and he waved toward the customized Mauser 98 leaning in a corner. I had seen the rifle before. It had a long, heavy match-grade barrel free-floated in a nice walnut stock by Reinhart/Fajen (now Macon Gunstocks).
Bill had made the rifle many decades before, during a stint of weeding out the crows that were marauding his cornfields. His shooting partner had a 6mm Remington with more reach than Bill’s .22-250. Tired of getting outshot past 400 yards, Bill put a 28-inch, bull-diameter, .25-caliber barrel on a Mauser 98 action, chambered it to .25-06, bedded it carefully, and scored an 800-yard hit on a faraway crow the first day out.
I needed to know more.
When I asked if it still shot well, Bill suppressed a grin and dug out the target he’d used to verify his zero before hunting. It had one peanut-shaped hole about two inches above center. “That’s five shots at 100 yards,” he told me.
Awestruck, I looked from the target to the rifle to the big buck. Even at that young age I leaned toward bigger-bore cartridges, but I knew that someday I’d own a special .25-06 myself.
Legitimized in 1969 by Remington, the .25-06 is more or less simply a necked-down .30-06. Long before Remington registered the cartridge with SAAMI, wildcatters, including Col. Townsend Whelen and A.O. Neider, experimented with various iterations.
Early work produced uninspiring results when compared to the older .250 Savage and .257 Roberts because the gunpowders of the time weren’t capable of utilizing the .25-06’s increased case capacity. It wasn’t until surplus military propellants became available after World War II that the .25-06 came into its own, generating velocities that eclipsed the smaller quarter-bores.
Technically, the .25-06 has a relatively shallow shoulder angle—just 17.30 degrees. Maximum overall cartridge length is specified at 3.250 inches, so it will fit in all .30-06-length actions. That said, many rifles have slightly longer magazine boxes and will allow handloaders a bit of leeway in seating-depth. Case length, base to mouth, is 2.494 inches. Trim-to length is usually listed at 2.484 inches.
The case head measures 0.474 inch in diameter, just like its parent .30-06 case. As registered to SAAMI, rifling is a twist rate of 1 turn in 10 inches with six grooves.
Factory ammunition usually achieves around 3,000 fps with 115- to 120-grain bullets and more than 3,200 fps with 100-grain projectiles. Zesty handloads push 110- to 117-grain bullets to 3,150 fps, resulting in flat, forgiving trajectories at traditional hunting distances.
Recoil is light, usually less than 15 ft-lbs in an 8-pound rifle. (The .30-06 generates approximately 35 percent more recoil.) For varmints and predators, savvy handloaders can achieve up to 3,600 fps with a thin-jacketed 75- to 85-grain projectile. When a big coyote gets wary and there’s no time to laser the range, the über-flat trajectory and impressive wallop frequently makes the difference between bringing home a heavy pelt or just a rueful story.
Twenty years after I drooled over and dreamed about Mr. Cox’s .25-06, I watched friend and mentor Scott Rupp, editor in chief of RifleShooter magazine, pull off a challenging shot on a Colorado pronghorn antelope with his own .25-06 (a favorite customized Model 700 Strata by Rifle’s Inc.) Knowing he’s carried on a longtime love affair with the .25-06, I asked why.
“It just works,” he said. “It kills everything I point it at.”
Open-country Western deer and antelope hunters, particularly in Wyoming and the Dakotas, feel the same. While the .25-06 has never achieved the widespread popularity of its .30-06 parent cartridge or its .270 Winchester sibling, most likely because the bigger-diameter bullets are distinctly better for elk, it has a cult-like following among those who have used it.
Still, the classic old quarter-bore had little potential to make the transition to the modern long-range era—until recently.
Why? Because, as mentioned, it was originally specified with a 1:10 rifling twist rate, which is too slow to stabilize long, heavy, aerodynamic bullets that are so popular today. In fact, during the first century or so that .25-caliber deer cartridges existed, no bulletmaker made .25-caliber projectiles with high ballistic coefficients (BC). That’s understandable. If no rifle would spin them fast enough to shoot accurately, why make them?
Then, a few years back, an upstart company called Blackjack bullets created one. Its match-grade, 131-grain ACE projectile has an unprecedented G7 BC of .340. On the G1 BC scale, that’s about .645. Impressive. Designed for a necked-down 6.5 Creedmoor wildcat called the .25 Creedmoor, it was conceived to take quarter-bore performance into the future.
As a side note, I differentiate the .25 Creedmoor from the earlier 2Fity-Hillbilly cartridge created by my friend Richard Mann purely by virtue of its very fast rifling twist rate, engineered more or less specifically for the 131-grain ACE bullet.
Predictably, the 131-grain ACE requires a fast rifling twist rate to stabilize. Put it in your old .25-06 with a 1:10-twist barrel, and it will tumble on its way downrange and put keyholes in your target. Plus, .25-06 cartridges topped with ACE bullets may not fit in your rifle’s magazine. The projectile’s nose is so long, with such a sleek taper, it protrudes much farther than traditional .25-caliber bullets.
However, with a fast, 1:7-twist barrel, .25 Creedmoor rifles provide jaw-dropping long-range performance. I tested the Blackjack bullet in a heavy-barreled custom rifle configured for PRS-type competition made by Short Action Customs, and it produced half-MOA accuracy. To my surprise, the 131-grain ACE achieved nearly 2,900 fps and ballistically trounced comparable bullets in the 6.5 Creedmoor and 6mm Creedmoor.
While I’ve shot competitively for more than three decades and thoroughly enjoy doing so, my real passion is hunting deep in wild, remote country.
The .25 Creedmoor match rifle was much too heavy for that, but I reasoned a sleek .25-06 with fast-twist rifling would be just perfect. I could shoot traditional big-game bullets at deer and antelope, light varmint and predator bullets while calling coyotes, and the super-aerodynamic ACE bullets for extreme-range target shooting. It was time to build the ultimate .25-06 I’d daydreamed about in my teens.
Building the Ultimate Modern .25-06
A local gunshop had a Kimber 84L Classic Select in stock. I purchased it for $1,000 and ordered a 24-inch stainless-steel Bartlein barrel with gain-twist, T-type 5R rifling that started at 1:8 and increased to 1:7.48 at the muzzle. It cost $355, but I figured the barrel’s quality should provide the desired accuracy. To preserve the rifle’s minimal weight and make it optimal for backcountry hunting, the contour is nearly, but not quite, as slender as the original Kimber barrel.
Rifle and new barrel in hand, I had Steve Pratt of Elk Meadow Performance install and chamber the barrel and apply a fresh coat of matte black Cerakote. Then I had Roland Black bed the action. All that cost another $475. Total cost for my custom .25-06 was $1,830.
I mounted a Vortex Razor HD LHT 3-15X 42mm riflescope, and the finished rig weighs exactly 7 pounds, 12 ounces—just perfect for a Western deer and antelope rifle.
It took some work, but eventually Joseph found a handload with Alliant Reloder 16 powder that pushes the high-BC Blackjack 131-grain ACE projectile at nearly 3,000 fps and produces tiny groups.
As I write this, ammo and reloading supplies are scarce to non-existent. However, I had a few boxes of Hornady, Federal, and Barnes ammo on hand. Three of the six loads I tried averaged right at 0.75 MOA. That’s pretty stellar for factory ammo in a relatively lightweight rifle.
With a bunch of cases accumulated, I began developing handloads. I had several different 0.257-inch-diameter component bullets on hand, including the Blackjack 131-grain ACE bullets.
They proved to be a tad finicky. I couldn’t load them to kiss the rifling leade and also feed through the magazine, so I opted to work with the necessary jump. Single-loading cartridges, while possible, rather defeats the purpose of having a repeating rifle.
A charge of IMR 8133 generated more than 3,000 fps and resulted in decent 0.90-inch groups at 100 yards. To my chagrin, my first attempt with H1000 (a favorite powder of mine) produced just 2,755 fps and 1.36-inch groups. Back I went to the loading bench.
On the plus side, all the other handloads I tried—with a variety of projectiles—averaged less than one MOA.
In a continued effort to achieve a super-accurate, magazine-compatible load with the 131-grain ACE bullet, I worked up two test batches using Alliant Reloder 23 and Reloder 16. Reloder 23 is theoretically ideal for the .25-06 with heavy-for-caliber bullets, and I just wanted to try the Reloder 16 because I’ve had such tremendous luck with it in the 6mm Creedmoor cartridge.
Contemplating the possibility that the long, high-BC bullets could possibly be not “settling” yet at 100 yards, I loaded enough cartridges with Reloder 23 to test at 200 yards as well.
Wouldn’t you know it, Reloder 16 produced splendid groups, averaging just over 0.60 inch at 100 yards. Speed, at 2,973 fps, was about 60 fps slower than with IMR 8133, but accuracy was better.
Velocity was more consistent, too, In fact, velocity consistency was excellent with both Reloder propellants, with standard deviation well down in the single digits. However, Reloder 23 wasn’t as accurate, averaging a little over an inch at 100 yards. But Reloder 23 was what the extra cartridges for 200-yard testing were loaded with. Figuring I’d still garner some useful info, I forged ahead. I was not surprised to see that the long, slender 131-grain ACE did indeed shoot better, comparatively, at 200 yards than at 100 yards. Group-size average edged under one MOA.
My custom .25-06 doesn’t have the weight or length that Mr. Cox’s rifle had, and it won’t shoot one-hole, five-shot groups, but it is much more suitable for packing up steep, gnarly terrain. Plus, it will keep bullets supersonic all the way to 1,975 yards, courtesy of extreme BCs and the fast-twist barrel. And that’s something that wasn’t even possible just 10 years ago.
.25-06 Specifications
- Parent Cartridge: .30-06 Springfield
- Capacity: 70 grains of water filled to case mouth (as measured)
- Overall Case Length: 2.494 in.
- Trim-To Case Length: 2.484 in.
- Cartridge Overall Length: 3.250 in.
- Primer: Large Rifle
- Pressure Limit: 63,000 psi
Custom Kimber 84L Classic Select Specifications
- Manufacturer: Kimber kimberamerica.com
- Type: Bolt-action repeater
- Caliber: .25-06
- Magazine Capacity: 5 rounds
- Barrel: Bartlein gain-twist 1:8–1:7.48 rifling, 24 in.
- Overall Length: 43.75 in.
- Weight, Empty: 6.38 lbs.
- Length Of Pull: 13.75 in.
- Stock: Walnut with ebony fore-end cap
- Finish: Charcoal black Cerakote
- Sights: None; drilled and tapped for scope bases
- Trigger: 2.63-lb. pull (as tested)
- Safety: Three-position wing-type
- MSRP: $1,830
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