Woke up with this thing in my bed.

The issue I saw was that someone who landed a shot that might be fatal with a .223 but would glance the target and be insignificant enough to wound the target leaving it to run away with a .22LR round stuck in their ass to become infected and die slowly. This is contrary to the requirement for the way they're put down to not be cruel required by law in his jurisdiction. Closest comparison we have where I am is shitty animal haters who go around shooting fucking stray cats. We don't have a horrible stray cat problem anywhere around here, but in my GF's neighborhood for a while there was a guy going around at night shooting cats that were outside. She had two come back with .22LR wounds in their hind quarters that were quite serious but totally non-fatal and the cat's recovered both times. one lost the leg, the other didn't mushroom and glanced the hip and exited up and out, to be found bloody on the sidewalk a few blocks away as proof. These were average house cats around the same size as a possum but probably a bit more muscular, and one of them is still alive today with all 4 of it's legs still functional. A .223 36gr travels at over 1100M/s compared to the .22LR traveling roughly half that at highest velocity load, meaning it does have penetrating power on something small you are correct. I just don't feel like it's going to be a significant threat to anything down range after going through main body mass. How wide is a cat on average, 6" for a skinny cat? watch this video. this is a factory overload .223 rated for a higher muzzle velocity than the specs i listed and it only penetrated ballistic gelatin 5 inches at a fairly standard range for hunting varmit. Obviously if you are taking out a possum in a tree outside your house using a lighter load would probably be a good idea, but as this test shows, unless you hit it directly sideways on main body mass, that a standard .223 with a much lighter load will have minimal penetration risk while delivering enough punch to definitely kill your target from the wound, and if not allow you to easily get to it and find it (without dogs, this is a pest killing situation for some, not proper hunting for consumption which is best done the way it always has).

/r/WTF Thread Parent Link - i.imgur.com