My immediate assumption was that it was 5.56 or 2.23. No analyzing it in the moment I saw the video, just seemed reasonable at the time. Didn't notice there was no obvious exit wound.

If you showed me that video for the first time and said, "The round was a 30.06.", I'd laugh in your face.

The facts the FBI has presented are laughable on many points. If this guy has a solid lawyer, I can see him sowing a shitload of doubt in the minds of the jurors. As it stands, with what I know in this moment, I'd let him walk. This evidence is far too smelly to be beyond reasonable doubt.

Anyway, I'm off to finally watch that video.

For a 30.06 round to be packed with so little, or such degraded powder that it would not penetrate through human bone at 150 yards, to even stand a chance at doing what the surgeon has described, it would need to have a KE of roughly less than 200 FT/LBs at 150 yards.

You typically only see that kind of wound behavior when the rounds invovled are roughly at or less than that amount of KE, either low powered pistol rounds, or moderately powered pistol rounds that have travelled a significant distance, or rifle rounds that have travelled a very, very, very significant distances.... or from rounds that are actually ricochets and have thus already bled off a lot of energy, and also likely mass.

What is being described is a straight on shot where the bullet stops 'just under the skin', presumably against the collarbone, possibly against a vertebrae.

No wacky internal terminal ballistics trajectories, no shattered bones, nope, just a bit of skin and soft tissue in the way, under an inch.

Also, no body armor, just a tshirt, no one has yet claimed officially that the shot ricocheted off of either armor or the ground or a wall or anything.

An average 30.06 bullet weighs ~180 grains.

To achieve only 200 FT/LBs of energy in that weight, you are looking at about 700 feet per second of velocity.

The average KE of a normal 30.06 round is around 2,200 FT/LBs at 150 yards of travel, has an average muzzle velocity of about 2700 feet per second.

A normal 30.06 round will have bled off maybe 300 to 400 fps after travelling 150 yards, from air resistance, down to 2300 to 2400 fps.

That means our theoretical underpowered, 180 grain, 30.06 for this scenario has to have a muzzle velocity of around 1000-1100 feet per second, less than half what a 30.06 typically does.

So, there, it would have to be a roughly 1/2 to 1/4 as much powder loaded, potentially also just less potent powder, as compared to a typical 30.06 180 grain round.

Sure would be neat if any of the casings with the messages etched into them....were, you know, photographed, and we could see those photos?

As far as I am aware, no pictures of the shell casings and or unfired cartridges have actually been published.

Hand loaded or custom loaded rounds usually have a number of tell tale signs you can use to differentiate them from factory rounds.

Anyway, reduce the muzzle velocity that drastically and you also drastically reduce the accuracy of the shot.

That likely is not even enough speed for a 30.06 to stabilize in flight, it would be tumbling over or around itself, 'yawing', not remaining stabilized, on point.

The most underpowered 30.06 rounds I am aware of, without going into custom reloaded rounds...

(which no one has yet even officially posited at all, and which there would be physical evidence of, reloading presses / crimpers, and powder stores and such, but they already searched his home and didn't mention any of that)

... are managed recoil training rounds, which fire a 125 grain bullet at approximately 2175 feet per second of muzzle velocity.

Thats about 1300 foot pounds of KE leaving the muzzle (thus between roughly half and a third the recoil, thats why they are training rounds), and after 150 yards of travel, it would have about 830 foot pounds of force, and be travelling at about 1725 feet per second.

Still roughly 4x too much energy to just be gently caught by a bone.

It is certainly possible, arguably even almost easy, for someone with moderate marksman training to make the shot Robinson is purported to have made with a normal 30.06 with a scope.

But uh, reduce the muzzle velocity down by more than half, and there is not a single sniper in the world who would tell you they could make that shot, on the first shot, in one shot, because they know how amazingly innacurate such a shot would be, no matter their shooting technique.

https://www.vcalc.com/wiki/30-06-springfield

Here, theres a bunch of ballistics calculators for you, if you wanna run all the numbers yourself.