[Zhang Fei]

What are the advantages of tube- vs magazine-fed rifles?

[SirLurkedalot]

With mag-feds you can use pointed bullets; you have to use rounded tips with tube fed rifles unless you want a chain fire. I’ve heard that’s a bummer lol

[Yo-Yo]

Tube fed rifles are usually slimmer than magazine fed.

Tube fed rifles are usually shorter at the receiver than a magazine fed rifle with the same magazine capacity.

Tube fed rifles work better with rimmed ammunition than magazine fed, which can sometimes suffer from 'rim lock' where the top cartridge's rim is behind the rim of the next cartridge in the magazine, keeping it from feeding into the chamber.

Disadvantages of the tube fed magazine include the inability to use pointed spitzer bullets, because the pointed tip of a round resting on the primer of the round in front of it in the tube magazine can cause a chain fire under recoil. So only round nose bullets can be used. (There is now a line of ammunition from Hornady called LEVERevolution that incorporates a rubber tip on a spitzer bullet, giving you the much better coefficient of drag than a traditional round nose soft point.)

Another disadvantage of a tube magazine is slower reloading. Magazine fed rifles can be reloaded quickly by either changing the magazine for a full one, or filling a fixed magazine with a stripper clip.

[Yo-Yo]

Oops, the quoted text should have been:

What are the advantages of tube- vs magazine-fed rifles?

[Yo-Yo]

Oops #2, the incorrect quote in my post also overwrote my first tube magazine advantage:

Tube magazine rifles are usually slimmer than magazine fed rifles.