What the gun shop guy was chuckling at was the US commercial ammo. it;s loaded to about 32 winchester special level, or just above 30-30 power. The original military loads are much hotter, as are european commercial loads. Both are close to 30-06 power level, as are handloads that use the actions strength level, not US SAAMI pressure levels. The US low pressure loads are because of a limited number of very early model guns that may have been imported, and had different barrel bore sizes. The US companies decided that they would load ammo that was safe to shoot in those few old guns from about the late 1890's or so, even tho most were supposedly rebarreled with later standard barrels by their governments. Make sense now?
