9mm vs .22LR

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 5/13/2019 | S Coffman

[w1n1]

Which is better for Self-Defense, Hunting or Plinking?
The 9mm and the 22LR are two popular ammunition out in the market. They are different in respect to cartridge sizes. Comparing the two in a head to head is easy when you’re only viewing the size of the caliber. The 9mm is bigger than the 22 round.
The .22 rounds have much less energy than 9mm rounds, the powder load is smaller. When fired has less acceleration and kinetic energy.
Which means the penetration and knock down power is not in the same class as the 9mm caliber. However, that doesn’t mean the .22 isn’t good for anything. Beginner shooters can start with the .22. With the less recoil, it helps newbies in learning all the basic marksmanship shooting. For the more seasoned shooter, the .22 does offer speed in shooting and accuracy. Now thats not to say that you can’t do the same with the 9mm.

Which is better is not a simple A or B answer. These two calibers are quite popular amongst avid shooters, some may be more of the die-hard but it seems that they prefer these calibers for self-defense, hunting and plinking. Let’s take a look at why these purposes serve one caliber and not the other.

Self-Defense
For personal defense stopping an attacker in their track with good shot placement to the vital area takes paramount. Which is why the 9mm takes the lead in this due to the bigger size and was specifically design for this purpose. (no brainer)
A quick word about "stopping the attacker" it means creating enough damage to cause significant blood loss and/or causing enough pain to make the attacker change their mind. So even if you’re packing a .22 J-Frame revolver and put 5 rounds into the attacker which compelled them to stop is also a good thing.
Penetration is another important factor, the ideal penetration needs to be at least 12 inches. (according to the FBI)
Most .22 LR does not reliably penetrate deep enough to strike something critical. 22LR was never designed to be a self-protection round and it serves poorly as one. However, in some self-defense circle they believe its more capable than a lot of people give it credit for. For example, with the advancement in loads, the CCI Velocitor 40-grain small game load has been known to perform relatively well out of handguns.

Hunting
In this department its sort of unfair to compare the two for hunting because the 9mm was never meant for hunting purpose.
22LR ammo is a better choice for hunting for this purpose. The .22 is the more ideal round in this environment due to practicality. Of course we’re not talking big game here, but small game. Another thing is most .22LR for hunting is from a rifle. Unless you’re able to find a Stevens Model 35 pistol from the past.
This single shot pistol in rimfire calibers and the more rare .410 shotgun shell including the .22LR were the favorite of sportsman and target shooters of yesteryear.
The downside to this pistol is that its a single shot. This gun was knowns as “bicycle guns” because they were light and handy and perfect for bringing along on your country bicycle trip for small game and plinking. (back in the day) Read the rest of .22 vs 9mm.

[schurmann]

“Here’s an esoteric one....
Bullet weight in grains times bullet diameter times muzzle velocity divided by 7000. This gives John “Pondoro” Taylor’s “Knock Out Value” as he called it...” [Tijeras_Slim, post 58]

Just because your momentum equation is easy to calculate doesn’t mean it captures reality.

No one has succeeded in fully explaining everything that happens when a projectile hits a living entity. My guess is no one ever will: biological critters (human, animal, plant) vary too much.

Your equation can be of use in comparing the relative merit of one projectile to another. But the key word is “relative.”

John “Pondoro” Taylor amassed a lot of field experience, but he wasn’t able to collect the quantity & variety of data that has been gathered by the weapons development sections of the military establishment. No individual could do so.

[schurmann]

“...if a 9 is inadequate, might as well go with the lightest possible...” [dsc, post 59]

Gun enthusiasts insist on believing there is some discernible cutoff point, between 45 ACP and all smaller-caliber handgun rounds, in effectiveness.

There isn’t.

Comparisons of handgun-cartridge effectiveness are necessarily uncertain, mostly because targets that are alive vary too much. And collection of data from “real” events such as law enforcement or self-defense incidents will never fully dispel that uncertainty. There are too many variables, too many unknown conditions.

9mm NATO actually develops more kinetic energy than MIL STD 45 ACP.

[dsc]

“Comparisons of handgun-cartridge effectiveness are necessarily uncertain, mostly because targets that are alive vary too much.”

That’s certainly true, but the comparison I harken back to is between the .38 long Colt that was ineffective in the Philippines and the 1911 that was effective.

[schurmann]

“...the comparison I harken back to is between the .38 long Colt that was ineffective in the Philippines and the 1911 that was effective.” [dsc, post 63]

Not a valid comparison.

The Philippine Insurrection (aka Philippine-American War) was done with in 1902.

Colt’s first 45 autoloading pistol cartridge did not appear until 1905, firing a 200 gr bullet at a muzzle velocity of 900 ft/sec. The final version for commercial sale wasn’t standardized until a few years later: 230 gr bullet at 850 ft/sec. MIL STD 45 cal cartridge for handguns and submachine guns for WW2 and all subsequent procurement was a 234 gr bullet at muzzle velocity 820 ft/sec.

The first M1911 auto pistols did not reach US Army units in the field until 1912.

The 38 Colt military cartridge fired a 150 gr bullet to a velocity of 770 ft/sec and did exhibit poor effectiveness in action. Army Ordnance reissued Colt’s M1873 Single Action revolvers (declared obsolescent in 1892) on an urgent basis; the 45 Long Colt revolver round did provide superior output, firing a 255 gr bullet at a muzzle velocity of 860 ft/sec.

Army Ordnance adopted an off-the-shelf version of Colt’s New Service revolver as the M1909, in that year, purchasing some 30,000 guns. It was chambered for the 45 Long Colt, but the original case configuration (made for M1873 revolvers) had a rim so small the New Service extractor star fingers did not catch. A new version with a larger rim was made, but the new rims were of such a large diameter that they interfered with each other when loaded into the smaller-diameter cylinders of the M1873 revolvers. Only every other chamber could be loaded if the old revolvers were to function.

The selection of 0.45 inch as the minimum bullet diameter for autoloading pistols was made on the fly, on the strength of very sparse data. What is mostly forgotten now is that no small arms rounds provided sure effectiveness against the Moro juramentadoes. Not even the Krag-Jorgensen rifle firing the 30-40 round did the job every time; the 12-gauge shotgun gave best results.

Many of the features of the M1911 pistol were incorporated to answer the concerns of the horse cavalry. One is the grip safety. Some gun writers claim there was a requirement for the cartridge to be capable of putting down the trooper’s own horse, but I’ve yet to corroborate that in the official documentation.

[dsc]

“The Philippine Insurrection (aka Philippine-American War) was done with in 1902.”

So what?

Repeated rebellions by the Moros against American rule continued to break out even after the main Moro Rebellion ended, right up to the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II.

Read up before you start rewriting history. Out.

[schurmann]

“...Repeated rebellions by the Moros against American rule continued to break out...
Read up before you start rewriting history...” [dsc, post 65]

I’m not rewriting history.

I’m explaining how the military establishment developed and fielded weapons (and still does). This requires reference to actual documentation, not years-after anecdotes told and re-told around campfires, across mess tables, or traded during slow nightwatches on guard duty.

From the 1890s until early 1911, the US War Dept conducted a long series of evaluations & modifications of sundry semi-automatic pistols before choosing a new official sidearm for the Army. Developmental semi-auto pistols were not sent to the Philippine Department, so there wasn’t any side-by-side comparison between the standard issue Colt DA revolvers firing 38 Long Colt, and any 45 cal autoloader.

I can’t say why you insist otherwise.

[dsc]

“so there wasn’t any side-by-side comparison between the standard issue Colt DA revolvers firing 38 Long Colt, and any 45 cal autoloader.”

Not required. Soldiers on the front lines said “When I shoot them with this, they drop. When I shoot them with that, they don’t.”

Not good enough for you? Don’t care. Get into combat and check it for yourself.

[schurmann]

“...Soldiers on the front lines said “When I shoot them with this, they drop. When I shoot them with that, they don’t.”
Not good enough for you? Don’t care. Get into combat and check it for yourself.” [dsc, post 67]

My apologies: didn’t mean to lead you so far outside your area of expertise, not intentionally.

I assumed you were more familiar with War Dept organization, and armaments development history. Assumptions are risky.

By the 1890s, US Army Ordnance was well into a period when it ignored inputs from units in the field. It did so deliberately: early in his tenure as Chief of Ordnance (1874-1891), Stephen Vincent Benet stated for the record that Ordnance would no longer accept inputs from field units on arms development - weapons had become too complex technically for officers leading outfits there to understand.

Doesn’t matter what you or I think about the advisability of such an idea. It’s what they did.

It led to a long stretch of time during which the United States lagged other nations in weapons development & fielding, at a time when the state of the art was advancing more rapidly than at any previous time since gunpowder came into use in Euro nations.

It’s long been an article of dogma among civilian gun fanciers that the US military is backward-looking when it comes to adopting newer technology. Just why it all happened isn’t as clear as most of us believe, but politics, tradition-worship, and a bevy of other factors played roles.

I’ll toss in another causative factor - the general attitude of the American public, where citizens have long been uniquely un-militaristic despite our many accomplishments. I’ve watched stuff happen for over half a century, and haven’t come up with a better explanation.

“shoot them with this, they drop...shoot them with that, they don’t” sounds great, but doesn’t work in the real world.

First, as targets, human beings vary too much. Size, fitness level, excitation, range, weather conditions, etc etc etc. What stops one assailant may not do the job on the next.

Second, in action, almost no one doing the shooting can manage the levels of accuracy nor precision to assure a hit in the “right spot,” even if that spot could be determined before the fact.

Third, the data to determine just what happened cannot be collected. Wars are singularly bad places to collect what is needed.

Fourth, even if it were possible to negate all the prior constraints, we would still be unable to equip every soldier with a weapon effective enough to sure-kill the adversary each and every time. We cannot give each troop an atomic hand grenade, nor a 30mm GAU-8 aircraft gun. Such armaments would be too heavy or too violent anyway, for individual use.

There are always constraints: size, weight, cost, materials, etc etc etc. There are many more on the list. What’s more, the full list has yet to be compiled.

Just a few observations, from the 24-plus years I spent on active duty. 13 of them were spent in operational testing and studies & analysis.

[Reily]

Stephen Vincent Benet

Namesake & grandfather of the American writer & poet!

[dsc]

Just the kind of crap I would expect from an REMF.

Everything you said about telling how a weapon is performing in combat was nonsense.

When a Moro is screaming in, intent on taking your head with his bolo, and you shoot him at a distance of six feet, you f*cking well know how the weapon performed.

““shoot them with this, they drop...shoot them with that, they don’t” sounds great, but doesn’t work in the real world.”

I guess you really don’t see how dimwitted that sounds.

[schurmann]

“Just the kind of crap I would expect from an REMF.
Everything you said about telling how a weapon is performing in combat was nonsense...I guess you really don’t see how dimwitted that sounds.” [dsc, post 70]

On the off chance you’re not striking a mere pose, I can say I’ve been chewed out by a long list of people wearing multiple stars. Some were more eloquent, some were more forceful, and most used saltier language.

Occupational hazard in my line of work. I didn’t take it personally; the laws of physics were on my side.

Before being medically grounded, I served on combat aircrew in B-52s and B-1Bs. About 1/3 of that stretch of time was spent on ground alert, beside fully armed & ready bombers. Rather less exciting that shooting someone six feet away, but necessary. And when not on alert, I flew to spots you’d have difficulty locating on a chart. Doubts still exist, as to whether anyone took a shot at us. No way to tell for sure.

Feel free to launch another self-congratulatory tirade. Or not, as you wish.

One might point out that the individual footsoldier isn’t any more than a target, without all the other weapon systems & logistic support that has been built up, over the past 150 years or so. This truth should not come as news to any forum member, as it’s a key “lesson of history” from World War One.

[dsc]

Myself, I wouldn’t brag about a “long list” of f*ckups that got me chewed out by senior officers. But I guess things are different in the Air Force; over there where you evaluate the effectiveness of weapons without reference to anything that happens on the battlefield.

[schurmann]

“Myself, I wouldn’t brag about a “long list” of f*ckups that got me chewed out by senior officers. But I guess things are different in the Air Force;...” [dsc, post 72]

I don’t often laugh aloud at towering ignorance, but your post did the trick. Can’t afford the megabytes to spell out the particulars of what you don’t know.

I wasn’t mistaken; neither were the subordinates in my branch. Flag-rankers were having difficulties reconciling the whims of their own egoes with reality. Like a great many ambitious, impatient people, they took it out on us.

And I guess you didn’t get the word about armed services unification, which was mandated by Congress in 1947. My own office was so small and specialized, we had to work with every other armed service to get the mission done. Sooner or later we had to tell senior leaders from each and every service what was going on. Some smartened up and grew up.

It occurs to me we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface. Know this: wars are bad paces to collect data on weapon effectiveness. Absurdly so. It’s one of the major reasons operational testing is mandated.