Posted on 02/26/2011 8:19:05 PM PST by Artemis Webb
I have a Taurus 94 .22LR 9 shot revolver. Does ammo make any difference as a self defense or concealed carry weapon?
Mu primary CCW pistol is a compact 9mm.... but I DO have a .22 WMR derringer that occasionally resides in my pocket, especially in the hottest weather. A .22 is better than nothing....
Remington .22 LR Yellow Jackets.
But a .22 is for targets, varmints, or as a hideaway back up.
For realistic personal protection, use a .38 special or larger.
A .22 will most certainly kill a man, but the object of personal protection is to stop a man. And don’t kid yourself into thinking that you will sharp shoot that .22 into an eyeball in a combat situation. You will want to aim for center body mass with something that will make a big hole.
Yes, ammo makes a difference. 45ACP is much better than 22LR, but you may have a hard time getting it into the cylinders.
Use hollow point LR and fire all 9 as quickly as possible then throw the pistol at him ‘cause he’s probably still on his feet and REALLY PISSED!
Perhaps Hornady will, similar to their “light magnum” loads for .308, 30.06 etc. New powders seem to be impressive. .22 MRF velocity in a .22 LR case with those V-Max, with standard pressure, would remake the .22 LR.
On the other hand, every clear headed self defense expert will tell you that a .22 is a very poor choice for a personal defense weapon because of the lack of stopping power. A .38 special can be had in just as light and concealable a weapon, with .40s and 9MMs not far behind.
I think a .22 is a great choice
Making you a consensus of one.
There are an awful lot of people killed by .22’s. Did all the shooters just get lucky sir?
There’s NO question in any well-informed gunnie’s mind about the number of people killed by .22’s. Their numbers are high.
But those deaths don’t happen as quickly as someone using a .22 for self-defense might like.
Here’s an example: In central Nevada years and years ago, we had a guy who attacked someone, was shot by the attacked person with a .22 revolver (much like what we’re talking about here).
Said attacker broke off his attack, got in his pickup truck, drove back to town, walked into a bar and ordered a couple of drinks. About 40 minutes later, he fell off the bar stool, dead as a wedge.
That’s a great example (IMO) of the efficacy of .22’s for killing. That guy would have been dead even if he hadn’t bellied up to the bar and instead tried to drive the 90 minutes to a ER that could have maybe plugged some of the holes in his guts. He bled out internally. There was no exit wound, the bullet just bounced around inside his internals.
In a self-defense weapon, tho, you’re not out to kill your assailant at some future point in time. You want to *stop* him. Right now. Not in 10 to 90 minutes when he finishes bleeding out.
And that’s where the .22LR fails. Absent a CNS shot, a .22 doesn’t stop an attacker quickly.
I agree. Everyone should own a .22 whether rifle, pistol or revolver. 5,000 rounds lasts a long time and costs only a couple hundred bucks.
Carrying one for self defense, when there are other better options... well, that’s not necessarily the best use of a .22.
(http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/849728/posts) ... General Julian Hatcher, in the early 1900’s developed a good formula to determine the theoretical stopping power of a firearm cartridge. His formula has withstood the test of time and validation from other studies and data related to stopping power.
You want a handgun cartridge that has a Hatcher value of over 50 for the most effective stopping power. Values over 55 have diminishing returns in that you don’t gain any significant increase in stopping power for the extra recoil and control you must cope with. Handgun cartridges that don’t make a value of at least 50, should not considered for self-defense. If the rating of your handgun cartridge is under 30, it only has about a 30% chance of producing a one shot stop. Hatcher Ratings of 30 to 49 raise a one shot stop to approximately a 50% chance. Ratings of 50 or higher produce a one shot stop about 90% of the time.
Handgun Cartridge Type ..................... Hatcher Rating
.45 ACP full metal jacket 230 grain .......... 49.1
.45 ACP jacketed hollow point 230 grain ...... 60.7
.44 Magnum full metal jacket 240 grain ....... 92.3
.44 Magnum lead wad cutter 240 grain ......... 136.8
.44 Special full metal jacket 240 grain ...... 51.6
.44 Special lead wad cutter 240 grain ............. 76.5
.41 Magnum full metal jacket 230 grain ............. 54
.41 Magnum lead wad cutter 230 grain .............. 80
10 millimeter full metal jacket 180 grain .......... 50.3
10 millimeter jacketed hollow point 180 grain ..62.1
.40 S&W full metal jacket flat nose 180 grain ...... 53.4
.40 S&W jacketed hollow point 180 grain ....... 59.4
.38 Special full metal jacket 158 grain ...... 26.7
.38 Special lead wad cutter 158 grain ............. 39.7
.357 Magnum full metal jacket 158 grain ..... 32.7
.357 Magnum lead wad cutter 158 grain ............ 48.5
.357 SIG full metal jacket 147 grain ................ 36.6
.357 SIG jacketed hollow point 147 grain ..... 45.2
9 millimeter full metal jacket 147 grain ............ 32.3
9 millimeter jacketed hollow point 147 grain ... 39.9
.380 Auto jacketed hollow point 95 grain ..... 18.3
.32 Auto jacketed hollow point 71 grain ...... 11.1
.25 Auto jacketed hollow point 50 grain ...... 3.7
.22 Long Rifle jacketed hollow point 40 grain ... 4.2 ...
Some popular calibers didn’t do as well as expected.
This is a cut and paste from an earlier FR article and it does not quite agree with my knowledge of the Hatcher Relative Stopping Power Scale as I learned it 40 years ago. When I studied it, it was a scale of 100 where 100 was the theoretical maximum: the power necessary to put a man down with a single shot—stop him— in a fight situation with a hand gun round. At the time Hatcher made his study no handgun rated higher than 73. That was a .45 Long Colt fired from a 7.5” Army Single Action. I don’t remember the weight of the bullet. However no round could rate MORE than 100 on his scale because you could not DO better than stop the man! Some of the rounds on this chart rate higher than 100! Why? Someone is fudging, I think.
However, for the purpose of this thread, note the abysmal showing of the .22 LR. We have names for people who try to use .22s for self defense. They’re called victims and corpses. It is better than nothing. . . But not much.
The article also erroneously claimed Hatcher was a “forensic pathologist”. He was not, nor, IIRC, was he a general at the time he created the scale. He was an Ordnance officer specializing in all arms for the US Army charged with helping select a new official side arm for officers and a Colonel.
Re: the thread on the effectiveness of .22s
That guy in SF was actually an MD who was mugged. . . and it wasn’t .22 bullets. He was attending a medical convention, down from his home town of Seattle. He made the mistake of taking a midnight walk in a back alley. After he came to, minus his watch, he went back to his hotel and went to bed, didn’t even bother calling the cops. The next morning he went to the ER when headaches persisted and X-Rays showed the nine .25ACP bullets in his head. he didn’t even know he had been shot! I had that article posted in my gun shop for several years in the early 70s. It was a good object lesson for customers who wanted to buy a .25 auto for a protection gun for their wife.
I have this gun BTTT
Ruger 22 revolver loaded with magnum hollow points. Easy to shoot, little recoil, very accurate
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Years ago - took out a rouge sea otter while my boat was dong 10 kts with one of those - stainless steel model. Nice.
Flying Lead in any caliber is deterrent!
Want proof, point and snap a fully extended rubber band at someones face!
The Mossad uses (or at least used) a .22 and taught its agents to fire twice in rapid succession.
“It will bring down all small game, wild and domestic, (there won’t be much big game after a few weeks). The report does not carry far giving away your position, and all members of the family can use it.”
I’ve used sub-sonic rounds in my rifle and it makes a little ‘pop’. You have to be close but it’s OK for small game.
Having said that, the critical issue for .22 ammo is reliability. So, buy the highest quality .22 ammo you can get to carry for self defense. Get some high priced Olympic level target ammunition. Those people cannot tolerate misfires either. Ely pistol match might be a good choice.
“No safe threshold for lead exposure has been discovered—that is, there is no known amount of lead that is too small to cause the body harm.
Bullets lodged in the body rarely cause significant levels of lead poisoning,”
You do realize that the above two statements are contradictory, don’t you?
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