For the extremely recoil sensitive folks, and they have a right to adequate self-defense too - a nice non-light weight .38 Special revolver, snub nose or slightly longer, will make for comfortable practice with powder-puff loads and then can be carried with rounds a bit more stout for quality protection. The 'lowly' thirty-eight has put a whole lot of bad guys in a hospital or under the grass in its century plus period of use by good guys and gals.
Theoretical 22LR question
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mikld the reality is unfortunately not what you think. Yes there is "stopping power that is a weapon which when fired in the general direction of the BG is guaranteed to kill. It's called a Davy Crockett (there are other less extreme examples). I ran a guy who was shot in the shoulder (medial to the joint and inferior to the clavicle) with a 12ga slug. Normally that would be expected to do significant damage. He was out of the hospital in two weeks. I've seen a bunch of center of mass shots which were survived-one was a 50BMG @ ~100yd. A few areas are pretty much guaranteed to kill or invalidate instantly: throat, center of the head or eye, knee, .... There are others which will kill or incapacitate but more slowly, maybe not at all no matter what caliber is used.
Now a 22lr requires more exact placement than a 9mm which requires more than a 45 which requires more exactitude than a 12ga! But all require exact placement and the 22 is easier particularly in follow-up shots.
Now a 22lr requires more exact placement than a 9mm which requires more than a 45 which requires more exactitude than a 12ga! But all require exact placement and the 22 is easier particularly in follow-up shots.
protoolman
Service-Sixer
I understand he has just the one gun and wants to rely on it. Nothing you can do about that probably? So he's pretty poorly armed to start with. Best you can do is offer advice on shot placement close up and using the gun barrel to crease the bad guys head or get him to carry a cheap sturdy fixed blade knife and teach him a few dirty tricks. Oh and hopefully he's pretty fast and has his tennis shoes on. That first round if it makes contact might give him time to run. If the bad guy has a gun however he might as well be a good negotiator and keep a fat roll of ones in his pocket to get the guy to go away.
loaded round
Hunter
Guys, for the record, I forwarded all your replies to him and his answer was '' I am what I am''! What more can be said, so I just wished him the best and told him not to step on a porcupine.
GunnyGene
Hawkeye
loaded round said:
If he was somebody I knew, I'd be watching the obits. :wink:
I think Bobby Kennedy might disagree about some of the opinions of the lowly .22lr being discussed here.
grobin, the "reality" of the situation is a larger caliber firing a heavier slug, often designed to do extensive tissue damage is much more likely to stop a fight than a 36 or 40 grain bullet @ 1,200 fps. And no I'm not talking about a "Davey Crockett shot". There are exceptions of course, the bad guy hit in the eye with a 22 lr has a good chance of being stopped and I read about a kid in high school that was being bullied. The youngster took his father's Ruger SBH to school and when the bully started punching him, he shot the punk in the gut with a 240 gr. JHP from the 44 Magnum. The kid sat on the curb and yelled for an ambulance, and survived quite well. Then there's the Mas Ayoob article about a LEO shot 15 times with a couple different handguns, 9mm and 45 ACP. Anybody can dig up arguments/examples, pro and con, but the reality is there is a much better chance of surviving an altercation with a larger centerfire cartridge designed for SD than a 22 rimfire that probably fires a 40 gr bullet at 900 fps out of a small handgun...
Now if you are talking about hits, the maybe, maybe a hit with a 22 lr is better than a miss with a 454 Magnum, unless your 22 hit just makes the bad guy mad...
Now if you are talking about hits, the maybe, maybe a hit with a 22 lr is better than a miss with a 454 Magnum, unless your 22 hit just makes the bad guy mad...
mikld said:
As you point out a hit with a over powered gun is NOT guarinted to more than inconvenience the BG. A solid hit with a 22 is much more likely and will put him down. Particularly under pressure a light low recoil gun is much much easier to get a hit with than a higher caliber gun. Also the lighter gun will come back ( or get) on target faster and easier. If you don't hit the BG you are not going to stop him! If you don't get a hit in a few specific areas you may not do more than inconvenience him and convince him to take the gun away from you and shove it where the sun don't shine.The
Now I agree that a 22will take a more precise hit than a large caliber to take the BG out-but that's more likely everything else being equal.
grobin said:
Now that's just silly and illogical (if I'm reading it correctly).Well then, you just trust your 22 lr to stop a 6-0 mad bad guy with one shot, or even 5 shots and I'll keep carrying my 9mm w/1,200 fps JHPs (the smallest SD gun I use)...
I'm done, you can have the last word in...
There are two different issues; ease of getting an accurate hit and effectiveness of the hit.
A lighter gun has a higher chance of getting a hit than a larger caliber gun.
If the bullet placement is good then the caliber doesn't matter much; except that a more powerful caliber will be harder to get back on target.
As for size of the BG ask Gloiath how he did against David and his rock!
A lighter gun has a higher chance of getting a hit than a larger caliber gun.
If the bullet placement is good then the caliber doesn't matter much; except that a more powerful caliber will be harder to get back on target.
As for size of the BG ask Gloiath how he did against David and his rock!
mikld said:
Could someone please explain this to me?
Kinda reminds me of that scene in Blazing Saddles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK7ZvZNAiKY
To the point, and purely only this old geezer's opinion, for 'serious self-defense' against two or four legged critters, the .22 LR is the worst caliber choice and a single action revolver is the worst choice of firearm from which to launch it. MANY folks have happily carried the double action S&W Kit Gun into the woods. It all becomes a series of compromises.But they ARE a perfect great fun choice when attacking tin cans and other plinking targets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK7ZvZNAiKY
To the point, and purely only this old geezer's opinion, for 'serious self-defense' against two or four legged critters, the .22 LR is the worst caliber choice and a single action revolver is the worst choice of firearm from which to launch it. MANY folks have happily carried the double action S&W Kit Gun into the woods. It all becomes a series of compromises.But they ARE a perfect great fun choice when attacking tin cans and other plinking targets.
I still disagree. The "hits" statement is why so many knowledgeable shooters say "practice, practice, practice". I can shoot my 45 ACPs just as (well nearly) accurately as I can my Single Six. I would much rather have a 8" group with a 9mm or 45 ACP on a bad guy's torso then a 2" group from a 22, even with "heart shots". The whole idea in a SD shooting is to stop the bad guy from hurting the shooter, aka good guy. If one had time to empty a 10 round magazine from a 22 into an attacker's torso (forget good accuracy in a critical, life or death situation) stopping the attack may, just maybe, stop the fight. It is a well known fact that a 22 lr is the worst fight stopper right along with the 25 ACP.grobin said:
David vs. Goliath? Simple, David had God on his side...
So a 9mm at home in your safe is better than carrying a .22 because the .22 is only going to make the BG mad when you shoot him in the eye...OK, I got it.
Now who said that? 90% of the forum are nor Combat Master Pistol shooters and 99% don't have person to person defense shooting experience so you saying "shoot him in the eye"? That' not even worth a reply, waaaaaaay to silly...Captain America said:
I'm beginning to think grobin doesn't really have an opinion/stance on this subject, he just wants to argue...grobin said:
BTW, Yes I can say the same, but "discussing" religion on a gun forum, anonymously is as silly as the above post...
The OP asked what those of us that have experience with .22lr ammunition for SD would recommend. It has been suggested that someone who gets shot with a .22 will only get mad, I respectfully disagree. The Op's Friend wants to carry a .22 in the woods for protection from a BG, I would suggest that having that .22(after some practice) would be better than nothing at all.
Flyover_Country
Bearcat
- Joined
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grobin said:
Those examples are certainly possible.
#1 describes a shot that punched a hole in the upper lobe of a lung and being a 12 gauge slug, didn't fragment and just punched through. It went under the subclavian artery, lateral to the aorta and superior to the heart/aortic arch (if it was on the left side). They guy probably broke a rib or two, had a unilateral pneumothorax, and a pulmonary contusion. Roughed up for sure, but as long as he didn't take hours to present to care, survivable.
#2 describes what is nearly certainly a .50 caliber non-expanding bullet wound. Unless it hits the heart, brain, spine, or a major artery, the victim will more than likely survive unless EMS is remote or delayed.
The areas where a shot can kill quickly (~5 minutes or less) are:
1. A transverse through-and-through shot through the skull.
2. Disruption of the spinal cord from the brainstem to the C3 body. (Remember the mnemonic- "C3-4-5 keeps the lungs alive" as they innervate the diaphragms.)
3. Penetration of the heart.
4. Penetration of the great vessels of the thorax- aorta, subclavian arteries, and vena cava.
5. Transverse shot through the thorax causing a double pneumothorax ("double lung shot.") This is difficult on a human as most humans are shot anterior-posterior (facing forward) and it would take two shots (one in each hemithorax) or use of multiple-projectile loads (buckshot) to accomplish this. Humans also have arms that are lateral to the lateral chest walls and one of them must be penetrated to enter the thorax laterally to attempt a double-lung shot, so even if somebody was facing 90 degrees away, it would take a relatively powerful round to traverse the thorax and drop both lungs.
Everything else is a slower to kill wound, and if EMS is quickly alerted and nearby, the victim often survives. Unless they're dead, blinded, or unable to use their hands, they are not completely incapacitated and can shoot back. Shooting somebody in the eye tangentially (seen it, a failed "9 mm to the chin" suicide attempt) will not kill them. Neither will getting shot in the knee or lower leg (have seen that too.)
