GunnyGene
Hawkeye
Pretty interesting article from last year. Since I often carry my .22mag LCR, and it was the model used in the article, it was of particular interest to me. They tested a variety of brands including the Hornady CD, which is also what I load mine with.
In addition, they made some good points (which we're all really familiar with) regarding gel tests vs real life including comparisons of larger calibers. And I agree with the bottom line - if what you have is a short barrel .22wmr, you better pull the trigger till the gun is empty. :wink:
Worth reading, imo.
In addition, they made some good points (which we're all really familiar with) regarding gel tests vs real life including comparisons of larger calibers. And I agree with the bottom line - if what you have is a short barrel .22wmr, you better pull the trigger till the gun is empty. :wink:
Worth reading, imo.
A practical personal protection plan should include a handgun, but that handgun should, without question, be one you’re comfortable with. As you become more experienced you’ll have the opportunity to further evaluate the situation and trade-up as your comfort and skill levels increase. For some, a .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire (WMR) might be the best place to start. It’s also affordable, readily available and relatively easy to shoot.
The .22 WMR is just one of many cartridges that comes in handguns sized for personal protection or concealed carry. A compact and light handgun like Ruger’s 16-ounce LCR is a perfect example of a carry-size .22 WMR revolver. For those who want to carry the smallest handgun possible, North American Arms’ less-than-6-ounces Mini-Revolvers, with 1-inch barrels, are about as small as small gets.
Many consider the .22 WMR too small for self-defense, but what do the facts and some common sense tell us? To answer this question we need to keep things in perspective. Unlike hunters, those who use a handgun to thwart violence don’t primarily intend to kill. The goal is to make the bad guy stop doing bad things. Handguns stop a threat in three ways. One is by causing enough pain that the bad guy submits or voluntarily decides further violent action is a bad idea. Another way is through incapacitation, which is an involuntary reaction on the part of the bad guy in response to being shot. Incapacitation can be instant or it can take a long time.
The third way handguns stop evil intent is through fear. No one wants to get shot with any gun. Law enforcement personnel will tell you that they point guns at bad guys much more often than they shoot them, and the most common response when a gun is pointed at someone is that they stop being bad and put their hands up or run. This voluntary surrender is the most common and effective way handguns stop crime, whether in the hands of police officers or citizens.
What we want to explore here is how effective a .22 WMR handgun might be at triggering these three outcomes. If just pointing the gun at the bad guy is enough, then caliber or cartridge is of no consequence—score one for the WMR. If a shot is required, will the .22 WMR be capable of causing enough pain to make the bad guy submit or voluntarily stop, and is it even capable of causing swift, involuntary incapacitation?
Terminal ballistics testing in 10 percent ordnance gelatin is about the only way we can gauge the potential effectiveness of any cartridge. By comparing how various .22 WMR loads perform in ordnance gelatin with how other, more trusted, larger-caliber handgun loads perform, we can hypothesize on the fight-stopping potential of the .22 WMR.
Make no mistake, velocity matters when it comes to terminal performance. It’s why .357 Mag. is more effective at stopping bad guys than .38 Spl. With the .22 WMR, velocity is just as, if not more, important because of its relatively small bullet. Interestingly, many .22 WMR loads are made for use in rifles, and the longer barrels result in substantially more velocity than if the same loads were shot through handguns. With that in mind, I conducted a series of tests with various .22 WMR loads fired from barrels as short as 1 inch to as long as 22 inches. The results can be found in the accompanying table, but before you try to digest all those numbers, let’s consider what these tests actually tell us.
Admittedly, 10 percent ordnance gelatin, as often as it is used and referenced, is not the same as a bad guy. It is simply a ballistic test medium which is thought to offer the same resistance to a bullet as would muscle tissue. It does not replicate skin, ribs, cartilage or fat and, in fact, very often the way a bullet performs in living tissue is quite different than how it performs in gelatin. Ordnance gelatin is merely a test medium that offers comparisons between projectiles on an even playing field.
So what you see in these results is how these loads compare to each other and to more powerful defensive handgun loads such as the 9 mm Luger and the .45 ACP. With those cartridges you can generally expect penetration in the 13-inch range. Interestingly, if we average the penetration of the .22 WMR loads tested from handguns with barrels ranging from 1 inch to 4½ inches we find they penetrated to just over 12 inches. Not much difference.
Full article: http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2015/6/8/the-22-magnum-for-self-defense/
