Conversely A friend of mine's brother was shot 5 times in the side with a .22 short at almost point blank range back in the 70s. The rounds lodged in the muscle tissue, maybe a half inch penetration. That said he was a young body builder with almost no fat on him and I don't know what he was wearing at the time. I also have no idea if the shooter was using under powered ammo and again they were short ball rounds so lots of factors involved.I personally witnessed one take down a mule dear at 75 yards in a single shot. The deer just dropped instantly.
Here's one that was done with .22 ball ammo out to 450 yards at 1/2" thick pine boards (old military penetration requirements).I don't know that anyone believes that a .22 will ricochet backwards after a direct hit, but if it hits something at a shallow enough angle it certainly can deflect in a different direction, like if you shoot a .22 out into a lake it can skip off the surface. But larger projectiles can do the same. My first deer, shot with a 1oz slugger, was quartering towards me. The slug was a direct hit to her shoulder, absolutely demolished it, and then the slug was deflected about 45 degrees and traveled the length of her body, making a soupy mess of everything inside. I found it lodged in her hams.
I also wish Paul had shown what the .22 solid bullet looked like after going through the test medium. My experience has been that .22 hollow points can do a lot of damage on small game like squirrel, but solids are no less lethal on squirrel, rabbit, raccoon and possum. Of course this is with a rifle in hunting / varmint control situations where shot placement can be far more accurate.
We get it . There are a lot of folks who think a .22 is a harmless noisemaker… and others who swear one shot will ricochet around a persons body or skull and make a complete shambles of a persons innards. (Which is the myth Paul Harrell was mentioning in the video.)BTW, this is NOT a "I think .22s are the best defensive rounds out there and I'm justifying my belief" thread. It's more aimed at those who think .22s are a waste of time and money because it's worthless as a defensive round. Would it be my first choice for a defensive round? No, not if I could afford a more powerful sidearm of which I own a few but if it's all I had I wouldn't hesitate to use it in a defensive situation with the knowledge it would kill or severely injure an assailent.
Lots of misinformation and myths out there concerning .22 lethality.
What do you think?.....
Greg Ellifritz said:...Take a look at two numbers: the percentage of people who did not stop (no matter how many rounds were fired into them) and the one-shot-stop percentage. The lower caliber rounds (.22, .25, .32) had a failure rate that was roughly double that of the higher caliber rounds. The one-shot-stop percentage (where I considered all hits, anywhere on the body) trended generally higher as the round gets more powerful. This tells us a couple of things...
In a certain (fairly high) percentage of shootings, people stop their aggressive actions after being hit with one round regardless of caliber or shot placement. These people are likely NOT physically incapacitated by the bullet. They just don't want to be shot anymore and give up! Call it a psychological stop if you will. Any bullet or caliber combination will likely yield similar results in those cases. And fortunately for us, there are a lot of these "psychological stops" occurring. The problem we have is when we don't get a psychological stop. If our attacker fights through the pain and continues to victimize us, we might want a round that causes the most damage possible. In essence, we are relying on a "physical stop" rather than a "psychological" one. In order to physically force someone to stop their violent actions we need to either hit him in the Central Nervous System (brain or upper spine) or cause enough bleeding that he becomes unconscious. The more powerful rounds look to be better at doing this....
...Psychological factors are probably the most important relative to achieving rapid incapacitation from a gunshot wound to the torso. Awareness of the injury..., fear of injury, fear of death, blood or pain; intimidation by the weapon or the act of being shot; or the simple desire to quit can all lead to rapid incapacitation even from minor wounds. However, psychological factors are also the primary cause of incapacitation failures.
The individual may be unaware of the wound and thus have no stimuli to force a reaction. Strong will, survival instinct, or sheer emotion such as rage or hate can keep a grievously wounded individual fighting....
In the case of low velocity missles, e. g., pistol bullets, the bullet produces a direct path of destruction with very little lateral extension within the surrounding tissue. Only a small temporary cavity is produced. To cause significant injuries to a structure, a pistol bullet must strike that structure directly. The amount of kinetic energy lost in the tissue by a pistol bullet is insufficient to cause the remote injuries produced by a high-velocity rifle bullet.
The tissue disruption caused by a handgun bullet is limited to two mechanisms. The first or crush mechanism is the hole that the bullet makes passing through the tissue. The second or stretch mechanism is the temporary wound cavity formed by the tissue being driven outward in a radial direction away from the path of the bullet. Of the two, the crush mechanism is the only handgun wounding mechanism that damages tissue. To cause significant injuries to a structure within the body using a handgun, the bullet must penetrate the structure.
Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much-discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable....The critical element in wounding effectiveness is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large blood-bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding....Given durable and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of the hole made by the bullet....
... The bullet ravaged her upper body when it nicked the lower portion of her heart, damaged her liver, destroyed her spleen, and exited through the center of her back, still with enough energy to penetrate her vehicle door, where it was later found....
As old as I am I've hunted one caliber for more than 50 years...
30-06 165grWhat is it?
I'm curious as I sold off all my centerfire rifles calibers about 12 years ago but just recently bought 1.
I've been debating adding another
This had me wondering as well especially the .380 caliber and lower calibers. My assumption was that there was a trend for more people to carry smaller guns for concealibility purposes, lighter, and a question of economics. So more guns in the smaller calibers could skew the data from larger calibers.
- Considering the physiology of wounding, the data showing high incapacitation rates for light cartridges seems anomalous.
- Furthermore, those same light cartridges which show high rates of incapacitation also show high rates of failures to incapacitate. In addition, heavier cartridges which show incapacitation rates comparable to the lighter cartridges nonetheless show lower failure to incapacitate rates.
. I personally have seen a patient survive 6 rounds to the head, face and neck from a .357. Which leads me to believe a higher power made it possible.And sometimes a .357 Magnum doesn't work all that well. LAPD Officer Stacy Lim who was shot in the chest with a .357 Magnum and still ran down her attacker, returned fire, killed him, survived, and ultimately was able to return to duty.
I can tell you this from MUCH experience, not just one anecdotal event:
When I was a teen, I did a lot of rabbit hunting with 22lr., mostly Win model 62 with irons, and a Rem 572 with a 4x weaver.
I saw the difference between standard round nose and Yellow Jackets. Don't even know if Rem still makes them, but they would literally pick a rabbit up and throw it a couple feet, saw it too many times. Solid round nose still worked fine, but they didn't throw a rabbit like the Yellow Jackets did.