.22 for self-defense...is a "man-stopper" really necessary?

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I always get a kick out of the reports in the 'Armed Citizen' page of the American Rifleman mag when a post is about some 78 yr. old widow opening fire with a .22LR revolver when 'the boys in 'hood' come to steal her S/S cash.
usually 1 DOS and 1-2 in hospital with multiple gunshot wounds.
awhile back some ol' gal didn't even report to the law the shooting. her daughter came to check on her next morn and a BG lay dead in her doorway. she went to bed after the shooting as if nothing had happened.:eek:
 
the problem with 22lr. is that you wait for the bad guy to bleed to death. during that time the bad guy is still moving. i read a story about a woman that shot the bad guy many times and died from being choked by the bad guy. the bad guy also died at the door step of the house.
 
in combat situations

I think the point that Double Naught Spy is trying to imply below is: in combat every shot is your first shot.

Quote: Double Naught Spy -
Every so often, a thread like this comes along where somebody claims or queries about itty bitty calibers along the lines of being able to put several hits on target in short order and doesn't that make the caliber as good or better than larger calibers with more recoil.

First, what makes you think you will be able to put all or most .22 rounds on target in a crisis? Generally speaking, if you can hit 1/3 of the time, you will be doing comparatively very well if you are firing a lot of rounds, say 10.

Second, what makes you think you will get more than one round off? There have been several instances over the years where folks fire the first round and the gun malfunctions, either due to maintenance, ammo, or damage, or the gun lost in a scuffle.

So if the reality of the world is that you are not likely to land large numbers of rounds on the target and may not have a chance with more than just one, do you really want to count on a .22 lr producing the desired stop?
 
I could be wrong but i belive Brady and Regan where shot with a 22 as well as John Lennon. Brady and Regan did survive, John did not.
 
Rimfire ammunition is simply not reliable enough to depend upon for this kind of usage. To many issues with the priming are common in the same box and lot number of ammunition its not easy to say, "yeah itll shoot the first time".

Centerfire primers have problems now and then. Thats why the gun companies are starting to make DA semi autos that give the "second strike" funciton to keep giving the prime in the chambered rounds a whack till it goes off.

Bullets in 22 are not the greatest thing around. Most are designed for one of the following options only: penetration, expanding, or prefragmented stuff. Not exactly the best option to use when your bullet has to be able to do tissue damage. Sure its ok to blow 10-40 .20 diameter holes through soft tissue but that would be more in the idea of carefully aiming each pellet in a single round of buckshot.

The trick is getting a combination of
-accuracy/easily controlled weapon
-nominal caliber size that will always create sufficient tissue damage
-shot placement
THe 9mm is used heavily by cops who tend to use the fanciest jhp they can find. Its normal to see the dash cam footage based reality shows of the late 90s show the famous clip.
The famous clip is a big burly guy gets pulled over in a van. The cop is checking the drivers information on the cruisers front end. The burly guy gets up off his vans rear bumper and tries to beat the cop up. The cop puts 5-6 rounds of service duty ammo into the burly guys gut and chest. The burly guy merely staggers backward and sits down on his bumper like a good boy whil cussing the cop out.
In that wonderful instance, we see how a good bullet in a caliber FAR more suited to self defense then a 22lr, FAILED to do its job. Yep it failed, the attacker should not be able to claim the title of "self propolled organism" after that many direct point blank hits to the upper body.

SO is a 22 "good enough"? Well the little NAA mini revolvers have killed rapists when the victim emptied it into the morons chest with muzzle rammed into flesh. but an old police case in wich a woman was raped when her target grade 22lr semi auto using "target" ammo failed to stop an attacker with 10 shots to the guys chest.

Personally? Id like something i a shotgun caliber if i had my choice. But a .38 gets the job done.
 
IMHO, a .22 is in NO WAY a good self-defense round.

In my 10 years as a cop, I saw several people who were hit multiple times with a .22 and were almost unaffected by it. Sure, they might eventually bleed out from being shot, but in the meantime they are still attacking you.

The whole purpose in carrying a gun is to save your life the one time in a lifetime you might need it - why handicap yourself with something that may or may not work?

Don't worry about recoil. Go to a range and rent a few guns and you will see what I mean and you won't worry about it anymore. My 15 year old son and my (very) petite wife both shoot my 9mm and my .45 equally well and recoil isn't a problem at all.

If you are going to carry a gun, get something that might give you a fighting chance.


.
 
Good point. The key to a defensive handgun is stopping, not killing. Those are two different things -- a man who hits the dirt may survive if he gets good medical care. A man who bleeds out over the course of an hour may kill you in the process.

As to recoil, I'd say there is a limit -- which is why I don't like ultra-light weight .357s. To shoot well, you must shoot a lot. And if it's painful, you may do yourself more harm than good by training in flinching and jerking.
 
Sorry, I am gonna post this even if someone else addressed it:

Plus, since I'm an idiot and shoot a lot, I imagine the recoil would be far smaller.
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Have you never shot a .22, or what? What do you shoot so often?
 
I'm going to add more anecdotal evidence; a friend of mine was killed when some fool he was hanging around with decided to play with a 22 revolver that he was sure "wasn't loaded". My friend was shot in the heart.

Now, I am not advocating carrying a 22. although I have to admit I do now and then. Most of the time I carry the .45 or .357, but once in a while I carry my Ruger Single Six in 22 mag. Now, 22 mag ballistics are a little different, but in carrying my Ruger I am doing the little slugs AND a single action revolver (Oh noes!). Still, I feel a little under-gunned carrying it with 22LRs in it.

To echo some of the other guys, whatever you decide on, make sure you practice and get proficient with its use.
 
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One thing to remember- all .22 ammo is not the same - I have had virtually no misfires with CCI brand ammo, and have used it for thirty years. Yes, it is almost twice as costly as bulk pack, but it has been reliable. This in no way recommends a .22 for self defense-just a comment on the "will it go bang" factor.
 
Also remember that recoil isn't totally dependent on calibre. I have .45ACP pistols that barely kick, and 9x19mm pistols that cause my wrist to hurt after a mag...
 
Nine times out of ten the caliber doesn't matter. I think that the stats say something like 92% of the time a criminal gives up without a shot being fired or after a shot is fired regardless of the effect (minor wound, miss, etc.)

So any caliber can do the trick the most of the time.

In the remaining cases, having a .22LR doesn't immediately consign you to an awful fate. Even Jeff Cooper pointed out that a .22LR to the proper part of the cranium will stop a person cold. Of course that puts a pretty heavy burden on the shooter at a time that is probably the most stressful he will encounter in his life. On the other hand, the .22LR is very easy to shoot accurately and rapidly.

Obviously your chances are better with a more conventional self-defense caliber, but the fact remains that in the vast majority of self-defense situations a .22LR will work just fine. Mostly because it won't be called upon to do anything other than make an appearance...
 
MJRodney said:
As an example, the Finnish school shooter who murdered 8 people last November, used a .22 handgun to do the deed.

From what I have been able to determine, there wasn't a whole lot of movement after the victims were shot. They were essentially "stopped" close to where they stood.
Click to expand...

Actually, they probably died because he shot the school nurse. The EMTs weren't able to get to the victims for nearly an hour.

The killer's victims were other school children, except for the nurse, a student teacher, and the principal, who was shot seven times.

Basing lethality of a given round on it's use in a massacre of unarmed, trapped victims may not help predict it's effectiveness against an aggressor.
 
If you belive it necessary or prudent to carry a weapon to defend yourself, why even consider one that "might" work. If a BG is charging me, I want to STOP him, not possibly slow him down. I read where a policeman was challenged by a lawyer to effectively demonstrate the difference between stopping & slowing down for a stop sign. The cop pulled out his night stick & began beating on the lawyer! as the lawyer was crying for him to stop, the cop said do you want me to stop? or just slow down?

I carry a .45, because it is proven to work without too much risk to the people behind the target.
 
If you belive it necessary or prudent to carry a weapon to defend yourself, why even consider one that "might" work. If a BG is charging me, I want to STOP him, not possibly slow him down.
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What do you recommend, hand grenades? :D

Stopping someone with a handgun is not a sure thing regardless of the caliber.

In fact, stopping someone with a firearm is not a sure thing even if you include long guns. You can certainly get better results with some firearms than others, but it's still not a sure thing. It might work.

To be frank, most of the hullaballoo about caliber selection comes from blatant misconceptions about the effects of handgun bullets on humans. I blame the movies partially but the real problem is that people desperately want to believe that their ammo/handgun choice is a deathray. So they readily soak up and repeat information that reinforces that belief and ignore things that contradict it.

To be perfectly clear, I don't recommend the .22LR for self-defense and I will state that it's not a particularly good chambering for a self-defense firearm. But if someone already has a .22LR I won't tell that person that they have to get another caliber and I don't regale them with apocryphal stories about the amazing "stopping power" of other handgun calibers to try to get them to switch.
 
I still can't get past the notion of 'not wanting to kill them' or 'stopping the threat'. I was always taught that you don't point a gun at anything unless you plan to kill it. I maintain that same philosophy when it comes to self defense. I will 'stop the threat', permanently. I don't want to deal with disability suits or plan to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life to see if the 'threat' is going to avenge the pain that I caused.

Not with a .22 unless that's all that I have available at the time.
 
I still can't get past the notion of 'not wanting to kill them' or 'stopping the threat'.
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The point of legal self-defense is not the death of the attacker, it is the cessation of the attack. The law doesn't give you a free pass to kill someone because they attack you, it gives you the right to use deadly force to stop very carefully defined illegal actions on the part of a criminal with the understanding that death is often a side-effect of this course of action.

You don't want to go around stating that if someone attacks you, you will KILL them--it calls your motives into question. Did you continue shooting after they ceased to be a threat because you WANTED them dead? Did you shoot when you didn't have to in order to prevent lawsuits? To cut down the chances of retaliation?

That's not legal.

You can't kill people to cut down on the chances of legal actions against you. You can't kill people because you're worried that they might be a danger to you some time in the distant future. You can't kill people to punish them for attacking you. Legal use of deadly force is about preventing certain types of illegal behavior, it is NOT about revenge, reducing the probability of lawsuits, or eliminating threats that MIGHT develop in the future.

This is NOT saying that you should try to AVOID killing your attacker. It is NOT saying that you should shoot to wound. While the attack continues you do what is most likely to stop the attack and that generally is also pretty likely to kill the attacker. The point is that what you're doing is intended to stop the attack, it's not specifically intended to kill.
 
I still can't get past the notion of 'not wanting to kill them' or 'stopping the threat'. I was always taught that you don't point a gun at anything unless you plan to kill it. I maintain that same philosophy when it comes to self defense. I will 'stop the threat', permanently. I don't want to deal with disability suits or plan to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life to see if the 'threat' is going to avenge the pain that I caused.
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Executing someone that is no longer a threat would lead to no more fun than any suit the living man could bring against you. You get to defend your life, not kill someone to make your life easier.
 
Anecdotal evidence aside, how many people are going to say, "Oh crap! He's got a gun and....Oh wait, it's just a .22" Whatever lets you shoot the most accurately and quickly is best for your self defense. Doesn't really matter what you're shooting if your shot placement is good in bad situations.

That being said, not all rounds are created equal. Since you like the light recoil and like to dump ammo, why not get yourself a FN 5.7? The capacity is huge and the felt recoil is less than a 9mm, while supposedly being at least as good in the ballistics department.
 
I believe that you guys, 'JohnKSa and Soybomb' may have not taken my point as I presented it or my presentation was flawed. Nowhere did I say that I would continue shooting after the threat had diminished. Nowhere did I say I would shoot if there were no other options.

I do agree with the rest of John's wording and if put in the situation of defending myself before our justice system, I know the words to use.

I have personally been in the situation where that split-second decision was required and I was able to do the 'right thing' and we all lived happily ever after.

If a person only wants to 'stop the threat' and is concerned about taking a bad guy's life, I would suggest a Taser. If you are going to carry a firearm and you are willing to use it in self-defense, death is often a by-product. I would prefer that it not be my life. Sugar coat it all you want but guns were designed to kill. Period.
 
...if put in the situation of defending myself before our justice system, I know the words to use.
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I'd be careful what I posted as well. The internet is not nearly as anonymous as people seem to think.
 
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