My son-in-law inherited an old rifle for .22 long and after
cleaning it up, I shot it with .22 CCI CB Long cartridges.
I did not dare shoot it with modern high vel shorts or longs.
It surprised me by shooting minute-of-rabbit to at least
25 yards.
As I recall, the first .22 rimfire cartridge was introduced with the
Smith & Wesson revolver in the 1850s, firing a 29 or 30 grain
bullet backed by 3 grains black powder.
Then rifle maker Frank Wesson introduced a longer case to hold
5 grains black powder behind the same 29 grain bullet in the early
1870s. The Smith&Wesson cartridge became known as the .22 Short
and the Frank Wesson cartridge became known as the .22 Long.
Then someone came up with an even longer case (about the
length of the current CCI Stinger) with a 40 grain bullet and
called it the .22 Extra Long.
Then in the early 1890s Stevens mated the 40 grain bullet
to the standard .22 Long case and called it .22 Long Rifle.
When I was a kid in the 1950s, a .22 rifle had to be marked
.22 S, L & LR or it wasn't worth having; shorts were cheaper
than longs which were cheaper than longrifles. Shorts were
used for short range or tin can plinking, Longs for medium
shots and longrifle for shots over fifty yards. The rifling
optimized for long rifle gave reasonable accuracy with short
and long, but rifling optimized for short or long is very
mediocre with long rifle.
By the 1960s at least, .22 Short High Velocity Hollowpoint
was actually hotter than most .22 Long loadings.
By the 1970s and 1980s, longrifle ammo was cheapest,
and shorts and longs were kept in limited production only
for guns specifically chambered for shorts or longs, making
longrifle the do-everything from tincan plinking to hunting
and target shooting and marginalising Short and Long as
specialty rounds.
Today most commercial .22 rifles are Long Rifle Only.
