22LR Military Use

[Mike OTDP]

It helps to be a very good shot...and to use the Mossad technique of emptying the gun.

In any event, the usual use of military .22s is for training. They provide cheap practice - and everybody needs more practice.

 

[10/22plinker]

I'm sorry I love my 10/22 it even has a custom collapseable stock and foregrip but if I needed to put someone out of commision in a light easy to carry rifle I'd use a Marlin camp 9mm or a semiauto sterling

 

[John Parker]

but for combat I'd rather have a Mini-14

You and the Bermuda regiment...

 

[LAK]

The IRA has used .22 RFs in rifle and pistol form, as has likely many other NGO's in the 20th and into the 21st century. I would say that first military use was probably WW2; OSS and or other clandestine groups, NGO's etc.

 

[rklessdriver]

The CIA issued Gary Powers this sweet little supressed Hi Standard HDM back in 1960...



Of course its now in the custody of the Russians.
Will

 

[danbrew]

wow, this just goes to show that *anything* can be successfully marketed...

the INFANTRY round - I gotta get me a case of them...

 

[no.5enfield]

John Plaster in his books about SOG specifically mentions the use of supressed .22lr pistols. My memory(which is hardly reliable) tells me it was a ruger, but it would make sense if it were the OSS-type High Standard. The pistol was primarily carried to disable or "pacify" North Vietnamese truck drivers and officers if they were lucky enough to come across them on the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. The SOG operator's primary mission was to grab prisoners behind enemy lines and bring them back for interrogation. A successful grab was rewarded with a week of R&R! I am pretty sure that there were more than a few enemy killed with these pistols during E&E because the Delta guys couldn't afford to give up their postition buy firing their CAR-15s(which curiously enough, they regarded as being excellent combat rifles. I guess they didn't get the memo about the 5.56's lack of stopping power.)