What the above folks said, but did it do this after you cleaned the barrel? You did clean out the barrel, didn't you?
Makes me wonder how a .22LR barrel got leaded up unless it was really pitted by rust at some point or someone was firing a lot of the old crimped-shell ratshot rounds through it. These did not have a plastic jacket around the shot charge. The little #12 pellets just went up the barrel stark nekkid. I suspect that it was used mostly as a barn gun for rats running around in there. Or barn pigeons.
This shows the old-fashioned crimped shells. (I think these look more like Ramset powder-actuated driver blanks, but that's the kind of crimp I'm talking about. Old-timers will remember these.)
The Liberator pistol was unrifled, but that was meant for almost contact distances and with the .45ACP slug's profile, at those distances, sidewise or backwards when it hit almost didn't matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator
Besides, the expanding bubble of hot gases inside the body cavity with a contact shot would probably do all the damage needed without any bullet at all.
The original versions of those .45 Colt / .410 shotshell revolvers like the Taurus "Judge" were known to tumble with the bulleted .45 Colt round, but that was because the rifling was so shallow. I don't know if they fixed that or not.
My personal impression at the time I read the
American RIfleman review of them was that the very shallow rifling was kind of a token thing anyhow to keep it from being called an illegally short smooth-barreled shotgun, yet shallow enough that the shot charge didn't spin too much and form doughnut patterns too badly.
They may have improved matters since then. Nevertheless, same story as with the Liberator: A .45 Colt round at the bad-breath-belly-to-belly distances that the gun was intended for, whether the bullet struck sideways or backwards didn't matter much to the intended target.
Terry, 230RN