Does SIZE matter?

Getting 4 or 5 rounds in a chest is no easy feat. In fact it's mighty hard. I always point people to this video. You'll see a man shooting his lawyer. He empties two .22 pistols at point blank range. Only 5 rounds hit the lawyer at all. Of those only 2 hit areas that are even close to being in vital areas. None of them were life threatening in any way. The lawyer walked away from the attack.

A .22 pistol is way better than nothing for defense. But comparing it to a large caliber gun reveals that it is extremely inadequate for self defense. People don't stand still and let you shoot them 5 times in the chest. They move to get away from being shot. It's not that easy to hit a moving target especially a human with a brain that knows by instinct how to avoid being hit by projectiles of any kind.

If you put even one round of .45 caliber ammo into a person the chances are it will severely affect that person. Even if the shot is only in the hand it will get the attention of the bad guy very quickly. People who get shot with a .22 often don't even realize they have been shot. Reagen didn't and he was an old man. The bullet "nearly" hit his heart but didn't. He was out of the hospital pretty quickly for an old guy because there wasn't that much damage.

Again a .22 is a poor example of a SD weapon. It's better than a sharp stick but not really that much better if you have a good sharp stick. I'm serious. They had these things called "spears" that were used very effectively in the days before firearms. They can be used repeatedly and they can put big holes in people plus they can keep someone pushed back. I was joking when I made it look like people didn't know what a spear is. But I'm not joking when I say they are possibly more effective than a .22.

One more example. My wife's cousin was cleaning his .22. He managed to forget to unload it. He shot himself in the head. The bullet didn't penetrate his skull but traveled around the outside of his skull under his skin instead. Don't try that with a .45 or a .40 or a 9mm or even a .380. Don't try it with a .22 either but it is a fact that all those other calibers are far superior to a .22 when it comes to SD. .22's are for hunting small game or killing small varmints. If you want to stop a human use a much bigger caliber gun. You won't regret it. The idea of choosing a .22 for SD isn't a good one.

Size absolutely does matter - a lot.

CJ_56 said:

One more example. My wife's cousin was cleaning his .22. He managed to forget to unload it. He shot himself in the head. The bullet didn't penetrate his skull but traveled around the outside of his skull under his skin instead. .

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i'd have to say your cousin was extremely lucky and his guardian angle or the big guy gave him a helping hand on that one.

I've seen someone shot int he head with a 25 that did that deal.. circumnavigated it.. but the 22lr is a completely different animal than a useless 25acp....

i've taken plenty of game wth a 22lr. i know my dad used to hunt deer with them way back when ( yeah i know.. not kosher nowadays )

again.. I think that was a real , real lucky break..

CJ_56 said:

Size absolutely does matter - a lot.

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especially if you are not accurate.

I imagine you can kill an elephant with a 22plr.. if you shoot it in the eye .. etc.

don't get me wrong. i'm a big fan of portable cannon. I like big hand abusers like 44amp, 45winmag, 50ae and 500 SWmag. I also like shoulder abusers like 416 rigby... overkill in the overkill dept for anything in north america by a factor

I imagine you can kill an elephant with a 22

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I hate to tell you friend but that's just ridiculous. That's the kind of thinking that makes me post the things I do when I see people touting the value of the mighty .22 as a SD weapon. My "wife's" cousin was indeed lucky but that kind of thing happens a lot with .22's. They tend to follow the bone instead of penetrate it on larger animals. I've heard of people killing a walrus with a .22. That does NOT mean you can kill an elephant. They are incredibly hard to kill.

And the usual insults about my ability to shoot accurately are just pure bull. I happen to be an excellent shot (I have a $100 bill that says I can shoot better than you - keep in mind that I won about 12 out of the last 16 contests I shot in) but that isn't even the point. Sure you can kill a human if you have time to take the perfect shot or if you get lucky and hit them just right. But taking your time to line up a shot on someone is usually called murder and counting on luck is not a good idea.

Watch the video. That's what will happen with a .22 in a SD situation. You can't argue with that video. It shows very clearly that hitting someone in the chest is not all that easy. And the shots that did hit the lawyer in the chest did NOT kill him. They didn't even come close to killing him. They didn't knock him down and they didn't stop him. He "walked" away. And that was after the shooter emptied two handguns at point blank range trying to kill him. If that isn't proof I don't know what is. In case you missed the video you can find it here:


Yes the lawyer "eventually" goes down but it wasn't because his life was threatened. It was likely shock. Getting shot is no fun even from a .22. But imagine that lawyer was a doped out loonie with a big tendency to violence. And then imagine that he brought his own gun, a .45. Tell me you would want to tangle with someone carrying a .45 if you had a .22. If you would then you would not be very smart.

BTW I've seen hundreds of ***** shot with a .22. Not one of them was ever knocked over backwards in a loop. In fact the vast majority never moved at all. I hunted **** for 40 years or so before my knees decided they didn't like hills any more. At one time the furs were worth big bucks and when season came we harvested a huge number.

You most certainly can kill a person with a .22. But hitting that person 10 times in the chest before he knows what's happening is pure fantasy. It ain't paint ball. People tend to move in a big hurry if you're shooting them with a small caliber gun. Just watch the lawyer in the video. And if you're counting on that 10/22 to defend your family you are making a huge mistake. One shot from a large caliber gun will do what multiple shots from a .22 won't do. That's been proven time and time again. For example a 12 ga. loaded with 00 buckshot will have 9 pellets all about the size of a .32 caliber bullet. So essentially you would be shooting that bad guy with more than the equivalent of 10 rounds of .22 with just one pull of the trigger and you can pull the trigger more than once just like you can with a .22. And if you know what you're doing you can shoot twice very quickly (or more) and hit the target both times (or more). Just watch those guys shooting doubles with clays. Those are flying discs and people shoot two of them in the air at a distance. I've seen people that could shoot 7 of them in the air or more. Of course those guys are the rare exception but even regular shooters can shoot doubles if they practice. And only one shot from a shotgun to the chest is a massive blow compared to a .22. One shot in the chest from a shotgun will almost certainly kill the person. So why would you choose a .22? I hate the idea of killing anyone but if it's him or me it's going to be him if I can do anything about it.

Give me a .22 and let me sneak up on someone like a special forces guy would do and even with a small .22 bullet I can put that bullet in his brain stem and he will die almost instantly. But that would be murder in any situation short of war. Trying to put 10 rounds in the chest of a bad guy ends up looking like that video. Yes some people die from one shot from a .22. But the odds of that happening are low and the one thing you really want to do is increase your odds of stopping a bad guy with one shot. And that means using something bigger than a .22. And anyone that thinks that because they can shoot a target 10 times quickly that it means they can shoot a man in the chest 10 times quickly needs to stop thinking life is a video game.

CJ_56 said:

I hate to tell you friend but that's just ridiculous. .

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Do me a favor.

when you quote MY post.. quote the entire line , not just the portion out of context that seemms to support your claim. when I said you could probably kill an elephant with a 22.. the entire line as i said it was:

I imagine you can kill an elephant with a 22plr.. if you shoot it in the eye .. etc

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so.. don't respond to or quote my messages if you are going to do so out of context.

I'm going to go check to see if this board has an ignore feature.. if it does.. I'm adding you after this post.

no use in conversing with a poster that uses deceptive posting practices like that!

b=don't bother replying to me.. I won;t read it.. actually if all goes well.. i won;t see it even after adding you to my ignore list.

deceptive poster... yuck....

gotta go wash my hands now too....

soundguy

so.. don't respond to or quote my messages if you are going to do so out of context.

I'm going to go check to see if this board has an ignore feature.. if it does.. I'm adding you after this post.

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I had a long post posted here essentially LMBO at your theory and your attitude but then I got to thinking you must be a kid to say something this ridiculous. No one distorted your post. I don't care where you shoot an elephant with a .22, you will not kill it. It is illegal to shoot large game (I'm talking the big 5) in most of Africa unless you use at least a .375 H&H. Pro hunters suggest calibers starting with .4 like a .408 CheyTac up to shoot an elephant.

Your theory about killing an elephant with a .22 is just absurd friend. It will never happen. You're talking the largest animal walking the earth. The angle you would hit the eye of an elephant would be so extreme that the bullet would not travel down the eye socket if you did hit it. You would be pointing up so much the bullet would penetrate a small amount of skull and lodge there. You'd have to be in a tree to have any hope of getting a bullet to travel down the eye socket. And if you did the bullet would not penetrate far enough to reach the brain. And I hope to heaven you never try such a thing with a bear because their eye socket leads to an angle area of the skull, not the brain. That's a way a bear protects it's brain from an eye injury. Elephants haven't needed that adaptation because nothing has ever been able to penetrate that far until firearms came along.

Stop trying to assume things will happen (which is what you did). Check the facts before you post. You won't look so silly if you do that. I can point you to web sites that back up what I say. Like this one:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070318205439AAic8ue

And this one:

http://sportsafield.com/content/elephant-hunt-375-hh

I could find a lot more if I tried. You're just wrong friend and no one tried to distort what you said. I never changed the meaning of your post. Grow up and don't try to use techniques you see on tv to get out of mistakes. That's not reality. Try going to a hunting site and ask them about killing an elephant with a .22 and see what sort of reaction you get. Then you might see how off the wall your comments look.