So we've seen now that .22 Magnum offers little to no additional performance over .22 Long Rifle out of a short (2"-4") pistol barrel. The powder in that long, thin case doesn't burn fast enough, so it just makes a louder bang instead of a faster bullet.
This got me thinking about .22 Short. Is it really inferior to .22 LR in pistol barrels?
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>Is it really inferior to .22 LR in pistol barrels?
Yes, and one look at both rounds should tell you why - .22 Short has nearly half as much propellant, and coincidentally, this means it has almost half the muzzle velocity.
People were saying, "Don't use .22LR in a pistol, at least get .22 Magnum." and then we get real, impartial test results from places like Ballistics By The Inch, and the muzzle velocity is very close to the same at the same bullet weight out of short pistol barrels, despite the extra powder.
.22 LR loses a lot of muzzle energy as the barrel gets shorter:
ballisticsbytheinch.com
For instance, CCI Stinger with a 32-grain bullet loses nearly 60% of its muzzle energy going from an 18-inch barrel to a 2-inch barrel. To me that implies that a good .22 Short might have practically-equivalent performance, while being more compact and quieter, especially out of an even shorter 1" barrel.
I hoped someone else might have some hard info on it, but it's surprisingly hard to find anyone who studies the .22 Short seriously rather than just dismissing it out of hand. It was designed as a self-defense round. The original designers could have put a longer case on it, and didn't. Mind you, this was the black powder era.
>green minifag detected
The muzzle velocity of a .22 Short is about half that of .22LR
I understand what you're trying to get at here, but you're wrong. The reason this subject doesn't get more attention is because we already know that .22 Short is a much weaker round.
>death by bee sting
I shot my self in the fore head with short out of a Ruger revolver. I didn't actually hav ethe gun to my head I was shooting and a target in front of a downed tree and it bounced back and hit me in the head. It hurt but did not break the skin. They are pretty much like a pellet rifle out of a 6-7 inch barrel.
It probably won't cycle in most semi autos...I suppose pump and lever action tube fed guns can feed them.
bolt actions maybe.
really I don't bother using .22lr except for in revolvers for plinking soda cans.
>The muzzle velocity of a .22 Short is about half that of .22LR
Fired out of what? You're not going to get 1000 FPS out of any .22LR round on the market out of a 2" barrel. Are you saying .22 Short is under 500 FPS from a 2" barrel? Because it's not. Anyway, you can get 1100+ FPS out of a .22 Short full-length rifle. You can't get 2200+ FPS out of .22 LR. 1600 FPS is about the ultimate potential of .22 LR.
This "we know" stuff is useless. Half the time it's old wives tales. We "knew" .22 Magnum was way more powerful than .22 LR in small pistols, and then we tested, and it turns out that out of a short barrel, .22 Magnum just means a louder bang.
Another thing "we know" is that .22 LR is inadequate as a defensive round, and yet it doesn't have a poor statistics in actual encounters. Unlike the "sufficient" 9mm, it has essentially no recoil, and in testing (let alone under real-world stress), this typically allows twice as many rounds on target in the same time. The recoil, flash, and bang of a more powerful cartridge can make it very difficult to recover if your first round misses, or doesn't hit a fast-stop area of the target.
I'm interested in .22 Short's real performance, because if .22 LR gets good results out of a pistol in practice, and .22 Short can do what .22 LR can in a pistol, it's a very relevant and underrated round.
Come on, man. I doubt that was even the bullet that hit you. It was probably a piece of bark.
BTW, .22 Short will fire in most .22 LR guns, but it works poorly. The bullet has to travel a third of an inch before it even reaches the barrel. There's also a lot of .22 Short ammunition that's specifically intended to be low power, and doesn't represent the potential of the cartridge at all.
>Being this retarded.
The velocity of .22 shorts is not half that of .22LR. They do have a lighter powder charge, but a correspondingly lighter bullet (27-29gr). You're looking at 1050ish fps for Standards and a touch over 1100 for High Velocities.
Now, this is out of a rifle barrel. Out of a pistol barrel I can't imagine their velocity is going to differ that much, since you have more powder in a .22LR, but neither is going to burn it all effectively.
>So we've seen now that .22 Magnum offers little to no additional performance over .22 Long Rifle out of a short (2"-4") pistol barrel.
But that just isn't true. You talk about BBTI, but it's like you haven't even read their data.
At 2", .22WMR does offer a definite, but small, increase in performance. (Small largely because the .22LR bullet has more distance to accelerate.) But by the time you get to 4", they're not close at all.
All figures from BBTI, 4" barrel length:
40gr minimag (LR):
>1014
40gr maximag (WMR):
>1353
33% more velocity
78% more energy
32gr stinger (LR):
>1191
30gr v-max (WMR):
>1504
26% more velocity
50% more energy
Also, if you want data on .22 Short, it's right there on BBTI, in the ".22" section, labeled as
>CCI 27 gr. CPHP
>CCI 29 gr. CPRN
32gr stinger (LR):
>1191
29gr CPRN (Short):
>948
20% less velocity
43% less energy
Yeah, I guess if you consider the +50% difference between .22LR and .22WMR to be negligible, you may as well go -40% with .22 Short.
You're overstating your case a little by not choosing the best-performing .22 LR ammunition, CCI Velocitor, which got 1120 fps, 111 ft-lb, against the CCI Maxi-Mag's 1353 fps, 163 ft-lb. 21% more velocity and momentum, 47% more energy.
You've got a point here that going up to 4" is stretching it a little, but I do consider this a negligible difference for practical purposes. These are both light rounds, which will do damage on a man-sized target more by penetration depth than by dumping energy. Kinetic energy's a poor metric for terminal effect, and even momentum has a sub-linear relationship to penetration depth. In practice, you might get 5-10% more penetration out of that 21% increase velocity, you might even get less penetration for the faster bullet, because they're unfortunately both expanding bullets. I would prefer a non-expanding bullet for a .22 defensive round.
Thank you for pointing out that the first two entries are Shorts. I didn't recognize those descriptions. Looking at this table, the 29 grain roundnose short looks reasonably adequate to me, ranging from 736 fps to 948 fps in small pistols, though I'd like to see some tests on skulls and ribs (ballistic gel is better than nothing, and easy to do in a consistent way, but shooting through clothes, skin, fat, and bone doesn't correspond all that well to gelatin). I'd expect the Viper and Super X to be the best defense rounds, but SSS (which uses a Short case and an extra-heavy bullet) might be surprising.
My main worries would be adequate penetration through the front of the skull, reaching the depths of a heavy man's chest after passing through a jacket and shirt, and whether it can break arm bones. I think I'm going to have to play with some CCI CB Short out of a rifle, which should be a little weaker than their high-velocity short out of a pistol.
I'd be perfectly fine with .22shorts if they weren't $7.99 for 100 here. 22LR here is $24.99 for 500 round bricks.
~80% of my shooting is precision rimfire, 19% is informal rimfire plinking. 1% is practice or sighting in for hunting season and defensive pistol practice.
99% of my shooting benefits from accurate .22LR's, while 1% needs power.
I believe Colibri and Super Colibri's make .22Short obsolete. .22 Colibri's are 22LR but without ANY powder, (So actually less powder than a .22 short) and they're like a pellet gun going off.
Not recommended in barrels over 12" or so.
The Super Colibri has a little powder, making it safe for rifles, eliminating the chance of a bullet getting stuck in a very tight bore target precision CZ455 or something.
Get a 17
I've had an idea for a multiple-tubular-magazine pistol that operates like a cross between a double-action revolver and a slam-firing pump action: as you pull the trigger, it ejects the round and cocks the hammer while rotating to the next tube, then chambers the next round, and finally releases the hammer. With .22 Short, you can fit 50% more ammunition in a tubular magazine, and the short action lets you try some interesting things.
Anyway, I think you could get 15 rounds in a tiny pocket pistol, in an action that doesn't require a special response if you get a misfire, and will eject a hangfire rather than have it blow up in your cylinder.
Found someone interested in testing .22 Short out of small pistols:
youtube.com
youtube.com
He does a lot more testing. Amateurish, but interesting.
Fair point about velocitor, I jumped to minimag and maximag as equivalent loads without looking for the actual fastest 40gr.
As for energy, it's a poor measure of penetration, but it's a decent measure of how much expansion you can afford without fucking penetration, since mushrooming a bullet literally takes energy. So to me, that's the whole point -- a .22LR out of a pistol really needs to be a solid to get adequate penetration, but a .22WMR can "waste" some energy on modest expansion, and still have enough velocity to penetrate. .22WMR Gold Dots do an excellent job of expanding while still making the FBI 12-18" penetration.
Anyway, if you can't stand Velocitor being hollow-point, you should definitely check out Aguila Interceptor. Same idea of a 40gr hypervelocity, but it's available in both hollow-point and solid. That said neither Velocitor nor Interceptor hollow-points will realize significant expansion at pistol velocities. (From a 3.5" barrel Walther P22, anyway.) I absolutely agree with you that you don't want expansion from .22LR, but a lot of these bullets designed for rifle velocities don't actually expand at handgun velocities.
As for SSS, it's got potential, but be aware it is marginally stable at best out of standard-twist barrels. Even if it's just stable enough (or you're at short enough range) to not be keyholing on impact, it will quickly tumble, carving out a wide wound track at the expense of penetration. That doesn't sound like what you want.
>mushrooming a bullet literally takes energy
It does, a little, but more importantly it lowers the ballistic coefficient and reduces the depth of penetration. That's great, if you've got penetration to spare, but if not, it means a higher velocity can actually result in poorer effectiveness for the same light hollowpoint bullet, because the bullet expands more and sooner, dumping its energy in the superficial layers of the target, so no part of it reaches into the vitals.
Given the choice, I'd prefer a solid copper bullet, or jacketed brass, particularly for when the bullet hits bone. Lead is very soft, so it tends to deform when it hits something hard. A bullet designed to deform, such as a hollow-point, will increase this effect. Poking through bone isn't easy. It gets a lot harder with a bullet shaped like a pancake.
>So we've seen now that .22 Magnum offers little to no additional performance over .22 Long Rifle out of a short (2"-4") pistol barrel.
22 mag was made for rifles with long barrels you stupid fuck. Thats like putting 308 into an AR with a 7'' barrel and bitching that it sucks.
22 short is going out of style because it has virtually no purpose over 22 long
>People were saying, "Don't use .22LR in a pistol, at least get .22 Magnum."
who the fuck ever said this? I've never seen a pistol in 22 magnum. I've only seen someone load 22 mag into their 22lr revolver because the chambers were long enough even then it was for shits and giggles not actual performance.
Lel kek my dude.
Some people consider "pistol" to include revolvers, just like they have since revolvers were invented. The idea that revolvers are not pistols is a relatively late one (early 20th century AFAIK) and took a long time to gain the acceptance it has. When somebody says "pistol" but clearly means "handgun", the civilized person accepts what they meant and doesn't make a big deal about it.
>load 22 mag into their 22lr revolver because the chambers were long enough
What noguns shit is this?