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Real world .22 self defense.

43K views 201 replies 83 participants last post by  gmd1950 
#1 · (Edited)
I love guns, and have been a shooter since my early days. But I am somewhat distressed at what have seen in the changes in the gun community driven by corporate greed in the past 20 years or so.

I’ll start by being very brutally honest; I’m a mixed race, former gang member from a very bad part of Washington D.C.. I have taken part in criminal activities in my teenage years, and most the guys I grew up with ended up in either prison, or the cemetery. The leading cause of death of young men in D.C., is gunfire. By the time I was 18 I had lost three friends to gunshots. Two were killed in gang vs gang activities, one was killed ironically being mugged when he got a job in the government and moved out to the Maryland suburbs and was shot in a metro parking garage in Silver Spring, Maryland. The only way I avoided that fate was I had an uncle that ‘convinced’ me to enlist in the service and get out of town. I owe him my life, as well as Sgt. First Class Mouton, a mentor who for some reason who saw something in me worth saving. I went strait and went on to live a pretty normal life.

But I see the gun shop guru’s brainlessly parroting the gun magazine guru’s, many of who have never had to use a gun in real world self defense. They are selling guns that the new naive buyers don’t really need, and will rarely if ever carry. Too big, too heavy, too much recoil to shoot fast and acurrite for the little amount of practice they will do once the new enthusiasm wears off. Yeah, I know, a gun is supposed to be comforting, not comfortable. But…why not both?

Growing up in what most people would call a bad part of town, what looking back I’d call a ghetto, there was lots of guns around. No matter that D.C. was as much an anti gun place as NYC, or anywhere in New Jersey, people were people, and they wanted to protect themselves. Small guns that didn’t cost much were the rule. Since these were not guns from a real gun shop, they came from the ‘gun guy.’ The guy you met by the trash dumpsters out back of the bowling ally or bar you frequented. You didn’t know the gun guy, and he didn’t want to know you. No names. But it was agreed on, if you got caught with the gun, you said you bought it from a guy at a bar that was hard up for money. If you had to use it, you tossed it in the river after and said nothing. Not like that idiot in the NYC subway shooting that actually turned himself in.

The most popular guns were the little German made RG .22 revolvers. They went bang everytinme, and at the close range most shootings took place, accuracy didn’t matter. Shooting at little more than arms length, minute of angle don’t matter. Another popular gun was the little Italian made .25acp’s. Galesi and the FIE Titan were around. Pocket size and effective. Which brings me to the point.

I was involved in one shooting with a little palm size .22 derringer. My friend Eli was shot in the stomach with a .22 RG. Our friend Al was killed by a little teenage crack head with a Raven .25. I first hand witnessed a shooting outside a bar where the deceased tried to use a strait razor on someone, and got shot three times with a RG.22. All in all, I never saw, or heard of, anyone who got shot with a .22 or .25 center of mass, dancing around afterward. In fact, I never heard of anyone not going down for the count, regardless of what some self inflated magazine guru said. Shootings were about 5 to 8 feet in range, and it was all over in a few seconds and a few shots, one way or the other. And it didn’t seem to matter what kind of gun you used, if you shot first and hit, then you got to live. When my friend Eli was gut shot one time, he crumbled and was out fit. He survived, but later in the hospital I asked him if he could have run or done anything. He said; “No man, it was like a white hot soldering iron twisting around in my guts.” Eli was a good 6 foot and 200 pound guy. He was taken right down the itty bitty .22.

I like to practice once a week. I go to local shooting ranges and I see a lot of atrocious shooting. Mostly by people shooting one of the “in” guns from Sig, Glock, or whatever, and its all they can do to keep most of their rounds inside the black on a full size silhouette at 10 yards, slowly aiming and taking their time. And they still manage to get rounds off in the white. There seems to be a direct correlation to how bad they shoot as to caliber. The 9mm people are barely passable. The .40 crowd is outright bad, while the more compact .380 shooters like Ruger LCP, Glock 42, the little Sig number whatever, are terrible. The little .380 crowd is a lot of women who can’t deal with the snappy .380’s. On multiple occasions now, I’ve been approached by a female shooter wanting to know what kind of gun I’m shooing that all the holes are in the middle. When I show them a .22, I’ve let them try it, and almost immediately they want one. After just a few cylinders of ammo, their shooting improves noticeably. Even a few men shooters did way way better with a .22. They then went to gun counter of the ranges gun shop and tried to trade in their gun for one like my .22. They of course got the speech of how a .22 will just make someone mad and it has zero stopping power. This from a gun guru that has never shot anyone in their sheltered little world.

Over the past few years, I and my wife have taught/retrained/influenced 11 women we met on shooting ranges to trade in their guns on a good quality .22 that they actually enjoy shooting. Ruger LCR’s, Smith and Wesson 317’s, NAA Black Widow’s, seem to be popular with them. A few even sprang for a Combo of a Ruger LCR .22 and a smaller NAA .22 for pocket carry when the Ruger may be a bit big for a date or business carry.

Unless you’re the Lone Ranger bringing justice to the frontier, or some other Hollywood action hero, it seems like most people going about their life going to the office, stopping on the way home to pick a pizza for the kids, picking up the dry cleaning, or taking the wife and kids for a walk in the park, would be better served by a small pocket size .22 that they can actually shoot well and enjoy practicing. Not to mention can just be dropped in a pocket holster in the pants with no trouble, so it will actually be there in case of a problem. Leave the bigger guns to the tactical Tommy’s that think they are Steven Sagal taking on a trainload of terrorists . I know that in the past 30 plus years of carrying one or two NAA mini .22’s, they have worked on two occasions of stopping a crime. My wife stopped a car jacking at a gas station with her little S&W 317.

This is just my own opinion from a earlier life in a crappy ghetto and first hand at real violence. I was a criminal and teenage gang member and street thug. I've seen people shot, and I've shot someone once. All I can go on is what I've actually experienced and seen first hand.
 
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#191 ·
I love guns, and have been a shooter since my early days. But I am somewhat distressed at what have seen in the changes in the gun community driven by corporate greed in the past 20 years or so.

I’ll start by being very brutally honest; I’m a mixed race, former gang member from a very bad part of Washington D.C.. I have taken part in criminal activities in my teenage years, and most the guys I grew up with ended up in either prison, or the cemetery. The leading cause of death of young men in D.C., is gunfire. By the time I was 18 I had lost three friends to gunshots. Two were killed in gang vs gang activities, one was killed ironically being mugged when he got a job in the government and moved out to the Maryland suburbs and was shot in a metro parking garage in Silver Spring, Maryland. The only way I avoided that fate was I had an uncle that ‘convinced’ me to enlist in the service and get out of town. I owe him my life, as well as Sgt. First Class Mouton, a mentor who for some reason who saw something in me worth saving. I went strait and went on to live a pretty normal life.

But I see the gun shop guru’s brainlessly parroting the gun magazine guru’s, many of who have never had to use a gun in real world self defense. They are selling guns that the new naive buyers don’t really need, and will rarely if ever carry. Too big, too heavy, too much recoil to shoot fast and acurrite for the little amount of practice they will do once the new enthusiasm wears off. Yeah, I know, a gun is supposed to be comforting, not comfortable. But…why not both?

Growing up in what most people would call a bad part of town, what looking back I’d call a ghetto, there was lots of guns around. No matter that D.C. was as much an anti gun place as NYC, or anywhere in New Jersey, people were people, and they wanted to protect themselves. Small guns that didn’t cost much were the rule. Since these were not guns from a real gun shop, they came from the ‘gun guy.’ The guy you met by the trash dumpsters out back of the bowling ally or bar you frequented. You didn’t know the gun guy, and he didn’t want to know you. No names. But it was agreed on, if you got caught with the gun, you said you bought it from a guy at a bar that was hard up for money. If you had to use it, you tossed it in the river after and said nothing. Not like that idiot in the NYC subway shooting that actually turned himself in.

The most popular guns were the little German made RG .22 revolvers. They went bang everytinme, and at the close range most shootings took place, accuracy didn’t matter. Shooting at little more than arms length, minute of angle don’t matter. Another popular gun was the little Italian made .25acp’s. Galesi and the FIE Titan were around. Pocket size and effective. Which brings me to the point.

I was involved in one shooting with a little palm size .22 derringer. My friend Eli was shot in the stomach with a .22 RG. Our friend Al was killed by a little teenage crack head with a Raven .25. I first hand witnessed a shooting outside a bar where the deceased tried to use a strait razor on someone, and got shot three times with a RG.22. All in all, I never saw, or heard of, anyone who got shot with a .22 or .25 center of mass, dancing around afterward. In fact, I never heard of anyone not going down for the count, regardless of what some self inflated magazine guru said. Shootings were about 5 to 8 feet in range, and it was all over in a few seconds and a few shots, one way or the other. And it didn’t seem to matter what kind of gun you used, if you shot first and hit, then you got to live. When my friend Eli was gut shot one time, he crumbled and was out fit. He survived, but later in the hospital I asked him if he could have run or done anything. He said; “No man, it was like a white hot soldering iron twisting around in my guts.” Eli was a good 6 foot and 200 pound guy. He was taken right down the itty bitty .22.

I like to practice once a week. I go to local shooting ranges and I see a lot of atrocious shooting. Mostly by people shooting one of the “in” guns from Sig, Glock, or whatever, and its all they can do to keep most of their rounds inside the black on a full size silhouette at 10 yards, slowly aiming and taking their time. And they still manage to get rounds off in the white. There seems to be a direct correlation to how bad they shoot as to caliber. The 9mm people are barely passable. The .40 crowd is outright bad, while the more compact .380 shooters like Ruger LCP, Glock 42, the little Sig number whatever, are terrible. The little .380 crowd is a lot of women who can’t deal with the snappy .380’s. On multiple occasions now, I’ve been approached by a female shooter wanting to know what kind of gun I’m shooing that all the holes are in the middle. When I show them a .22, I’ve let them try it, and almost immediately they want one. After just a few cylinders of ammo, their shooting improves noticeably. Even a few men shooters did way way better with a .22. They then went to gun counter of the ranges gun shop and tried to trade in their gun for one like my .22. They of course got the speech of how a .22 will just make someone mad and it has zero stopping power. This from a gun guru that has never shot anyone in their sheltered little world.

Over the past few years, I and my wife have taught/retrained/influenced 11 women we met on shooting ranges to trade in their guns on a good quality .22 that they actually enjoy shooting. Ruger LCR’s, Smith and Wesson 317’s, NAA Black Widow’s, seem to be popular with them. A few even sprang for a Combo of a Ruger LCR .22 and a smaller NAA .22 for pocket carry when the Ruger may be a bit big for a date or business carry.

Unless you’re the Lone Ranger bringing justice to the frontier, or some other Hollywood action hero, it seems like most people going about their life going to the office, stopping on the way home to pick a pizza for the kids, picking up the dry cleaning, or taking the wife and kids for a walk in the park, would be better served by a small pocket size .22 that they can actually shoot well and enjoy practicing. Not to mention can just be dropped in a pocket holster in the pants with no trouble, so it will actually be there in case of a problem. Leave the bigger guns to the tactical Tommy’s that think they are Steven Sagal taking on a trainload of terrorists . I know that in the past 30 plus years of carrying one or two NAA mini .22’s, they have worked on two occasions of stopping a crime. My wife stopped a car jacking at a gas station with her little S&W 317.

This is just my own opinion from a earlier life in a crappy ghetto and first hand at real violence. I was a criminal and teenage gang member and street thug. I've seen people shot, and I've shot someone once. All I can go on is what I've actually experienced and seen first hand.
Thanks for having the balls to step out and admit your early life and share the things you learned. On the flip side I knew a guy that was shot with a 22 LR and did not even know he had been shot!

Truth is there are no easy answers to this one other than SOME gun is better than NO gun
I have a Ruger LCR in .327 Federal that I'll trust a whole lot more....
My personal minimum carry gun is a KelTec P3AT in .380. at only 7 ounces it is easy to hide and pretty powerful. Did a "fluff and buff" when it was new.































myminimum
 
#199 ·
My ffl guy keeps a NAA revolver in his pocket. The folding one with a pocket clip that looks like a pocket knife.
He is a gun dealer too. That doesn't make him an expert, but he does have a lot of other options.
He pockets the one he will carry all of the time. Not the tatical safe queen that many folks always train with, but never actually take with them.
 
#200 ·
I don’t own a small carry size .22lr handgun and to be honest, one of those wouldn’t be my first choice for carry even if I did. I’ll be damned if I’ll willingly find myself outgunned by some ****bird robbing the quicky mart with a high point yeet cannon. Nope, not gonna happen so long as I’m physically able to make good hits at defensive distances with one of my centerfire carry guns.
 
#201 ·
Every time this comes up I think Aileen Wurnous (sp). The Female serial killer.....
... who killed seven men who had engaged her for her services as a prostitute. Murder of an unsuspecting victim who thinks he is getting a happy ending is altogether different to self-defense.

I normally avoid these conversations because everyone already has their mind made up. Nothing anyone posts is going to change the belief someone had when they popped into the thread. But I saw a video this morning that brought this discussion to mind so I thought I would share it. I noticed a few things.

The defender was almost immediately overwhelmed by the speed and violence of the attack. He only managed to get off two shots, both of which connected (I think). The attacker was dying but he managed to keep going for quite some time.... those seconds probably seemed like minutes to the man on the ground. How much longer would the struggle have continued had the weapon been a 22lr?

Make your own decisions and your own choices. Maybe while doing so consider that you may be defending not yourself but your spouse, or your child. Are you going with the bare minimum that is "good enough" because you are supremely confident in your ability to place multiple shots even while being dragged to the ground and pummeled as your attacker attempts to take your weapon away from you? Self-defense shootings don't take place at ten yards against stationary targets. I think we all understand that much.

 
#202 ·
Excellent Video, and good commentary with very valid points. Don't go looking for someone in your house, take a defensive position and if they come to you use the most force you can control comfortably.
 
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