I've always been told all that matters in handguns is capacity, recoil, and the ability to penetrate 12-18".

Velocity, energy, bullet diameter, none of that matters.

So why isn't a 30 round .22 handgun a better choice for self defense? There are now .22 Magnum loads that can punch 14-15" into gel.

Itsy bitsy wound cavity?

Some folks believe so and buy a PMR-30.

My question is how much does the wound channel collapse after the hydrostatic effect?

Rimfire reliability sucks.

rimlock

Why trust your life on the reliability of rimfire.

Attached File

I would suspect the first issue is barrel length.  I am willing to bet 9mm faster burning powder designed for shorter barrels.  It probably also has higher pressure.  22mag is not designed for short barrels, and while it makes a great fireball I doubt you are getting the performance you think you are if you shot it out of a 4" barrel.

Who told you that?

I keep hearing about the non-reliability of rimfire cartridges but honestly I find it interesting as I’ve never had a rimfire not go off. Granted I shoot a shit ton more centerfire and I’ve probably only shot 2000-3000 rounds of rimfire in my life either for squirrel hunting or just fucking around at the range but I’ve never had one not discharge (even with supposedly shitty Remington ammo) yet I keep seeing how people claim them to be unreliable. Anyway that’s just my observation  and I just find it curious.

I hope you play the lottery.


Also, you need to shoot more.

I shoot about 2k of rimfire a year and have about a dozen duds out of that.  (Federal, Winchester and CCI/Blazer).

Sadly, you are right. I actually do have a Winchester model 62a I picked up about four years ago and still haven’t shot and I’ve been itching to get it to the range

This.
Lol.

This last part is confusing.  All wound channels collapse unless they were made by high velocity rifles, then you get stretch damage surrounding the permanent cavity.  Its the temporary cavity which collapses.   And what hydrostatic effect are you talking about?  Is it supposed to be a wounding mechanism?  Can you provide links?


OP I always thought 22 mag had some potential as a self defense round.   The reliability thing is historically more about bulk 22 lr, not high quality 22 mag.  22 mag should be reliable out of a decent gun.

A 10 round 22 mag DA revolver with a 6" barrel might be ok if the trigger wasn't too heavy and if anyone makes such a thing.  

The PMR 30 is supposed to be easy to rack, light weight and light recoil and 30 rounds is nice.  If you could get it to run reliably it might be ok.   The thing is, you can get 15+ in a lot of 9mm pistols and 9 is so well proven.  It's not really likely you will ever need 30 rounds anyway.  

You would have to get into a discussion about how good of a "stopper" 22 mag is and there is really no way to quantify that.

Interesting, I probably shoot 10 times as much centerfire as I do rimfire but even with that I’ve only had a handful of centerfire pistol cartridges not go off. And I’ve never had a centerfire rifle cartridge not go off. Anyway I guess I’m just lucky. And like the other poster said perhaps I should play the lottery :-)

Not only does rimfire have ignition reliably problems, but it also has a (go figure) prominent rim that makes designing a “fighting-reliable” magazine a massive PITA.

If you shoot a 22 it will miss fire sometime.  Thanks just the way it is.  But if you had a 22 mag revolver
that would be the ticket.  Not a 22 auto too picky.

It's what I heard the temporary cavity called years ago.  I have no links, for I am the missing link.  

Federal bulk pack in the 2008-2016 range were some of the worst.

Yeah, seems peeps here own a hell of a lot of unreliable .22s and buy low-rent ammo for them to boot.

Now I'm not about to EDC a .22, magnum or not, but outside of a pocket full of .22s that got wet when I was wading in the river when I was a kid I've never had any fail to go bang nor operate properly in any .22 I own. One thing I simply won't put up with is a finicky .22.  

I have probably shot 50k rounds of 22 in my life.

I only remember one time I had a dud.  

Yep, Remington!

My Naa .22 magnum is 100% reliable. Never has a round not go boom. .22 magnum ammo is much better than bulk pack .22 LR.

I've had lots of 22LR duds, but never a 22WMR dud.  

I've killed a lot of stuff with a 22WMR.  It kills stuff better than it should from looking at it on paper.

I would never intentionally carry it for a defensive weapon.

I have a NAA Pug but that’s a back up to a back up if there’s no rocks around to throw and I don’t have time to pray.

It will KEEEL!

But it may take awhile....

I have.shot about 25000 rounds.of 22 magnum in my life
Out of little naa revolvers and rifles. About 200 out of a AMT  auto.
I have never had a misfire.

Hornady makes a pistol loading for 22 magnumb

I’m a CCI snob & don’t remember ever having a dud LR or .22 magnum....

Federal, Remington & Winchester, sure, but not CCI.

That’s why I’m a CCI snob.

I've heard the "reliability" shortcomings of rimfire all may life. I can't remember the last time I had a misfire. I never had a misfire from CCI in their upper level ammo. Velocitors and Stingers. Remington Yellowjackets have been 100%, but I have not used them very much.
Centerfire has less chance of having a primer malfunction form carry, and bouncing around though.

You were lied to, and humans are not made of ballistic gel.  We have hundreds of bones that can stop, slow down, or deflect light bullets.

I bought 6500 rounds from Cabelas a couple days after Sandy Hook.  20 Federal 325 packs.

That sounds about right.

Yep...

Gotta disagree with you on this. We have 2 Taurus TX 22's, a Glock 44, a Ruger Mk4, and a Colt Ace, at the range for rentals. Every one of them runs 100% without a hitch. The only real problem any of them have are failures to fire from bad ammo. It shows up with Aguila, Rem Thunderbolts and such. When fed a diet of CCI they are 100% reliable.

So, it is in fact readily doable to make a rimfire semi-automatic that does reliably feed from a magazine, in both pistol and rifle formats.

OP,

Pistol calibers do their damage primarily by crushing tissue. They don’t have enough energy to have a large enough temporary cavity like a rifle round, that can stretch organs beyond their elasticity and tear them.

So, the larger diameter the bullet, the more damage you could expect. (Have to factor in sectional density and velocity)

As someone above mentioned, the much lighter projectile of the 22 mag will likely be more apt to be deflected by bones, and not reach vital organs.

Gotta drop the BP or shut off the CNS..

On the reliability subject. I've never had a 17HMR or 22mag fail to fire that had to do with the ammo itself. It was always related to a dirty gun causing a light strike on the rim. And you can hear and feel the difference when it happens. You know instantly it was a light strike. I've always had 22lr and similar rounds not go off. And its always bulk ammo. 22lr Stingers have always fired for me.

Do the manufacturers do something different with the magnum rounds? I dont have reliability issues with the larger rimfire stuff.

Same reason .223 is no good. Dude, it's a .22. But seriously, the only advantage of .22 in a self defense gun is small size/concealability. once you have a larger gun, might as well go with a larger caliber. Bigger holes leak more blood.

Yep. Rimfire is only viable for SD in a revolver.

I've had plenty of very high quality rim fire, stuff like Eley red and black box, fail to go off.

This. I've had a PMR 30 for 4 years and have put 3500-4500 rounds through it and never ANY feed or eject problems. I won't shoot anything but CCI.

I have wanted to not like this gun. It's a curiosity and no one gives a .22mag respect for doing damage or being reliable. BUT, 30 rounds at a time, no failures, supersonic loads and the smooth operation of the pistol, I can't get rid of it. If it's all I had, I would not worry too much.

No he's not. Stop using cheap bulk ammo as the standard to propagate a gun myth.

I love my PMR30 and just recently bought the "all in one" upgrade from Mcarbo that vastly improves the mag lock/release, replaces the OEM plastic feed ramp with a steel one, and upgraded recoil spring.
It also includes an upgraded trigger but I really like the OEM so didn't change that.
I carry it with 31 rounds of Hornady critical defense rounds.

joglee thread, The end.

Keltec has done a great job of overcoming this issue.
In addition, there are multiple versions of speed loaders that ensure the rounds are seated correctly in the mag

Out of handgun length barrels, it pretty much matches a 40 grain .22LR load out of a 16" barrel.



Add a few inches and it matches slug weight and velocity to an FN 5.7 handgun.......... That will fuck some shit up.

Temporary cavity isn’t a wounding mechanism in itself. The transfer of energy, like what you get from a good 5.56 round for example, pushes the temporary cavity effect to beyond that of the elastic capacity of tissue, resulting in...not temporary cavity. Though it’s not displaced tissue like permanent cavity so it’s different from either. It can be the difference between a tissue wound in an extremity that ultimately is a clean wound channel of minimal damage, to one that tears muscle groups and major circulatory tissue and causes fatal bleeding or loss of mobility. Or both.

But that doesn’t apply here because you’re not getting velocity like that out of a pistol barrel. Pistol not being the “brace not a stock” meaning, but in this context, a sidearm. So you’re left relying on the ability of the projectile to expand, maintain mass to continue through muscle and bone and reach vital organs or nerve clusters. A low mass narrow diameter round, at low velocity, will perform poorly in a self defense role against a human. And really that’s what we’re talking about here.

Another thing is the cartridge might be better than bulk 22lr ammo in a reliability sense, I’ve done some varmint hunting with 22 mag with good CCI ammo and the Gold Dot as well. Never had a failure to fire with thousands of them. In a pistol though, there are not many viable options in that chambering. Plenty of revolvers I suppose, but I don’t want to advocate a revolver as a primary defense weapon over any of the modern auto pistols that are so much more well suited for the task.

The PMR-30 is a good concept that has been unviable as far as reliably consistent cycling. For every one I’ve been able to see run perfectly with defensive ammo, another 9 can’t get through a magazine. I don’t really fault KelTec for that entirely, it’s a long straight walled cartridge that’s very thin. Even if it had good feed ramps the fast cycling slide would sooner transfer energy into deforming the case than try to force the round into a fouled chamber. And the chamber fouls quickly because of the short barrel length.

What you end up with is a nitpicking the ballistics of a round that performs poorly in the areas that a defensive caliber would need to. People will cite hunting results with the round, but hunting is a very different set of needs. A human who is attacking you will behave differently than a coyote or raccoon who you are taking a single well aimed shot at at your discretion.

Then you take that round and put it into a weapon that either isn’t the best choice for a fight and all that comes with a fight to survive, or it’s not reliable by any metric. So you end up with basically something that can’t apply no matter how good it looks on paper.

Federal loads a short barreled 22 magnum load

I would wager of the 9 malfunctioning PMR's you've seen, a vast majority of the failures are due to firing rounds below the 40 grain weight listed in the owners manual and improper magazine loading.

Geez, I sound like a keltec fan boi.

Well, in the case of at least one state (Virginia), your carry gun must be .32 or larger

I bought my wife a PMR30   With CCI ammo it fails to eject reliably.  Ejector rips the case apart but the casing is still stuck in chamber.  I need to send it back to KelTec.