Ruger SR22: Defensive Carry Weapon?

[Mango]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qufPPWe1Kg&feature=plcp

Very interesting review...not that I want to carry .22 (although I kinda dig the new .22 LCR) but might be an option to get my wife into shooting

[Ewussor]

A friend of mine who's pretty much a pistol noob bought an SR22 recently. It's OK. If I was going to carry a .22 on my hip, this would be the one because it's totally reliable and it's the right size for that. But I don't see any good reason to do that. If you can carry this thing on your hip, you can just as easily carry a 9mm. In fact, there are plenty of 9s that are smaller.

Now my 14 year old daughter does have a hard time racking the slide on my 9 mm pistols, so I was thinking this would be a great gun for her to use (under my supervision of course!). She can rack the slide fine on this one, but she doesn't care for the gun very much. She shoots several of my nines just as well or better (and yes, she was shooting it strictly SA -- the DA trigger on it is downright nasty).

While we were at the range, my buddy also shot my P7 PSP better than his new SR22. I don't quite know why, but this gun is not easy to shoot really accurately. The SA trigger is OK, but somehow you have to work hard at getting good groups with it. It may be the "Just OK" SA trigger combined with the very light weight. Can it be done? Yep, but it takes more effort and concentration that it seems it should.

All that said, if I could only own one pistol and it had to be a .22, this would be the one I'd get. But since that's not the case, I'll keep my MKII 22/45 for plinking (it's ridiculously easy to shoot well) and I'll carry something else (exactly what depends on the situation).

[mbinpa]

I don't think I would carry a .22 if there were other options available, but with that said:

1. It is the easiest, least expensive weapon to train with. You can buy several hundred rounds of the good stuff (Stingers, etc.) for the price of 50 rounds of anything else. The more you train the better you will be.

2. It is the easiest weapon for a new shooter to learn on. Easy to rack the slide, most .22 triggers are better, the recoil is incredibly manageable. The better a it is to learn to shoot the better you will shoot when you move up to a 'real' gun.

3. The ballistics of the .22 LR have gotten really good - both exterior ballistics and terminal ballistics. Today's hyper velocity .22 rounds will probably outperform .25, .32 and maybe even .380.

4. As discussed many times before, effective shooting is really a matter of shot placement. A .22 well aimed is a better round then a .357 mag that was jerked 8" to the right. Am equally important is the ability to put the second through tenth rounds of a .22 on target with almost no need to bring the weapon back on target.

My uncle was a police officer in North Jersey and as soon as he made LT. his carry piece was a PPK in .22. He mentioned that more people were killed with a .22 then any other in the US.

I would consider it a great (almost mandatory) starting handgun and for those not comfortable with heavy guns and heavy recoil, a better then nothing option.

[JW1914]

My uncle was a police officer in North Jersey and as soon as he made LT. his carry piece was a PPK in .22. He mentioned that more people were killed with a .22 then any other in the US.

thats cause most of those people were probably shot in the back of the head by someone who snuck up on their sleepin ass

[rwb1500]

I don't think I would carry a .22 if there were other options available, but with that said:

1. It is the easiest, least expensive weapon to train with. You can buy several hundred rounds of the good stuff (Stingers, etc.) for the price of 50 rounds of anything else. The more you train the better you will be.
Agreed
2. It is the easiest weapon for a new shooter to learn on. Easy to rack the slide, most .22 triggers are better, the recoil is incredibly manageable. The better a it is to learn to shoot the better you will shoot when you move up to a 'real' gun.
Also in agreement here
3. The ballistics of the .22 LR have gotten really good - both exterior ballistics and terminal ballistics. Today's hyper velocity .22 rounds will probably outperform .25, .32 and maybe even .380.
This is where I disagree, a lot. If you could provide some hard data than maybe, but I will be very hard to convince that .32 and .380 can be outperformed by .22lr.

4. As discussed many times before, effective shooting is really a matter of shot placement. A .22 well aimed is a better round then a .357 mag that was jerked 8" to the right. Am equally important is the ability to put the second through tenth rounds of a .22 on target with almost no need to bring the weapon back on target.

My uncle was a police officer in North Jersey and as soon as he made LT. his carry piece was a PPK in .22. He mentioned that more people were killed with a .22 then any other in the US. This is a common logic problem that we see a lot with the .22 argument. Fords kill way more people than Lamborghinis do, so are Fords more dangerous? No, there are simply more of them.

I would consider it a great (almost mandatory) starting handgun and for those not comfortable with heavy guns and heavy recoil, a better then nothing option.

.22lr is certainly better than nothing, but if anything else is available I'd certainly pick the alternative. With the variety of rounds and loads out there I don't think anyone should ever choose .22 as their primary defensive caliber. We didn't even discuss the reliability of a rimfire cartridge...

[NathanB]

the sr-22 has a long trigger pull. I think that happens to take away from the accuracy of it. I shoot mine pretty well but the trigger is not one of my favorites.

[lemko]

Would .22 WMR make a better choice as a defensive weapon? Not that I would carry one as a defensive pistol, but I have an old H&R revolver that shoots .22 WMR and it seems to have quite a wallop, (for a .22). Hornady makes Critical Defense rounds in that caliber. Heck, there's a story over in the Lounge about a 92 year-old man who took out a burglar with a .22 rifle.

I agree .22 shooting is a lot more fun because it isn't as draining on the wallet as other calibers. My wife has a Walther P22 which is a lot of fun to shoot. I still want to get a Ruger SP101 revolver.

[das]

This just my opinion. I would rather carry a .22lr than a 25. Remember the old galvanized trash cans? When I was a kid 12-14yrs old my dad gave me a 22lr pistol and a 25 semi the 22 would rip right through the lid the 25 barely dented it. Thats my reasoning on that. otherwise I agree I will keep on with my 38 special and 9mm's for protection.

[gascolator]

We didn't even discuss the reliability of a rimfire cartridge...

In my last 3300+ rounds of Federal Bulk .22, I've had 3 that failed to fire. That's better than 99.9% reliability; and that's the "cheap" stuff.

I've never seen a dud CCI MiniMag.

Now consider that most .22 pistols carry a 10-round magazine, whereas many other compact pistols carry only 6 or 7.

I've never had the SR22 fail to clear a jam or misfire simply by racking the slide... I've seen 9mm <top-selling reputable brand deleted to protect the guilty> misfire and then be hard-jammed to where a serious struggle ensued even to rack the slide. And in doing so, I only gave up 10% of my magazine load.

The SR22 has rather course sights, and being as light as it is doesn't have much of a buffer against your heartbeat. And it has a teeny-tiny little short barrel. So there seems to be a bit of a limit on groups, but at defensive distances, it is sufficient to put a big hurt on someone.

I'd be more concerned with the effect of that short barrel on the muzzle velocity; that 92-year-old farmer down south pegged the guy in the heart with a .22 rifle. On the SR22, with any kind of a high-velocity round, you get a big old muzzle flash, which suggests that a significant amount of the potential energy in the powder load is just coming out as a pretty ball of flame, rather than any of the 1260 FPS it says on the package.

[redeye202]

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