Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire handgun stopping power

The average scenario where a 22 is used in a shooting vs when a 9mm is used might have more to do with it than anything.

You are right, the .22 kills far above it's paygrade. It is a vicious lethal little round. I worked several hundred gsw when I was a paramedic and I saw about 14 people killed with a single .22 hit to the chest or belly. I saw people killed with just about everything, including, saw one killed with a single shot by the anemic little .25 auto. What I learned is, you don't want to get shot with anything, especially a torso hit.


And we have the story of SC Trooper Mark Coates. Now, he shot the bad guy 5 times with a .357 and the guy lived! That is one in a million.
The bad guy had one of those .22 mag mini revolvers. He got one lucky shot to the armpit, missed the vest.
Trooper Coates ran about 5 steps to the front of his patrol car and he dropped.



MARK HUNTER COATES
Corporal Mark Coates was shot and killed after stopping a car for weaving in traffic on I-95 near the Georgia border.

During the traffic stop the subject began to struggle with Corporal Coates and they both fell to the ground. The man fired a .22 caliber handgun into Corporal Coates' chest, but the round was stopped by his vest.

Corporal Coates was able to force the man off of him and return fire, striking the him five times in the chest with his .357 caliber revolver. As he retreated for cover and to radio for backup, the man fired another shot. The round struck Trooper Coates in the left armpit and traveled into his heart.

The man survived the incident and was sentenced to life in prison.

Corporal Coates was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and had served with the South Carolina Highway patrol for five years. He was survived by his wife, two sons, two step-daughters, parents, sister and brother.

good points, all.

to not to be shot is the best outcome of all.

lot's of shootings on saturday nights back in the day in the macon, ga. general area.

not a lot of folks succumbed because of the randomness of the location of the small caliber hits.

That would be part of the methodology problem. Unless there's a reasonable amount of consistency between the situations in which each caliber is used any it's hard to draw accurate conclusions. But these aren't controlled experiments. It's just an attempt trying to draw conclusions from the available data on shootings. And there's lots of variation in that data. I'm not saying the studies are worthless, just that they have to be taken for what they are.

Gus, you are talking about Macon Georgia. I was a medic over in Baldwin County, took lots of transfers to the Medical Center. Talk about gsw, we hauled ass over there one afternoon with a deer hunter who got a 7 mag to the thigh bone, Good God! You could have stuffed a loaf of bread into that exit wound. 72 year old guy who had jumped in to Normandy with the 101st, and never had been shot. Got shot by his hunting partner, a 22 year old college boy. Guy had to get his leg amputated even the Medical Center couldn't help much.

And we had a doc who worked part-time in our ER, Dr. Williams. He worked full time at the Medical Center in Macon. He was working at the Medical Center the night Duane Allman came in.
He was trying to treat the guy and, as Dr. Williams told me, "Duane Allman was a real a**hole."
Allman didn't want to be treated and he walked out AMA and when Dr. Williams saw him again, three hours later, the Rock Star was dead.

allus thought Macon was just a very large small town.

otis redding did his growing up there.

but small caliber guns don't kill like large caliber guns.

at least i feel pretty certain that's the case.

random shots with small caliber guns provide work for the medical profession.

large caliber guns tend to assist in business support for the morticians.

the sage's at the fire will never accept that all normally used hand gun cartridges have about the same lethality and stopping power. There is maybe 15% difference between a 380 and a 44 magnum. Of course several regulars on here will get the vapors and say it just isnt so, they cannot and will not believe that the 45ACP is about as effective as the 380. OTOH all handgun wounds from common calibers are very similar (given 500SW is different). The fire is just not ready to accept that information.

and if one of these wonder bullets fails to perform like its supposed to , a 40 or 45 will still give you an edge


there could also be a time when you cant get wonder bullets and you have to carry any ol thing you can get ahold of.....which could be FMJ

I'll buy what you're saying, with the caveat that any decent .45 is likely to be easier to shoot well than most any .380

Things I know for sure about punching holes in things

Any caliber is better than no caliber.
The bigger the hole the larger the effect.
Headshots are for ninja's.
If it's worth shooting once, it's worth shooting twice.

I've killed enough stuff that I reserve .22's for small game. I've seen stuff survive that shouldn't have, and things that were dead on the spot shouldn't have been. You never know till it's over.

Y'all can laugh all you want but of all my pistols, I choose my Walther PPQ M2 in 22lr. I'm good with it and comfy. No matter what anyone carries, I think those are the important factors. If someone got shot in the face and chest with a clipfull of 22 rounds, I doubt they'll be getting up for more. Not by any means an expert, just my 2 cents.

go out and shoot a big ol jackrabbit with a .22lr and see what it does.
then shoot another jackrabbit with a .45acp and see what it does.

Archduke Franz and his wifey started the Great War by checking out after a single round each, courtesy of Gavrilo.

.380 ACP from about five feet.





P

Probably HST rounds.

When I was a paramedic we were hospital based. 92 percent of EMS are fire dept based, but our barracks was out in the parking lot of the county hospital.
So that, if another ambulance brought in a gsw, of course I heard them describe it on the medic radio, and I went right over to the ER to check it out and to work, I might start an IV, cut off patients clothes, put pt on monitor etc.

Also lots of gsw brought in by car and the nurses would call us on the phone, and I would go over to assist.
Furthermore, the ER was, as Tom Cruise said of the bar in Top Gun that had all the sexy gals in it, "This is a target rich environment."
The ER was also a "target rich environment." I spent a lot of time over there, I would help an RN, or stacked xray tech, any way I could.

So I got to work many more gsw than I would have had I been a fire dept medic.
Also, I got to check out the xrays. Hell doc would be looking at an xray of pneumonia, I couldn't tell s***, looked like cumulus clouds to me.
But, a bullet, it shows up on xray very well. A bullet jumps out at you like it has a light on it. Just fascinating to see the entrance wound, then see the xray of where the bullet winds up.

beansnbacon33 you are on to something because in my extensive study of gsw, a single .22 lr to the torso, fifty percent chance of death. Two hits from the little .22 to the torso [chest or belly, they are equally lethal] about a 90 percent chance of death.

Do as I did the other day, put a .38 Special cartridge on the coffee table next to a .22, in fact, I had a .22 mag hollow point.
The .38 just looks like a bad ass. And the .22 looks like a joke.

The .22 is no joke if you are looking down the barrel.

I will tell y'all another thing about the little .22lr. Surgeons hate it because it won't exit. Where you shoot somebody with an honest .44 mag, that bullet travels in a straight path and exits. Shoot someone with a .22, the damn bullet enters the chest, but it doesn't exit, it bounces off a rib, goes through the chest and damages the lung some more, then bounces off another rib.

In some ways the little .22 is more lethal because it is less powerful. It is a nasty lethal round.

Based on what I have read about shootings with the .22lr they are quite lethal. However, it often takes several days before the person dies. So the .22lr kills people eventually but is not a very effective stopper in the short term. In a self defense situation you need to stop the attacker ASAP and the .22lr is not very effective for that in comparison to larger cartridges.

Between 35 and 20 years ago I was collecting different breeds of layer hens. Some of them got broody and had chicks.

When the chicks got to be ~ 6 months old, the young roosters showed their colors, and I would shoot them

Every year I set up a picnic bench shooting bench with a scoped Ruger 10/22 and Federal Eagle hollow point 22LR ammo.
I have noticed [with dozens of examples] that 6 month old roosters can take 3 American Eagle long rifle hollow points to the body and not develop a limp.
I also noticed that any hits to the head or neck, and the rooster goes down.

If a one pound rooster does not flinch or limp from (3) 22LR HP body shots, 22LR HP would not be a good man stopper with body shots.

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I read a study that pointed out this very thing. The study said that the biggest issue with being shot with a 22 is that it may ricochet around inside or your body damaging multiple organs, also since they are small and do not leave a lot "wound trail" the projectile itself can be difficult to find.
That was the issue that almost killed Presiden Reagan, he was bleeding out and they could not find the projectile - Yep, he was shot with a 22.

drover

That's what John Hinckley used on Ronald Reagan. Reagan walked into the hospital on his own legs and collapsed in the lobby. He had zero blood pressure. The bullet was a solid and it hit a lung. If it had been a HP, Reagan would have died before he reached the hospital.

My experience is to use whatever gun I have on hand. Carry a gun anywhere you may need it or anywhere you do not need it. If you do not have a gun and need one it is too late.