Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire .22 semi auto rifle for home defense?

Better than nothing and/or it's all you've got available at the moment, yes, but unless it's a hit to the central nervous system or critical joint serious and painful enough to quickly immobilize an aggressor, I'd have reservations that a .22 rim-fire should be counted on to effectively end an attack, especially if the aggressor is drugged up as is often the case nowadays.

While they may well bleed-out and die soon from multiple bullet wounds, a mortally wounded hyped-up druggie aggressor could still do a lot of harm before they succumb and they could be fighting for their life every bit as hard as you.

Yeah.............wouldn't count on that aspect.

Sorta seems like more old wives tale than fact.

There was a case in Kentucky a few years ago,......a 92 year old man living alone on his old farm was being robbed blind by burglars. They were breaking into his house,...his outbuildings,...even stealing his cattle.

He was at home sitting in an upstairs room one day when he heard them breaking in again.

He went to the closet and got an old .22 single shot rifle,....the only firearm he owned,..loaded it then sat back down in his chair.

Eventually one of the burglars made it up to the room he was sitting in and came in the door of it.

The old man raised the.22 rifle and shot him square in the chest with it.

The burglar fell back and stumbled down the stairs. He and his companions got in the car and took off. A couple of miles down the road they stopped to remove his dead body from the car.

The police showed up and took the man's .22 rifle from him,....no charges filed from what I heard.

The next day a local pawn shop owner stopped by his place and gave him another .22 rifle.

Not to start an argument but let's define needs for self defense.

Dying is not necessarily stopping. A man can be killed with an ice pick but the pick wielder might end up on the next slab over at the morgue.

Self defense is about stopping the threat. If the guy dies that's a good outcome but secondary to stopping.

Its oft repeated though...."22lr kills more people than all other calibers combined"....

As my son likes to say, "If you don't think little bitty holes hurt...... get a splinter in your finger!"

And I'll add, a lot of little bitty holes hurts worser!

(for the proper english crowd, there's bad, worse, worser, and then worst.)

think I was capable of doing it as a 10 year old with a .22 auto loading rifle.