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

Never used a Chevaliere,..but I once owned an Alliant that didn't give up anything to a Bridgeport.

Yes, but that is not the issue. I believe that you probably made the best choice for yourself but not all are as limited and can make better choices. Good luck w/ that rifle.


mike r

Well, Wild damn Bill!

Dang it Bristoe, I done went & called your shooter a Yugo, didn't mean to.

But partly serious here, hope you have better if the Black Widow gang invades Neds again.

I went to a suicide one evening working the afternoon shift. The guy went to Coast to Coast and bought a Model 60. He went home and loaded 2 bullets in the gun. He kicked apart an aluminum screen door and used the very bottom piece to push on the trigger. He leaned over the gun and shot himself right in the heart. The autopsy revealed the little 22 totally destroyed the heart. He did not have time to use the second bullet.

Yea, they work.

kwg

It's a $140 rifle. It's not like I have an emotional attachment to it. So far I just like it,...that's all.

As far as the Black Widow gang at Ned's,...how can I tell who they are?

The one time I was at Ned's on Bike night I met a lot of friendly people. I was having a good conversation with 3 or 4 of them until a horny fat girl joined the assembly. After that they all seemed occupied.

I've attended many, many bike nights at various locations. Enough fat horny girls will cause them to break up early.

I am personally aware of only two people shot by 22 rimfire. The first was in the mid '70s, a petite tiny 25 year old woman accidentally shot herself in the abdomen with a 22 WMR revolver. A few weeks later, she was good as new..

The second case was about ten years ago. My daughter's alcoholic exhusband attempted suicide with a 22 LR rifle. He placed one round to his chest. He laid in the back yard for thirty to forty five minutes before an ambulance arrived, then had a twenty minute ride to the hospital.

He did not lose consciousness. But he did have an extended stay in the hospital.

There are a lot of better choices when one picks a weapon for instant incapacitation of a lethal threat.

No weapon guarantees 100% first shot stops. But the odds certainly are better with increased horsepower. I would go with the better odds.

Just keep em clean

In 1973 my first stepmother used my dad's Remington Nylon 66 to put 12 out of 15 shots into a very large negro that had entered her apartment while my dad was working nights. The perp took a few hits coming down the hallway toward the bedrooms, took a number of hits his side and back trying to get back down the hallway running for the door and then took one hit right between the eyes when he turned back toward her when he couldn't figure out how to get out the door. She was basically shooting from the hip at a distance of about 5 to 15 feet from start to finish. She was an emergency room nurse who worked the night shift and was home on her day off with her two daughters. She had no experience with guns and had learned to operate the .22 after she married my dad. My dad kept that .22 leaned in a corner of their bedroom loaded with the safety off all the time. She did not attempt to render first aid. One the cops who showed up knew her and told her that was good shooting after dragging the guy out of the apartment. There was one bullet hole in the door frame and two about head high in the door that passed through but were never found on the building across the way. The perp had a long and violent record including break-ins and rapes. It was impossible to determine which shots hit and which missed but the medical report said he was dead on his feet with multiple hits to both lungs, liver, heart and other organs. The perp had hits in an arm, side and shoulder blade. The autopsy photo showed a pretty good grouping on his back just off his spine. None of the shots that hit him exited. She believed the missed shots were the last 3 she fired after the perp started to fall after the head shot.The head shot turned out his lights, but did not exit. The scene had very little blood other than what drained out of his mouth when he fell in the hallway. I don't remember the load but it was probably the cheapest stuff my dad could buy and was likely Mohawk solids he purchased at OTASCO. My stepsisters always told the story of the gun sounding like a machine gun firing and their mother using language they never heard her say. A side note, she did this dressed the way she slept-naked. She looked and was built like Rachel Welch. It must have been quite a sight for that dude to see her naked with a gun stitching him from front to back. After that my dad always called that rifle his n i g g er shooter. My dad bought that rifle in the mid 60s. I got that rifle when he died in 2017 and it still pumps out shots as fast as you can pull the trigger.

I had a friend that stopped a home invasion on Super Bowl Sunday a few years ago with one shot from a Browning Sweet Sixteen and a load of number 6 shot at about the same distance my stepmother killed her attacker. My friend retrieved the shotgun from a hall closet after the first kick at the door did not open it and was waiting when the second kick was soon followed by a shady looking dude entering the house. The shot was to the perp's neck and lower head/jaw and basically blew the dude back out the front door he had just kicked in. A second shot to the perp's upper back was unnecessary but served to carry him further out of the house. Both incidents prove it is good to have loaded gun in the house and that one hit from a shotgun with accomplish much quicker what 12 from a .22 will do, but that either is better than dialing 911.

Shooting a 22 builds confidence, which builds proficiency, which leads to accurate shot placement. That alone makes a 22 (especially a semi-auto rifle) a formidable weapon in the hands of a user that has practiced with it. Being that ammo is inexpensive makes that practice more likely to happen. A good quality semi rifle doesn't break the bank either . All these things combined make it deadlier than it should be if we were only considering the rounds exterior ballistics. Ease of shot placement carries the mail....

To identify the Black Widows I would normally suggest you watch the Eastwood movie, "Every which way but loose" or "Every which way you can". But considering that the bad assed biker testosterone kicked in & turf war BS broke out a few months ago, that bunch may not even qualify as BW, a term my brother & I use for wannabe biker gangs. Hearing bike night ain't what it used to be.

I wouldn't know, as I've only been to one of them as well.

Years ago I worked with a little guy that tried to commit suicide once with an old .22 single shot rifle.

Apparently he flinched at the last moment and only managed to inflict a nonlethal flesh wound to himself.

When asked why he didn't just pop another round into the old rifle and finish the job his answer was, "I was hurting too damn bad from where I shot myself"...

His nickname at work from then-on was 'Single Shot'.

He never tried it again that I'm aware of.

Local guy did it in heart. After evidently decided that wasnt the thing to do and panicked....ran through every room in the house ( painting it as he went ). Found dead in the house.

Another decided to pop himself in the head....in and out. Nothing really vital hit except both optic nerves {( temple in and temple out ). Still kickin...but completely blind

IF you had to you want to do it with authority. 357 or 9mm are your choices. LOL. They will work too, but authority to us starts at 10mm and moves up from there. 41 44 45 460 etc....

I'm not saying we don't carry 380s at times. Or that a 22 won't work ,in fact we aren't as sacred of using a 22 as you are.

Carry on.

Many pistol rounds are far from guaranteed.

A close pard was shot square in the head with a 9mm HP out of a Beretta 92 from maybe 4 or 5 feet. He called 911 and told them to send the “ambalance”. He was back in school in surprisingly quick time.

A 22rn may very well have turned out his lights. It for sure would of been easy to put several more in his melon before he’d of even realized he was shot.

I used to work with a guy named Nick. I mean, his nick name was Nick. Used to run a trap line with a Ruger .22 pistol stuck in the front of his pants.

I also used to have a landlord that did some home remodels and light construction work. Had a couple of guys working for him and he paid in cash. Two jackasses confronted him coming out of the bank one payday Friday, and tried to rob him. He had an original Bearcat inside his bibs and shot one of the would-be robbers in the crotch without taking the Bearcat out of his bibs. The other robber found reason to be elsewhere...

Reviewing every thread on this post, my two big takeaways are:

1) The Marlin 795 and all in its gene pool are not the most reliable in operation.
2) the .22 RF round is not the most effective, when other options are available.

I'd like to focus on conclusion #1: Mechanical reliability.

What IS the most reliable .22 rifle? The 10/22?

Great stories. Love a happy ending.