Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns .22 Snub Nose Revolvers; LR or WMR?

I’m looking at J-sized .22 revolvers, Smith & Ruger, for utility carry and varmints. In your experience, does the Magnum make a significant difference from a 2” revolver?

I found a pretty neat website called Ballistics By The Inch. They have ballistics tables for both the LR and WMR with different barrel lengths and several different loads. Their tables don’t show a huge difference. I would say the rough averages were around 860 for the LR and 950 for the WMR and both cartridges had a few loads that got Up to around 100 fps faster.

Thanks,
Expat

Check to see if the WMR revolver has full length extraction.

I bought my wife the 7 shot J frame 22 magnum. I think it’s a 351.. Hornady makes Critical defense ammo for 22 magnum. I’m pretty impressed with the little snub over all. Trigger is a little stiff in double action. Hasbeen

I went with the LCR 22 lr. I practice with it & CC a LRC 38. I see no real advantage in the 22mag out of a 2" revolver. Plus you get 8 shots over 6.

Have had several rimfire S&W J-s with 2-3.5" barrels..would never bother with a fixed sight 2" again unless one really need a compact carry piece with little recoil...shootability is tough....

Best of them going right now is the Ruger LCRX3"...light, compact, good trigger....would get the .22 Magnum for hunting/defense over the LR.

Bob

I have a Model 34-1 snubnose made in the mid-60’s. It’s very high quality but it doesn’t take too many rounds for extraction to become difficult and the cylinder to start dragging on the barrel forcing vine due to gunk. Definitely not a gun to take out for high volume plinking. Maybe the 22 Magnum is cleaner with less issues.

I prefer 22lr because I've had terrible luck with duds and misfires across multiple brands of 22 WMR ammunition in the past decade.

S&W makes a titanium snub nose 22 MAG that I think would be an awesome concealed carry gun with hollow point bullets

I've put a lot of miles on a Ruger LCR 22LR. No need for the magnum.

I had a smith and wesson ss j frame 22 magnum with a 2 inch barrel once upon a time. Firing it once casually while I was hiking convinced me once my ears stopped ringing that I had no need for a 22 magnum in a 2.5 inch barreled revolver. The 22 LR from that kind of a gun would be my choice.

I don’t have any chronograph results from a 2 inch barrel, but I do have results from 1 inch, 1-1/8 inch and 3 inch barrels. The .22WMR 40 grain Gold Dots gave me about 200 extra fps from the 1-1/8 inch barrel than .22 LR JHP 36 grain Mini-Mags out of the same barrel (convertible NAA mini). The .22 WMR Gold Dots out of a one inch barrel were still 80 fps faster than the Mini-Mags out of the slightly longer barrel. I also have shot .22 LR bulk pack type ammo out of a 3 inch S&W, and the results also were slower, some drastically slower, than the .22 WMR out of the much shorter barrels. It is not until I started shooting stuff like .22 LR Stingers and Velocitors out of the 3 inch LR barrel that the velocities started to beat the .22 WMR out of the 1-1/8 inch barrel. Also note that extreme spreads with 10 shot strings of .22 LR and .22 WMR ran 100 fps with a lot of loads, so you never know if the round you shoot next is going to be at the high end or the low end of the spectrum. Is WMR worth an extra 20 cents per shot over LR? I can reload .380 with 95 grain jacketed flat points for my 3.25 inch Glock 42 and get 900-950 fps for about 13 cents a shot.

This is the bestest advice you're going to get...

I'd say 90 to 100 FPS more is significant

NEVER shoot a .22 Magnum without hearing protection, painfully loud and sharp.

Slightly off topic but a couple of years ago a father and young teenage son were at the range shooting a Kel-Tec PMR 30, their 30 round .22 WMR pistol with a 4.3" barrel. The kid was having fun blasting out strings of 10 and 15 shots at a time.

This was around noon on a bright summer day and the thing that still stands out in my mind is that yard wide fireball in front of the pistol with every shot.

Yes, Magnum is significantly faster, even from a snubby, but their bullets likely will not expand from a snubby revolver, so penetration on a human target may not be much different.

The exact reason I sold mine, haha

If you compare 40 gr loads, the WMR is closer to 200+ fps faster in the 1.8" LCR. That's per testing done by Gunblast.com.

Numbers are here if anyone really gives a shhhit,

https://gunblast.com/Ruger-LCR22.htm

https://gunblast.com/Ruger-LCR22Mag.htm

CCI segmented 22LR mini-mags will take the wind out of most furry, little critters RTFN.

Much better ammo choices for a 22lr revolver, by a factor of a billion.

I'd give the 22LR the win, for target/plinking.

If choosing between them for personal protection, I'd take the WMR, probably load it with the 50 grain Federal load. That load because I would weigh penetration over anything else with a mouse-gun.