I’ve always scoffed the use of .22LR for Self / Home defense.  But consider the following.

A combination such as the above as a lot of potential for a .22LR House Gun or Truck Gun.  The Stinger is pretty much the hottest thing going for .22LR that I know of.  It claims 1640 FPS, which is smoking for these little Rimfires.  Put 25 of those little suckers in a little carbine such as this HK MP5, or an S&W M&P15-22, or even a good Ruger 10/22, and you just might have something there.

I know I don’t want to catch any of these Stingers, and certainly not 25 of them.  That’s a pretty goodly amount of fire power in a package that even a small child or frail adult or very strange ladyboy could handle with little problem.

We’ve nodded at the value of a training analog using such rimfires to offset the cost of ammunition with 5.56mm and the like.  Ammo is expensive, but luckily .22LR can be had in bulk at the average price of 20 bucks for 500.

As a survival tool, .22LR is a clear winner for sure.  Packing 500 rounds is pretty easy compared to 500 rounds of anything else.  Lots of ammo on hand, cheap ammo, it has a lot going for it.

.22LR is a very lethal little round when used with good accuracy.  It’s killed quite a few things over the years.  And it’s been used with success as a defensive tool as well.  However the point of Defense is not to Kill.  The point of Defense is to Stop A Threat.  The mad man with the knife is the model often used as an example, and perhaps this is unfair for the rimfire, as it’s also unfair to most handguns… only thing that really works there is a 12 gauge anyways and even then you are going to use multiple shots, so what chance does your 9mm have let alone a .22?    The most often “Defense Use” of a weapon is pulling the gun up, pointing it at the Threat and saying “STOP”.  This usually works because even stupid bad guys don’t want to get perforated regardless of caliber.  And a scary looking .22LR like the picture posted is probably going to be every bit as effective for this purpose as anything else.  If not, you have 25 bullet points in your argument to present… I am thinking that this might be convincing enough.

Wild animals don’t speak English, and can be unimpressed with your fancy gun regardless of caliber.  Noise often scares them away and any gun shot can do the trick quite often.  Having a high capacity here is a very good thing though because if the warning shot (ONLY FOR WILD ANIMAL THREATS OUTSIDE OF THE CITY) fails to send the critter running away, it’s going to come at you.  Some animals are much tougher to stop than others.  Badgers for one.  I hit one with a car and then a .45 and it just got pissed. (I was the one that ran away!  Evil little fucker!)

The key here with a .22 LR for Defense is ammo.  You want to use the good stuff for this.  And I’m talking STINGERS or VELOCITORS.  I’d not use anything else.  The cheap bulk stuff is good for plinking and practicing, but for serious use, keep your mags full of the quality made stuff.  Mini-Mag HP’s are the Minimum.  Shot Placement is more critical than ever here because the stopping factors such as hypovolemic shock are not going to come into play here.  The hotter rounds as mentioned are your best bet for penetration and tissue/organ disruption.  Hollowpoints are advised as well.  Not because they expand, because they rarely do reliably… but because the flatter ogive cuts more tissue instead of pushing it apart out of the way.  To get the Shot Placement that is so needed, practice becomes very important and again, the .22LR lets you do this.  So if you are practicing all the time with your .22 and you can make 5 fast hits in a blink at the sound of the buzzer… that’s a pretty solid defensive response.

Feel free to discuss or argue below.