22 Magnum Snub Nosed Option

I'm a big fan of the J-Frame revolver for someone who's interested in close quarters, personal defense. If you're willing to train with the gun learn how to shoot it well, it can be very capable. And of course it's very convenient, and very comfortable. Now, traditionally, I carry the six 42, the Smith and Wesson five shot J-Frame revolver that is firing a .38 special round. Now, the alternative that's been proposed to this kind of a setup is one of these revolvers.

This particular one happens to also be an airlite from Smith and Wesson. It is a seven shot, .22 Rimfire Magnum. So this gives you seven shots of a round that is lighter, but moving much faster than the .38 special round. Obviously these are training rounds, this is just a jacketed round and this is just a wad cutter. But the idea here is that we're better off with seven rounds that are lower recoil with still some capable energy being brought into the bad guy, versus five rounds that have a much higher recoil.

Now, there are some concerns I have with this theory but let's first and foremost, take a look at our most plausible defensive shooting circumstance beyond two arms reach, into the high center chest. So I've got five shots of .38 at this distance on this target, looking at the high center chest. You can see that it's relatively easy to put five rounds for me, of course, like I said, I've been practicing I've experienced this gun quite a bit. Don't worry about exactly what the time was, because really at the end of the day, your time to get those hits is going to be a little different from mine. The distance is going to change, everything else.

Now we're going to look at seven shots from this Magnum round, the .22 Rimfire Magnum Again, seven shots into the high center chest is seven shots into the high center chest. One thing you probably noticed on the video and we can play it back, is that there's very little movement of the gun with the .22 as compared to the actual .38 Special, that round has less inherent recoil. There's less issue to recover from that but both guns were able to put the rounds very quickly, very efficiently into the high center chest. Now here's where the real comparison starts when we think about the difference between this incredibly lightweight .22 Magnum moving fast and this much heavier .38 Special round moving still fast relative, to our everyday lives, but not as fast as the little tiny .22 bullet. What we realize is that this heavier bullet is going to have more momentum.

It's going to be able to penetrate deeper into that human body, that person that we're trying to stop. And that's really what's most important when we talk about the high center chest. So I'd probably stick with five rounds of the .38 going through the chest, getting that deep penetration that we're looking for, that 10, 12, 14 inches that we're looking for out of our good defensive rounds versus the lower penetration but more rounds actually hitting the body, when we talk about the .22. So where does the .22 possibly come into its own? Well, let's take a look now and do another scenario test this time I'm going to stick with five shots only but I'm going to go five shots into the head of this target.

Let's look at five shots into the head of this target. I'm going to take the .38 and try to recreate the same thing. And we can see that trying to keep the pace about the same. There was much more recoil, much more movement and I didn't do quite as well as far as keeping all those shots in the head, there was a much larger group there. That's exactly what I see from the typical shooter that I've let try this comparison between the .38 and the .22 when it comes to a higher level of precision.

Under any given speed, under any given circumstances, trying to keep as much the same as possible. People are able to keep a tighter group under any given timeframe with the .22. Now, while that may seem like it applies across the board as you saw in my first demonstration it really doesn't apply at the generous area that we have with the high center chest. It's only once we start shrinking that area down that the .22 Magnum becomes much more viable or seems like a better choice. Now here's the rub the real bad guy isn't going to stand still like that head area of this paper target.

The real bad guy isn't going to stand still like a four-inch plate, the real bad guy isn't going to stand still, like at all. When you start shooting that guy is going to be moving, flinching doing the things he's trying to do to hurt you. The head moves, the head moves much more than the chest. And in fact, my theory is this. I'm going to spend more time trying to re-index the head that's moving down there, after I go through recoil, however slight it is.

It's going to take me more time to get back on that moving target than it is for me to actually manage the recoil of the .38. So again, apples to apples in the real world, not against paper I still think the .38 Special with five shots wins the battle against the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire out of the snubnose revolver.