22 Ammunition | A Brief Discussion

Alan here for the old English suppliers, so we've noticed a trend lately and it particularly revolves around new handles. Now, new shooters don't necessarily mean young people. Okay, you can be a new shooter and still be a little older, but new shooters have a It's a little misleading about one of our oldest cartridges, it's called a 22. We have a lot of people who come in looking for a 22 because, well, it's the world's most popular cartridge on the planet, everyone uses 22. It is made in larger quantities than anything else used in a wide variety of weapons rifles pistols revolvers all sorts of things it has huge advantages it is relatively quiet quite a good cartridge makes a good job for the missions it's intended for and it's inexpensive compared to most other things it's a rimfire cartridge.

So as we talked about in one of our previous segments, it's not something you want to take a gun in that chamber and shoot it dry. Specific manufacturers say you can, but some say you can't, usually it's if you're not sure. Don't do it because of how it's built, but we have a lot of people, new shooters, mostly, who come in and order 22 long because they have a pistol, rifle and chambered revolver in a 22 long rifle, but they order 22 long. long and there is a big difference between those two cartridges, so we thought it might be interesting and informative to take a look at the 22 cartridges.

Now, this does not include everything, there are one or two strays that we are not going to analyze. We talk, but you don't see them very often, but the ones I have in front of me here are the ones we're going to talk about, it goes back to the beginning of history and we. Now let's develop the difference between a 22 long and a 22 long rifle. One of the reasons this is important is because if you have a pistol or rifle that is semi-automatic and you buy 22 longs, they won't work on that. gun, it may look like they will work but they won't because of the differences between the cartridge and we, for a while now, we have had 22 longs in the cci brand for sale, people buy them and then end up returning when they find it doesn't work , so we're going to try to divert them a little bit so that doesn't happen, so in front of me here I have five .22 caliber cartridges and it's very interesting because this one is here on this end. this is the granddaddy of the whole group today we call it flow bear f-l-o-b-e-r-t french word the flow bear used to be called and still is called to some extent 22 bb cap this thing is where all the others come from it's not interchangeable with them and if you're going to buy this, you have an old old gun with a chamber for it, you're not going to use it in most things, but I pointed it out because that's where the rest of these come from how old is this cartridge?

You are ready for this 1854. 1854 in Europe was where this cartridge was designed and it is not much more than a muzzle loading percussion cap with a projectile attached. It's not much more than that, very low. motorized used for target shooting and games would actually use small target shooting games would have small targets and just shoot them to score the 22 bb cap very interesting the old round next to it is the 22 short now the 22 short much newer, true, yes, not really 1857 was when the 22 short was designed 1857 before the united states civil war 1857 was the first metallic cartridge chambered in a so-called modern firearm.

Smith and Wesson built a revolver for it. He took the bb cap idea, put a longer case on it, trimmed it down a bit, and put a real usable projectile in it. About a 29 grain bullet, today you can get 22 less in the standard and high velocity configurations than they used to be, and if you are old enough to remember this. You're dating yourself a little bit, but you used to be able to go to county fairs and shooting galleries, and the shooting galleries used 22 shorts, they had guns chambered specifically for Sometimes they were semi-automatic guns chambered specifically for the 22 short. with which you could shoot a target, of course, that was in the days before we became paranoid and began to be afraid of everything that we see right in the 22 short, next to it here we have the 22 long, the one that has caused a bit of confusion these days, the 22 long, well, it's a much newer cartridge, not really. 1871 was when the 22 long was designed, 1871, not much longer after 1857, was based on the same idea we did. the case is longer so we can put more powder in it, we took a very similar bullet, essentially the same bullet as the 22 short, we used a 29 grain bullet, a relatively light bullet, but we put a bigger case in it, we put more powder in it behind and we drive it faster. and it became very popular among small game hunters and shooters and it works quite well, the 22 long, then we have next to it the one we have almost everything today chambered in a 22 long rifle, it doesn't have to be a rifle to shoot.

Most modern firearms in 22 caliber are chambered for the 22 long rifle. Progression of the same idea. We took the same case length, but put a heavier bullet in it. We put a little more power behind it and ended up with the 22 long rifle. It is probably called that to distinguish it from the long, the long rifle today is manufactured in standard and high velocity and hypervelocity configurations if you have a semi-automatic weapon, pistol or rifle 22 long rifle, high velocity is what you need now high velocity 22 rifles First of all, on the boxes of these things, they usually tell you how fast they go, what their speed is, their initial speeds, long rifle, high speed to qualify as high speed, it will usually start around 1200 feet per second and go up .

From there, there are some so-called hypervelocity bullets that are fired at about 1600 feet per second or so from the barrel of a rifle, but what you need now is a high-velocity long rifle for most semi-automatic things. , these three short and long. Long rifles are somewhat interchangeable if you have a revolver or a lever action rifle you can probably shoot all three because you are providing the energy to operate the gun the energy of the cartridge does not do it when you pull the lever or in a revolver you are a hammer, you pull the trigger, whatever you're manually operating the mechanism of the firearm so you can shoot short rifles, long rifles, long rifles, if you look at the side of some of the barrels of some of the guns, Henry thinks mind because usually Outline the letters on them, you will see that it will say s l or lr short, long or long rifle and I shot Henry Lever actions loaded with shorts, works well, long, works well, long rifles, works well, no matter the speed. is it because you are providing the power to operate semi auto again just to summarize, you need the long rifle and you need the high velocity now, are there exceptions?

You're bound to find the occasional exception that will trigger a standard. Velocity 22 long rifle in a semi-automatic action and still do it reliably if your gun works that well, no problem, go for it if you don't have to find the high velocity stuff. Well the three modern cartridges in the standard 22 range are the short long and long rifle here we have the 22 magnum actually the 22 winchester magnum or wmr that was the actual designation of this cartridge sometimes the question arises: can I shoot a rifle 22 long in a 22 magnum and the answer is no but? the answer is also yes and you say what the hell does he mean by that, you can shoot the shells through the same barrel, they are not exactly the same diameter, there the magnum is a little bigger, but it will still work fine.

However, what you need is a different chamber, so you have revolvers like the Heritage series, like the ruger single sixes that have two cylinders. The cylinder, of course, is worth the chamber of a revolver, so you have a cylinder set up. for a 22 long rifle chambering, one that is set up for a 22 magnum chambering, the magnum cartridge is not only longer, it has a slightly larger diameter, it's all like that, so you have to have a different chamber if you shoot a long rifle in a magnum number. one, because it is a slightly larger chamber, the firing pin may not reach the primer, even if it does, the casing will expand and most likely jam the operation, so you can't make the semi-automatic weapon with chambered for 22 magnum is not going to shoot. 22 long rifle just isn't it, if you want to shoot both you have to go to a revolver platform, something that has the ability to interchange the chamber, okay, so recap grandpa, the 22 bb cap, the short , the long one, the long rifle and the. 22 magnum once again if you come with a modern firearm and it is semi automatic you are looking for a long rifle not much if its a revolver no problem where will a bolt action shoot the short ones and the long ones and maybe this stuff? it's short enough that through one bolt action cycle the bolt can jam when you feed it, probably for sure if it comes out of a box magazine, maybe if it comes out of a tube magazine, maybe it will work for a long time, he usually does without it. too many problems, so it's one of those things where you can try your particular gun, you're okay, you know it's funny, sometimes things go in a big circle here, we have this very low power 22 that started everything well today .

We have things like this, made by Águila and México, it's called 22 colibri 22 cb caps. You've heard of them, maybe they're the same idea, so what someone did was take a long rifle or a long casing and put that really small projectile in. In it, these things very often have very little or no gunpowder, sometimes they just have a primer compound, so you have a projectile that travels very slowly, in some cases as low as around 300 feet per second, some of them They are a little more robust and could catch you. up to about 700 feet per second, but you don't like arrogant speeds, so indoor target shooting reports low, no recoil, but because you have this long casing, it could be powered through some actions, obviously not It is a semi-automatic bolt action, perhaps a lever. action maybe you could try it with a slightly short projectile sometimes that creates enough length problems to cause problems single shots there is no problem you have to be a little careful when using a rifle, they travel so slow that they may not take out the barrel so I have to look at that okay so the full circle of 22 now like I said there are one or two stray .22 caliber rounds that are there specific weapons use them and it's rare that you see them and if If you're a new shooter, you probably don't have any interest in them if you're a new shooter, the two you're interested in are the long rifle and the long rifle to a slightly lesser degree than the short, but like I said, the long rifle is what they're for. stored most modern things, okay, so I hope that clarified it a little bit and gave you a little history about where all this came from, as we sometimes do as human beings.

They took a basic idea and built on it. beyond that, who knows, they haven't done it with .22 caliber shells yet, so we'll see, okay, that's all I have for now. I hope I have made things a little clearer for you and eliminated the confusion and problems when you are looking for

ammunition

for your .22 and are confused about what you need. Okay, that's all we have for today. Thanks for watching. I'm Alan from Old English Outfitters.