The .22 Magnum for Self-Defense

A practical personal protection plan should include a handgun, but that handgun should, without question, be one you’re comfortable with. As you become more experienced you’ll have the opportunity to further evaluate the situation and trade-up as your comfort and skill levels increase. For some, a .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire (WMR) might be the best place to start. It’s also affordable, readily available and relatively easy to shoot.

...

Many consider the .22 WMR too small for self-defense, but what do the facts and some common sense tell us? To answer this question we need to keep things in perspective. Unlike hunters, those who use a handgun to thwart violence don’t primarily intend to kill. The goal is to make the bad guy stop doing bad things. Handguns stop a threat in three ways. One is by causing enough pain that the bad guy submits or voluntarily decides further violent action is a bad idea. Another way is through incapacitation, which is an involuntary reaction on the part of the bad guy in response to being shot. Incapacitation can be instant or it can take a long time.

The third way handguns stop evil intent is through fear. No one wants to get shot with any gun. Law enforcement personnel will tell you that they point guns at bad guys much more often than they shoot them, and the most common response when a gun is pointed at someone is that they stop being bad and put their hands up or run. This voluntary surrender is the most common and effective way handguns stop crime, whether in the hands of police officers or citizens.

What we want to explore here is how effective a .22 WMR handgun might be at triggering these three outcomes. If just pointing the gun at the bad guy is enough, then caliber or cartridge is of no consequence—score one for the WMR. If a shot is required, will the .22 WMR be capable of causing enough pain to make the bad guy submit or voluntarily stop, and is it even capable of causing swift, involuntary incapacitation?

Click here to read the entire article at AmericanRifleman.org.