22 Ammunition | A Brief Discussion

alan here for old english outfitters so we have noticed a bit of a trend lately and particularly it revolves around new shooters now new shooters doesn't necessarily mean young people okay you can be a new shooter and still be somewhat old but new shooters have a little bit of a misconception about one of our oldest cartridges it's called the 22. we have a lot of people coming in looking for 22s because well it's the most popular cartridge in the world on the planet everybody uses 22. it's made in bigger numbers than anything else used in a wide variety of weapons rifles pistols revolvers all sorts of things it has huge advantages it's relatively quiet pretty good cartridge does a pretty good job for the missions it's intended for and it's uh inexpensive compared to most other things it's a rimfire cartridge so as we talked in one of our previous segments it's not something that you want to take a weapon in that chamber and dry fire it very much specific manufacturers say you can but some say you can't it's usually if you're unsure about it don't do it because of how that's constructed but we have a lot of people new shooters mostly who come in and they're asking for 22 long because they have a pistol rifle revolver chambered in 22 long rifle but they're asking for 22 long and there is a big difference between those two cartridges so we thought it might be kind of interesting and informative to take a look at the 22 cartridges now this is not all inclusive there's one or two strays out there that we're not going to talk about but there you don't see those hardly very often at all but the ones that i have in front of me here are the ones that we're going to talk about kind of goes back to the beginning history of it and we're going to flesh out the difference between 22 long and 22 long rifle now one of the reasons this is important is because if you have a pistol or a rifle that are semi-automatic and you buy 22 longs they are not going to work in that gun they might look like they'll work but they won't because of the differences between the cartridge and we for a while now have had 22 long in cci's brand for sale people buy it and then they end up coming right back when they find out it doesn't work so we're going to try to head you off 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 right here on this end this is the grandfather of the whole bunch today we call it the flow bear f-l-o-b-e-r-t french word the flow bear it used to be called and still is called to some degree 22 bb cap this thing is where all the rest of these kind of came from it is not interchangeable with them and you kind of if you're going to buy this you've got an old old old gun that's chambered for it you're not going to use it in most things but i pointed out because it's kind of where the rest of these came from how old is this cartridge you ready for this 1854 1854 over in europe was where this cartridge was designed and it's not much more than a muzzleloader percussion cap with a projectile attached to it it's not much more than that very low powered used for target shooting and games playing actually they would use little target games they'd have little targets and they'd just shoot at them for score the 22 bb cap very interesting old round next to it is the 22 short now the 22 shorts a lot newer right yeah not really 1857 was when the 22 short was designed 1857 before the united states civil war 1857 it was the first metallic cartridge that was chambered in a so-called modern firearm smith and wesson built a revolver for it it took the idea of the bb cap put a longer case on it trimmed it up a little bit and put an actual usable projectile on it about a 29 grain bullet today you can get 22 short in both standard and high velocity configurations they used to be and if you're old enough to remember this you're dating yourself just a little bit but there used to be you could go to the county fairs and you could go to shooting galleries and the shooting galleries used 22 shorts they had guns that were chambered specifically for them sometimes semi-automatic guns chambered specifically for the 22 short that you could target shoot with of course that was in the days before we got paranoid and started being afraid of everything that we see right the 22 short next to it over here we have the 22 long the one that's kind of caused a little bit of confusion these days the 22 long well that's a much newer cartridge right not really 1871 was when the 22 long was designed 1871 not too much longer after 1857 it built upon the same idea we made the casing longer so we could put more powder in it we took a very similar bullet essentially the same bullet that 22 short used a 29 grain bullet relatively lightweight slug but we put a bigger case on it we put more powder behind it we drove it faster and it became very popular with small game hunters and and target shooters and such works pretty good the 22 long then we have next to it the one that we have most everything today chambered in 22 long rifle it does not have to be a rifle to shoot it 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 we put a heavier bullet on it put a little more power yet behind it and we end up with the 22 long rifle probably named that to distinguish it from the long the long rifle today is made in standard and high velocity and hyper velocity configurations if you have a semi-automatic weapon pistol or rifle 22 long rifle high velocity is what you need now high velocity 22 long rifles first of all on the boxes of these things usually they tell you about how fast they're going what their velocity is their starting velocities long rifle high velocity to qualify as a high velocity it's usually going to start around 1200 feet per second and go up from there there are some so-called hyper velocity rounds that'll truck out there at about 1600 feet per second or thereabouts out of a rifle barrel but long rifle high velocity for most semi-automatic things is what you need now these three short long long rifle are somewhat interchangeable if you have a revolver or a lever action rifle you can probably shoot all three of those because you're providing the power to operate the gun the cartridge power isn't doing it when you actuate the lever or in a revolver you you [ __ ] a hammer pull the trigger whatever you're manually operating the mechanism of the firearm so you can shoot shorts longs long rifles if you look at the side of some of the barrels on some of the guns henry comes to mind because usually they kind of outline the lettering on them you'll see it'll say s l or lr short long or long rifle and i've shot henry lever actions loaded up with shorts works fine longs works fine long rifles works fine doesn't matter what velocity is because you're providing the power to operate semi-automatic once again just to recap you need the long rifle and you need the high velocity now are there exceptions sure there are you're going to find the occasional exception that will shoot a standard velocity 22 long rifle in a semi-automatic action and still do it reliably if your gun does that wonderful fine no problems do it if it doesn't gotta find the high velocity stuff okay the three modern cartridges in the the standard 22 range are the short long and long rifle over here we have the 22 magnum actually the 22 winchester magnum or wmr that was this the actual uh designation of this cartridge sometimes the question comes up can i shoot 22 long rifle in a 22 magnum and the answer is no but the answer is also yes and you say what the heck does he mean by that well you can shoot the projectiles through the same barrel they're not exactly the same diameter there the magnum is just just very slightly bigger but it will still work okay through the same barrel what you need though is a different chamber so you have revolvers like the heritage series rough riders like the ruger single sixes that have two cylinders the cylinder of course is worth is the chamber on a revolver right so you have one cylinder that's set up for 22 long rifle chamber one that's set up for 22 magnum chamber the magnum cartridge is not just longer it's marginally bigger in diameter the whole thing is so you've got to have a different chamber if you shoot a long rifle in a magnum number one because that's a little larger chamber firing pin may not reach the primer even if it does the casing is going to expand and most likely jam up the works okay so you cannot do that semi-automatic weapon chambered for 22 magnum is not going to shoot 22 long rifle it just isn't if you want to shoot both you got to go to a revolver platform something that has the capability of swapping the chamber okay all right so recap granddaddy the 22 bb cap the short the long the long rifle and the 22 magnum once again if you're coming in with a modern firearm and it's semi-automatic you're looking for a long rifle not long if it's a revolver no problem where will a bolt action shoot the shorts and the longs and maybe this thing is short enough that through a bolt action cycling the bolt it may jam it up when you feed it probably for sure if it's coming out of a box type magazine maybe if it's coming out of a a tube magazine maybe it'll work long's usually do without too much trouble so it's one of those things where you might just try in your particular gun you're okay you know it's funny sometimes things make a big circle right over here we have this really low powered 22 that kind of started all this well today we have things like that this one's made by aguila and mexico it's called a 22 colibri 22 cb caps you've heard of those perhaps those are the same idea so what somebody did was they took long rifle or long casing and put that really tiny projectile on it these things very often have very little or no powder sometimes they just have priming compound so you got a projectile that's traveling really slow in some cases as low as around 300 feet per second some of them are a little more robust they might get you out to about 700 feet per second but you don't like arrogant velocities right so indoor target shooting low report no recoil to speak of whatsoever but because you have this long casing it might feed through some actions obviously not semi-auto bolt action maybe lever action maybe might try it little bitty short projectile sometimes that creates enough length problems to cause trouble single shots no problem at all got to be a little careful with using a rifle they're traveling so slow that they may not get out the barrel so you got to kind of watch that okay so the full circle of 22s now like i said there's one or two stray 22 caliber rounds that are out there specific guns use them and it's rare for you to see them and if you're a new shooter you're probably not going to have any interest in them if you're a new shooter the two that are that you're interested in are the long and the long rifle to a slightly lesser degree to short but like i said the long rifle is what most modern things are actually chambered for okay so hopefully that cleared it up a little bit and gave you a little history about where all this stuff came from like we sometimes do as human beings they took a basic idea and built upon it will it go further from that uh who knows they haven't really done it yet in in 22 caliber projectiles so we'll see okay that's all i have for right now hopefully that cleared things up for you just a little bit and eliminates confusion and eliminates problems when you are looking for ammunition for your 22 and your your uh you're confused about what you need okay all right that's all we have for today thanks for watching i'm alan for old english outfitters you

Channel: Olde English Outfitters

Views: 614,816

Rating: 4.9294639 out of 5

Keywords: 22 ammo, 22LR, 22 Long, 22 Shorts, 22 Magnum, 22lr pistol, 22 handgun, ccw

Id: 2E7DZvWQEek

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021