The Best .22 LR Handguns for Concealed Carry

in parts four and five of our pocket pistol series I talked about the pros and cons of relying on the humble 22 long-rifle for self-defense this cartridge has below average ballistic performance and failures to feed and fire are a lot more common than with centerfire ammo but 22 long-rifle also offers the unique advantages of extremely low recoil and low cost for some people that means they are a lot more likely to practice building both skill and confidence if their concealed carry pistol is a 22 because reliability issues with 22s are a very real concern choosing a carry gun carefully is even more important with this caliber than normal I'm gonna offer a couple of recommendations based on my experience and since this is part of our pocket pistol series I will start with the smallest handguns and then I'll talk about a few of the slightly larger 22s at the end if you are going to carry a small 22 a snubnose double action revolver is probably the way to go because it's gonna let you avoid most of those reliability issues they're not perfect especially if you don't keep them clean but most of the time the worst you'll run into is the occasional light primer strike in that case you just press the trigger again and keep shooting there are 2 lightweight 22 long-rifle snub-nosed models I can recommend the Smith & Wesson model 43 c & the Ruger LCR 22 I've been playing with the 43 C a lot lately and I have to say I am really having a lot of fun with this thing it only weighs 11 and a half ounces empty and twelve point three ounces fully loaded with eight rounds that's about the same weight as a loaded Ruger 380 LCP and lighter than just about any other double action revolver that I know of the 43 C comes standard with the XS white dot front sight and a large u-shaped notch in the top strap for the rear sight for me these sights are a major improvement over the traditional J frame ramp front sight with the square notch rear I am able to more consistently get a decent flash sight picture for that all-important first shot out of the holster like most J frames the trigger on the 43 C is less than amazing and like most 22 revolvers it's heavier than its center fire counterparts even after thoroughly breaking it in the trigger on this one is about 12 pounds and it's not super smooth but there is a silver lining to that shooting a lightweight 22 like this one is a great way to learn how to manage a stiff double action trigger if you can learn to consistently press a 12 pound trigger straight to the rear on a 12 ounce gun without disturbing the sights or pulling the muscle off target then you should be able to pick up any 38 or 357 and run the trigger with no problem if the heavy trigger is too much of a turn off and you don't mind a revolver that's a couple of ounces heavier you might prefer the Ruger LCR 22 the trigger is still a little heavier than the centerfire LCR's but most people will find it to be a big improvement over the 43 see the LCR 22 also has an eight shot cylinder and it weighs fifteen and a half ounces fully loaded which is about three ounces more than the 43 see it's been a while since I fired one of these but I did review the LCR 22 for our blog a few years ago like all the other LCR's I've tried I was pretty impressed with it and I would not hesitate to recommend one if you would like to know more about the basic differences between the Ruger LCR and the smith and wesson j-frame 's be sure to check out the comparison video i did on that topic last week Smith & Wesson and Ruger also make 22 Magnum versions of these revolvers I'll be talking about those and the 22 Magnum cartridge in general in the next installment of our pocket pistol series okay let's talk about semi-automatic 22s for concealed carry back in part four I mentioned that there are really only two semi-auto 22s in current production that are truly pocket-sized I wouldn't call either of them ideal options for personal protection but the better of the two by far is the beretta 21 a bobcat this pistol has the tip-up barrel like the beretta nine fifty I talked about a few weeks ago let's let you load the chamber without racking the slide also like the 950 it has a manual safety and a mag release on the left side of the grip and miniscule nearly useless sights unlike the 950 it is a double action single action pistol and for my hands at least it is a much more ergonomic design mostly because it's a little bit larger the double action trigger on this gun is quite heavy and very long but the single action nice and it has an extremely short reset thanks to that and the low recoil even if I mag dump one of these things as fast as my finger can run the trigger I can usually still keep it reasonably on target this particular pistol is an older used model so it's not necessarily the best sample for judging the reliability of the 21a in general I've had a couple of light primer strikes and feeding failures with it while using CCI mini mags and stingers this gun does much better with standard velocity 22 ammo which is what the owners manual recommends using this little guy is much smaller than a snubnose revolver but it doesn't offer any real advantages otherwise loaded it's about an ounce heavier than the 43 see the capacity is the same for the first shot the trigger is not any better the sights are much worse it's a lot more ammo sensitive and if you do have a malfunction getting a good enough grip on this little slide so you can clear it is not exactly easy now I don't mean to go off on a revolver versus semi-auto tangent but I just want to make it clear that there are some serious compromises involved in carrying a semi-auto 22 pocket pistol speaking of compromises the other choice you have for a 22 pocket pistol is the Taurus PT 22 some people have asked me about that one and about some other small 22 budget pistols that I wouldn't consider quite small enough to be pocket-sized like the Phoenix arms HP 22 and the bursa Thunderer 22 now I realize that some examples of these guns might work just fine but they are budget pistols for a reason and it's not because the people making them are trying to be altruistic carrying a 22 is already a big compromise carrying a small semi-auto 22 is an even bigger compromise and unless you honestly just have no other choice do you really think it's wise to push your luck even further by trusting your life to a 22 that was designed around being as cheap to produce as humanly possible if I was limited to carrying a compact 22 but it didn't have to be as small as a pocket gun I would go with the Smith & Wesson M&P 22 compact I picked one up when they first came out a few years ago and I've put thousands of rounds through it since then with no problems at all it's fed every kind of ammo I put through it on top of that it's got a nice trigger and a well-designed manual safety the sites are decent and there are a couple of aftermarket options if you want to change them I can't guarantee that all of these guns run as well as mine has but I also haven't heard a whole lot of complaints from other owners of the M&P 22 compact but that is all relative because it still has all the drawbacks of any 22 pistol if a 22 up he'll see you more because of the reduced recoil then because of the cheap ammo there are probably better options for self-defense for example the 380 M&P shield ez is very similar to the MP 22 compact but its chamber for a cartridge that is much better suited for a fighting pistol I'll talk about this one a little more in our series when we cover 380s but I wanted to go ahead and put in a plug for the 380 shield I think it is a better compromise than a rimfire pistol in a lot of cases there are a few other compact 22s people have asked me about I don't want to go into a whole lot of detail but I'll give you my two cents on some of these the Ruger sr22 I owned one for a while it's not a bad gun but mine was not nearly as reliable as the M&P compact the trigger is not great what really bugged me is the manual safety it's the only frame mounted safety I've ever seen where you have to push up for fire and down for safe the Walther p22 for a long time these were notorious for cracking slides and for braking and other fun and interesting ways supposedly Walther has revised the design and they're better now but Walthers 22s are not built in the same factory or to the same standard as their centerfire pistols and I would be reluctant to trust one of these for self defense the walther ppk/s in 22 the current production models are a newer design than the P 22 and so far they do not seem to have developed as bad at reputation I still would not be too excited about carrying one the Sig p9 38 and 22 no one actually asked me about this one but I wanted to mention it anyway the p9 38 is SIG's micro 1911 style 9-millimeter a few years ago they started making a 22 version with a longer 4-inch barrel and target sights I got to try one of those out for a couple of weeks and it was pretty cool but the really interesting thing is that on and off sig has also offered a three inch version of the 22 model with night sights that means it's the same size at the 9mm 9:38 and it should fit the same holsters as far as i'm aware the only magazines they have for the 22 are the extended 10 round mags so it won't be quite as concealable as the nine-millimeter version but it's still among these smallest 22s being made right now and lastly I wanted to mention the NA a mini revolvers there are several versions of these little five shots single action only revolvers in 22 long-rifle and 22 Magnum I'm not gonna say it has no practical value but based on my experience so far I think I would rather be armed with a can of pepper spray and a sharp stick but enough people have asked me about these that I am gonna devote an entire video to reviewing this one so be on the lookout for that in the meantime you should probably do your Christmas shopping if you haven't already maybe that special someone in your life would really love a giant case of ammo and it's almost Christmas so you'll probably need to get that ammo with lightning fast shipping well that's what you get if you order it from us at Lucky gunner dot-com [Music]

Channel: Lucky Gunner Ammo

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Rating: 4.8520021 out of 5

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Id: jkCmI5-JRp8

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 17 2018