Which is better in a pocket gun, a .25 ACP or a .22 Long Rifle?

hi we're out here on the range today and you may hear some gunfire backgrounds bear with me okay you may have seen our tiny handgun video and you may have heard me say sometimes you need a really little gun sometimes you do at just about the bottom of really long scale is the 25 ACP and the 22 long rifle there's a lot of bicker and debate over which one of these is better in a pocket gun and there's a lot of myths surrounding both of them hopefully today we can dispel a couple of those things first of all let me give you a close-up look of two cartridges that we're talking about these are the two cartridges we're talking about this is a 25 acp on your left and a 22 long rifle on your right now 25 is a bigger number than 22 and it's 25 caliber and so it's a little bit bigger in diameter that does not necessarily mean more powerful there's two major differences between these two cartridges one the 22 as you can see is rimmed as where the 25 is semi rimmed making it a little bit better for use in an autoloader especially the autoloaders that were around in 1905 when the thing was invented the other major difference is as you can see here the 25 is centerfire and the 22 long rifle is rimfire center fires can generally speaking be more reliable than room fires this is a Colt model 1908 in caliber 25 NCP now if you've ever looked at ballistics charts you know that a 22 long rifle there's a lot more powerful than a 25 however read the fine print on those ballistics charts most charts will tell you which they used to get the results and the guns they use to test 25 are very typically pocket guns that's what the caliber was made for the gun they used to test 22 is typically a 16 inch plus barreled rifle well obviously the results are going to be terribly askew so what happens when you take the 22 and put it in a pocket gun like this beretta model 21 a and compare pocket gun pocket gun then how will the ballistics compare well we've got our high-tech program and our high-tech chronograph stand let's shoot these two guns and see what differences there really is we have our cronograph about seven yards away and I've got to shoot from the kneeling so I had it go level through the chronograph otherwise and screw up the results so let's see how we do with 25 first shot says 725 second shot is 727 so that's pretty consistent third shot is 718 fourth shot is 730 so that gives us a rough average of about seven hundred and 25 feet per second okay now let's see how that compares to the 22 now let's compare that to the 22 first shot is 860 that's a lot more 840 850 850 so we're faster by about 125 feet per second that's a lot more however the 25 was shooting a full metal case 50 grain bullet this is shooting a hollow point 36 grain book so that still isn't really a fair comparison let's change our 25 animal and see if we get a different result now we've switched guns to a baby browning which is also a 25 and we've switched to hornady critical defense in which is a 35 range AK and hollow-point let me show you a close-up what that looks like this is the hornady critical defense on 25 acp with a 35 grain jacketed hollow-point and this isn't a copper wash or a brass wash like a 22 it's a real live copper jacket ok so now what we got is the 22 is shooting a thirty sixth grade hollow-point the 25 shooting in 35 gram hollow-point that's about as close to a spare comparison as you're going to get so let's see how we do 865 866 85 855 so as you can see when you actually make a fair comparison between a 25 and a 22 the results are about as close as you could ever get the difference between the two isn't even worth talking about one of the common things you hear about shooting these really little guns is that they're not very accurate whether they're 20 to 25 or any other caliber people say they won't hold a very good group well we're going to put that to the test I'm going to shoot this model 21 810 yards the FBI tells us that seven yards is the mean average distance of relief of confrontations and we'll shoot from ten just to push that a little bit now here's our army-issue silhouette notice where I put this shootin see a very important thing about shooting little guns like this is making sure you shoot for the best part of the target to get the effect you want we're here at ten yards and yes if I got a really good stance shot really slow I could probably hold a really good group but in real life you probably have to shoot fairly fast so let me shoot fairly quickly and see how good a group we can hold at this distance okay that was six shots at 10 yards fired fairly fast and you can see that's pretty good hits definitely enough accuracy to get the job done really interesting thing and I don't know if you can see it see how this one bullet hole that's one bullet will not - it looks kind of elongated compared to the others that's because that bullet is tumbling that's one of the reasons it's so far off the center out of these little guns you'll experience that occasional now we're back with the baby browning and this gun to shoot it this distance can be very difficult it has sights but they're so tiny they're really hard to see let me show you a close-up as you can see this gun is tiny it does have sights but they can be very difficult to use okay so how do we do not too bad now I'm not saying that you should go sign up for the Olympics with a gun like this but for practical purposes that's plenty of accuracy and the most important thing is make sure you're shooting at the correct portion of the target if you know what I mean but really when you get down to it are these little guns accurate yes they are whether it's a 22 or 25 the real difference is you and the model of the gun not the caliber okay so we've showed you that the 22 and the 25 Pocket guns can be fairly accurate but how powerful are those tiny calibers well we've got one of my favorite target soda jugs and let's shoot a couple of guns and compare the power up alright we've got four jugs been shooting left to right at the 20 to 25 9-millimeter and 45 all of these loaded with high performance holocrons the 22 it's 105 the nine-millimeter and the 45 okay so do the little guns compared to the big guns in terms of power of course now but one thing you could see is that in terms of the 22 versus the 25 wasn't really very much different and it was a really cool visual effect the main thing you got out of that was I got drenched in orange soda and so did my gun so I mean I could do some serious cleaning get home but in terms of what you're really getting at here is the 22 a better gun than the 25 just shooting those soda bottles I don't think there's enough difference to talk about here's another type of high performance 25 spear gold gun it's also a 35 grain jacketed hollow-point let's shoot that out of our colt model 19 le and see how that goes plenty of accuracy plenty of pop so as long as you're a pepsi assassin you're doing just fine so how does the 25 compare with the 22 in terms of penetration well we'll do another really high-tech test we'll shoot through this Pepsi can and see how far this hollow point 25 bullet will go through the soda jugs and then we'll repeat that test with the 22 see the results okay so how do we do well through the Pepsi through the first job and through the second now on this one it wasn't really fair because we're off to the side so it didn't really penetrate the whole thing but as you can see even that hollow point with the 25 penetrated quite a bit now let's compare that to a 22 well the 22 we can through the first pub and went through the second bottle and made that cool geyser effect but as you can see even these small caliber hollow points will give you plenty of penetration and once again there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of difference between the 22 and the 25 okay we shot some stuff and that was pretty fun and hopefully we learn a little bit let me warn you right now this is the boring part of the video where I talk what we did with shot the 22 versus the 25 and they came out pretty equally a lot of people ask the question why does it 25 even exist that's a long story let me try to be as brief as I can in the 18 hundreds of carry little guns most of time you carry those double-barrel derringers or really small revolvers in 22 caliber around the turn of the century around 1900 people started carrying Auto loaders they wanted only small Auto loaders thus in 1905 225 was invented the whole point was to have a semi ran cartridge so it lent itself better to Auto loaders and the reliability of center fire that's the whole point of the 25 and guns like this model 1908 Colt were very common up through nineteen fifty sixty even into the 70s 25 was very popular one of the things that really killed the 25 there were actually two big things that kill the 25 first was the Gun Control Act of 1968 that passed all those laws and restrictions on guns one of those was it banned the import of guns under a certain size so guns like this baby Brian made in Belgium couldn't be important anymore another thing it did was it put some taxes and tariffs and I can't quote a chapter and verse and like I say I'm trying to make this short and made it to where reputable companies like Colt could no longer make little guns like 25 and get them to the market for price people were willing to pay thus making 25s became the Bailiwick of companies like raven arms and phoenix arms and i don't mean to offend anybody these are companies that make lower quality guns and so the end result of that was a whole generation of people who look at the 25 and equate that with cheap crap that's not the case as you've seen today if you have some old-school high quality guns the other thing that was just the death knell for 25 was right around give or take 1980 a whole new generation of 22 long-rifle and like the CCI mini bag with CCI stinger and Remington yellow jacket list goes on at nausea a really high quality powerful reliable 22 long rifle ammunition and a whole new generation of really tiny 22 long rifle guns to shoot it like this North American Arms mini revolver now we didn't shoot this day because reality is it's not very accurate doesn't even begin to be comparable just which was Baretta but as you can see it's a whole lot smaller guns like this and new generation 22 animal rendered 225 completely obsolete but as you can see in terms of power it stacks up against the 22 for the equal and right now today there are two great advantages to a 25 and two great advantages to a 22 the 22 has the advantage of the ammo was a lot cheaper it's literally about one-tenth the cost of 25 in 25 ammo although small is just as expensive even more expensive than the bigger center fire wings the other advantage is now that 22 is a lot more popular you can get a whole lot better variety of guns in 22 caliber yes there are they are still making 25 but there aren't nearly as many now the 25 has two really big advantages one it's a center fire and even with the modern generation of and rimfire is not as reliable and we're already back in your life on a gun this small and this week you got to take every minute you came the other advantage of 25 is the availability of an even though it's more expensive right now we're in some kind of 22 ammunition drive today is September 19 2014 now things might change in a year or two but as of right now I can go to Bass Pro Shop Cabela's Sportsman's Warehouse just about any reputable gun store of any size and I can buy 25 in buying 22 ammo is really hard to do I know that sounds ridiculous but if you try to buy it recently you've seen what I mean so right now this minute 25 animal is a lot more available and it's centerfire 22 ammo when you can get it is a lot cheaper and a lot greater variety of guns so bottom line to the whole thing is gotta get the gun that fits your needs and when you have the debate over is a 22 better than a 25 in a pocket gun prison a nickels worth of difference when you actually start shooting I hope that cleared up some myths and misunderstandings about 22 versus 25 so as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the 22 versus 25 pocket-gun shoot

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 955,306

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Id: nnnJ0vjXQmo

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 30 2014