boati

barrels. i later cut one to 2.5" and it still grouped 2" at 50 ft.. The 3" ones tho, grouped 1.5" at 25 yds. I never got to shoot groups with them at 50 yds. The dog I shot in the top of the head, at a range of a few ft, died instantly. You could hear his chin hit the sidewalk. I was walking home from my attic on Walnut to Pam's place on S 6th street, about 1 AM.

The sob came roaring at me out of the dark. I'd heard dogs roar many times as they attacked, during dog handler training. It's quite distinctly an attack-noise. I was on the N side of the street, walking East, I dont recall why. I think there was a sidewalk on both sides of walnut? Any way, the dog came from the north, quite a distance, couple of seconds, full charge. I could hear his chain dragging, but had no way of knowing if it was anchored. Just as he came into the street light's cone of visibility out to the sidewalk, i had drawn the 10" long gun from behind my hip, from under the Army field jacket and as I fired, he hit the end of his chain.The same gun took 3 pigeons off a wire with 3 shots, at 25m, braced on the car window. The first 2 , I centered and they just collapsed. the third one, i hit poorly and he flopped a bit on his way to the ground.

I got a rabbit in Panichi's back yard with it, too, 40 ft or so. Chest hit, it went down, flopped around a few seconds and was dead by the time I walked up to it. Dont kid yourself that a 3" barreled 22lr to your upper face, temple, top of head, base of skull, behind the ear, etc, wont rock your world enough to dump you on the ground! The Standard barrel for a M21 Beretta is 2.5" long, but the externally threaded barrel is 3" long. The gun starts out being 5" long, so the size after the barrel swap is 5.5". 3.5" of silencer renders the package 9" long, like a 4" barreled K frame 357 or an M9 beretta 9mm. The m21 that I silenced in S Cal, 1985, I took a cat with on the back streets of Wilmington and got rid of a couple of crazy-mean pit bulls as they stuck their faces thru the steel posts, of a fence, which were 4" apart, I'd told the owner that they were going to hurt some kids some day, but he just blew it off. So I arranged for him to need a couple of new dogs. The range was just a foot or so from the muzzle, one shot each. They dropped like rocks.

Garand

What have you done lately?

Terry G

JMD, the great pet killer. Shooting Dog's and Cat's, somebody's loved animals for what he considers sport. He's proven time and again he's not normal. Go do some more drug's Melvin, and dream some more of shooting Rover and Tabby.

John in AR

Have to also factor in that while the 21A's barrel is listed as 2.4", that includes around .87" of chamber, leaving only 1.5" of actual barrel for the bullet to accelerate in. A .22LR from a little gun could absolutely put me on my back. A .22LR from a little gun could also just piss me off. Depends on where it hit me and how surprised I was by it.

There's also the issue of the round being rimfire. Most ammo is pretty good today, but a rimfire will never be as functionally reliable as a centerfire, and intentionally reducing reliability in a defensive firearm is simply a mistake. If a person just HAD to take this approach, they'd be better off using the .25acp instead. I hate the .25acp, but the same gun in .25acp would be better than the (same size) 22LR would.

And lastly, one of the big problems with a little .22LR-caliber pistol for defensive purposes is that you're not shooting it out of a gun that makes full use of the cartridge - in other words, a little .22 long rifle pistol isn't a ".22 long rifle". Basically, using fast ammo, the .21A still gets only about one third the power the same cartridge gets thru a rifle. Sometimes as much as one half, but pretty much always somewhere in between one half and one third. Put another way, with good ammo like stingers, minimags, etc, the 21A has roughly the same energy at the muzzle as a .22 rifle still has at 200 yards or so. That's just mathematical reality, and no way I'm counting on a .22LR rifle as a 200-yard defensive gun choice.

For another comparison, (and I'm pretty sure we've discussed this before), the 21A (even with minimags) only has about 10 ft/lbs more energy than a typical little-league child throwing a pitch. Yes, it could possibly hurt me, or even incapacitate or kill me; but to COUNT on it doing so would be no more than blindly hoping for the best, and that makes no sense at all.

michaelc012

Thanks for Sharing

Garand

I was watching a you tube video last evening when the gentleman actually chronoed a 21A's performance, the MV averaged only about 860 fps. Not encouraging.

John in AR

Fwiw, a screenshot of one page of my 'gun stuff' spreadsheet; some loads chronographed thru the 21A, and a couple other guns as well. I have to use a spreadsheet; I don't trust memory to be completely accurate in remembering pages of details long-term.



Even though those are all high-velocity or hyper-velocity loads, they only averaged 59.1 ft/lbs thru the little 21A. If we delete the semi-exotic (and now-nonexistent) 31-grain Federal Spitfire load from the mix, it's even lower.

For more evidence on how critical barrel length is to a .22LR, compare the results of the same ammo from the (shorter) FA mini-revolver, and the (longer) single-action revolver. From the 4.75" revolver, the thunderbolt is nearly twice as powerful as thru the mini-revolver, and more than 42% more powerful than from the 21A.

So again, for defensive purposes, a gun that's 42% less powerful than a .22LR revolver? Not in my comfort zone at all. Keep in mind, I'm the one that bought the 21A for my wife back in (I think) 1986. She liked it, it was functionally one of the best-made small .22's, and seemed like a good choice for her.

But one day I used it side-by-side with a Ruger 4 7/8" pistol, shooting at an old washing machine in a junk pile in a field. At around 20'-30', from the ruger the federal 40-grain copper-plated solids always penetrated the outer sheet metal and around half the time also penetrated the much heavier inner tub sheet metal. Same ammo from the 21A never once penetrated even the outer sheet metal of the washer. We actually could see them bounce off and land in the grass. That was when I quit trusting the little 21A's power. It's still a fine-made gun and kind of fun to shoot, but it's a flat-out wimp. If I wanted an assassination gun for 5-10 lb animals, the 21A with a suppressor would be a great choice. But for 200-lb thugs? Not a chance.

boati

the 3" barrel will definitely rock your world with a hit to your upper head, or thru your teeth and into your spine. You can look at paper ballstics all you want. I'll go with proven performance on flesh and blood. John in Ar shot a dog that attacked, you pos, which was doubtless somebody's pet. So why dont you chew on him, eh? Cause you're a gutless ****, that's why.

Terry G

You actually don't comprehend shooting an attacking possibly diseased animal and shooting a domestic pet for "sport" or to "test loads" as you have boasted sickly about so many times. You obviously enjoy doing it and relish telling about it. Maybe you want to share AGAIN how you hung up a Sentry Dog by it's neck and "with kicks and punches" you tortured it. Your very sick and definitely have no business owning a firearm.

Dorobuta

Holy crap!

Is this for real?

Terry G

Yes, for real. "Boati" or the other hundred alias's he uses is so proud of his Dog torture while stationed in Korea he has boasted of it numerous times. The Sentry Dog was his responsibility and the "kicks and punches" quotes are his. The shooting of Dog's to "test" loads are his words, not mine.

John in AR

Yes. I've lived in the country most of my life, and have shot several dogs; all of which were killing other animals with one exception.

The story of the one exception: a large, heavily-built dog was in the lead of a pack of 5-6 feral dogs when I was a teenager on the farm 40-45 years ago or so. We were 50-60 miles north of Detroit but only a few miles off a highway, and had nearly constant problems with abandoned animals that were once pets. The small & weak ones died, and the bigger and/or stronger ones became feral predators. We lost ducks, chickens, and cats to these dogs in the 60's and 70's. One day I was out rabbit hunting with only a CVA kit-built blackpowder rifle and a fixed-blade knife, when this half dozen dogs appeared in the field probably 70-80 yards from me (not sure of the distance, it was a long time ago), and when they saw me, instead of turning away they turned and came toward me. I was in the middle of a large, barren hay field and had nowhere to go in the time I had. It was wintertime, and I have to assume they were hungry and more desperate than usual, as this was the first time I'd had any feral strays do this. The leader dog was easy to tell, as he was largest and in the front; so when they got probably 50-60 yards away, I knelt and shot the lead dog head-on. Not a particularly difficult or great shot or anything, as they were kind of trotting at that point, not running flat-out at me. It was a .45-caliber round ball; I forget how much FFFG behind it. He tumbled "rump over teakettle" as the saying goes, and by the time I got my sheath knife out, the rest were scattering.

So no, this wasn't someone's pet that I happened to encounter; it was a feral carnivore, leading a pack of other feral carnivores at me.

Fwiw, a big part of the reason people respond negatively to your claims is the inherently unbelievable nature of some of them. IE, shooting a beagle with a .45Colt loaded to .45 Winchester Magnum power, and the beagle not even noticing. From https://armslocker.com/handguns/3521...olt-jhp-s.html

In your words, When you ask us to believe things like a beagle, shot at 15 feet with a .45-caliber bullet at 1,800fps (more than 1,300 ft/lbs of energy), just looking at you & walking away, it naturally is met with rational skepticism at best, and guffawing laughter most commonly. Again, a plain round ball of that same .45 caliber, at MUCH lower velocity and power levels, took that large dog down in his tracks; making it even harder still to read your "beagle ignored the impact of the .45Colt bullet launched at .45WinMag-power-level at five yards" claim without spewing coffee on one's keyboard in laughter.

But then, to go on & claim in this thread that a load that has around 5% of that power will "rock your world"...?

So a hit with a 45-caliber bullet with 1300 ft/lbs of energy was completely ignored by a small ~25lb dog, but a rimfire with ~55-60 ft/lbs will "rock the world" of a human thug. As the comic-strip character would say, "I has doubts"...

boati

nah, it was 1500 fps, 4 3/4" barrel. wtf you get your numbers, same place your head is? this was in 1974, the bullet was a hornady, tiny nose cavity, way too thick a jacket, made as a softpoint with a hole in its nose. The seating stem in my dies closed the hole a bit, too. So there was no expansion, meaning that at least 1/3rd of the 900 ft lbs was wasted on the far side of the dog. I've seen a 40 lb mutt run with a 308 ball round up his butt, too. The only reason I knew about the first hit was he was hit again and went down. I saw a house cat run with a 250 gr hornady 45 Colt hot load thru the guts. same thing with the jacket and nose cavity, same Ruger blackhawk, 22 grs of 2400. The 185 was 15 grs of Unique. I hit it again as it rain, thru the chest. I PRESUME that the first hit was to the guts didn't slow him down at ALL. The second hit made him chase his tail a bit, then he fell over. Bullets that dont expand aint waf.

Garand

Sad Melvin

BigEd

He was a big game hunter for Chinese Restaurants.

Dorobuta

This made me laugh.

John in AR

You're right (or close) on the velocity. I ran it through my QuickLoad software and it's more like 1500-1600 fps, not 1800.

Still, your contention is that a supersonic 45-caliber bullet at .44 magnum power, running at those supersonic speeds by virtue of loading it at nearly 250% of the chamber pressure of saami-standard .45Colt loads - isn't effective on a beagle because it doesn't expand? Even though it starts out already bigger than any expanding .22-caliber bullet will achieve? Interesting.


That load (250 grain hornady bullet, 22 grains of 2400) runs MORE than 250% of saami spec (36171 psi, vs 14000 psi) for .45LC; pushing a 250-grain bullet supersonic at over 1300fps, and is unsuitable for housecat-size game, simply because it's a non-expanding bullet.

Non-expanding bullets take down buffalo, bison, and even elephants daily. Yet even when driven supersonic as in your example, you claim that they're unacceptable for housecats. Great.

John in AR

Missed this part initially. You say 'at least one-third' was wasted; so let's say 33%-40% wasted energy. That means that you're claiming that 540-600 ft/lbs of actual energy imparted on target, is so inadequate that a 25-lb animal just looked at you & walked away.

Yet even though I'm around 8-10 times the size of that beagle, you claim that one-tenth of that energy (a .22 rimfire from a 3" handgun), using a bullet with one-fourth of the surface area, will "rock my world".

How does that logic train work...?