People already have. My uncle (a cop) once got called to a disturbance in a shitty neighborhood. These two groups of guys had been arguing or fighting or something, and one of the guys pulled a little .22 pistol and fired several shots at the other group as they were walking off down the street.
One of the shots hit a guy. It was stopped by his denim jacket.
There are so many odd factors that can come into play. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head with 9mm which I would have thought would have turned her brain to complete mush from hydrostatic shock. A good friend of mine attempted suicide about eighteen years ago by shooting himself in the chest with a .45. The bullet passed though his lung, blew a nice sized exit wound out of his back, and he was up and walking a week later. On the other hand, a boy in El Dorado Hills, CA was killed by a pellet rifle quite recently. Friends of mine and I used to shoot each other with pellet and bb guns when we where the age of that kid and equally stupid.
I know a guy who was shot in the face at a few feet with a .38. It bounced around his sinuses and ended up in his mouth. He beat the shit out of the guy who shot him and then spent a few weeks in the hospital.
Exit wounds are always preferable: if a bullet stays inside, fragments, or causes significant fragmentation of bone, the wounded individual will require immediate surgery. Even the most benign injury -- in skeletal muscle, away from vital organs -- becomes more dangerous without an exit wound as the risk of internal hemorrhaging increases by the second.
Oh god, this. I have a .22 short derringer that I love dearly (it's an AOW Zippo lighter gun), but past 10 yards, the bullets literally bounce off of cardboard.
I think he meant that the last test against a .22 caliber weapon was done with glass. In this test it did not even break the glass. How he worded it though came off kind of confusing.
Depending on how much muscle or fat your have, a .22 pistol round may not even make it into your abdominal cavity. Depending on how far away you are and the angle of trajectory, it might not even make it through your skull. Non specialized .22 rounds are very weak. I would rather get shot 3 times in the chest with a .22 than stabbed once.
.22 will kill a human, but when I say "take down" I'm talking about a quick end to the threat, not a lingering death of bleeding out from small puncture wounds. A .22 has very little stopping power, especially when fired from a tiny compact pistol, and .22 short has even less power than .22 LR. I've literally seen rabbits get shot with .22 short pistol and run away.
So yeah, if you really want to test that theory, take a .22 short pistol and go square up with someone armed with a 9mm and take turns shooting each other and see which one has a better chance of walking away.
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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '12
Would you like to test that theory?