I Still Don’t Have Enough .22 Pistols

Because I am in some ways a frivolous person, I am currently thinking about buying a .22 pistol with a red dot sight. Mission: kill squirrels and generally plink while out and about on the farm. A big .22 pistol with a large magazine is actually a better self-defense gun than the pistols I generally carry, and it’s fun for goofing around. It’s also a lot lighter and smaller than a rifle.

What about all the other .22 pistols I have? Why can’t I settle for one of them? Nice try. This one is different. It’s the kind of pistol that keeps David Hogg awake at night. It’s semiautomatic, and it looks sort of like an AR-15.

Of course, I’m talking about the Mossberg 715P. I’ll insert a video of a lady shooting one.

It’s pretty hilarious. That big, fat AR-looking mass is really a thin plastic shell. It’s like a toy gun. The actual gun is hidden inside it, and it’s just a cheap .22 rifle receiver. It’s like a movie studio hired someone to make a Marlin Model 60 look like an AR.

Nonetheless, it works, as you can see in the video.

By the way, the Marlin Model 60 is dead. Ruger bought Marlin and decided to kill the Model 60, so looks like the 10/22 won the budget .22 war by forced default. Ruger could make new Model 60’s, but they say they have no plans to do it.

The Mossberg is pretty clearly not the highest expression of the gun manufacturer’s art. It’s a low-end product. But it hits a spot that definitely exists.

I guess some people will huff and puff and say a 10mm Glock is better for self-defense. No, it isn’t. The Mossberg is far better. It holds 26 rounds of .22 LR, and it has a red dot. A good marksman could pop an assailant over and over, accurately, from a distance that would make using a Glock challenging. If you can shoot your perp over and over before he gets close, you can disable him without allowing him to get near enough to get a fair shot at you. In self-defense, fairness is a giant mistake.

A .22 round isn’t as damaging as a 10mm round, but hitting someone 100 feet away, over and over, with little rounds, is a lot better than hitting him three or 4 times with big bullets when he’s 20 feet away, shooting back. Think how discouraging it would be to know the person you wanted to kill could shoot you maybe 20 times before you could do a thing to him.

Any semiauto .22 that can be fired accurately and easily at relatively long ranges is better for protection from distant human beings than any big-bore pistol that’s hard to aim and has a lot of recoil. If I had to shoot a person from 50 yards with a Glock, I’d have to settle for shooting at the body and keeping shots within a one-foot circle. If I were using a Marlin 60, I could shoot him through the head repeatedly without much effort, even if I was scared and shaking.

Shot placement is a very, very big deal. Criminals have survived multiple badly-placed torso shots from .45 pistols, and they have continued to attack and harm people after the shots landed, but one shot from an accurate .22 rifle can kill any terrestrial mammal on Earth.

For a long time, the record grizzly bear was a huge animal a lady shot in the head with a .22. The bear was enormous, and it scared an American Indian woman. She popped it in the skull, and it dropped. Then she moved up close and emptied the gun into the skull to make sure the bear’s nap continued. You can see a photo of the skull online. People think bears’ skulls are so thick high-powered rifle slugs bounce off of them. Well, not this bear’s. Not where she aimed, anyway. And she was only using .22 Long.

You don’t need a big cartridge to kill a big animal unless you can’t take your best shot. If you can take your time and shoot wherever you want, you can kill an elephant with a .22. It has been done.

I don’t know why I’m mentioning self-defense (or elephants), because I want this gun for fun. I suppose it helps me justify buying it.

Why not put a folding AK in the cart and forget about all this? Because a .22 is what you want for a cart. You want something small, light, cheap, and fun to shoot.

The problem with the Mossberg 715P is the Ruger Charger. It’s another .22 pistol. The appearance isn’t as hilarious as that of the Mossberg, but it’s a better gun. It’s a 10/22 with the barrel and buttstock abbreviated.

You can get a Charger with a 10″ barrel, which would give higher velocity and less noise than the Mossberg’s short barrel. The Charger would also have all sorts of support, because the 10/22 is more common than the Bic lighter. Unfortunately, it costs more than the 715P, and I would have to blow about $85 for a cheap red dot to sit on it.

If I felt like it, I could keep a Charger in the utility cart and keep a huge 10/22 magazine with it. I could use a smaller magazine for fooling around, and then if black-clad transvestite ninjas from an allegedly nonexistent domestic terror organization decided to come to my farm and murder me for pointing out that men aren’t women, I could put the big magazine in and spray my way to the house, where I could reach for a more serious rifle. Or a few of them.

One neat thing about these guns is that you can put a pistol brace on either one and end up with a really neat and handy little rifle. You just have to buy an NFA stamp.

So do I get the Mossberg, which is more fun, or do I get the Charger, which is more gun? Or do I do the mature thing and forget about it?

I think we can rule out option #3.