.22 lr penetration in humans

I shoot with some of the LEOs here and my uncle is the sniper/firearms instructor and he had a close call. young dum dum was shooting a .22 and decided "hmmm, i bet if i shoot a large rock it'll be neat-o", next thing ya know my uncle has the side of his head scraped by a zinger. i know few people who treat the .22 with respect, heck i'm cautious as i can be even with a CB short in my rifles.
 
said it would do more damage to try to dig it out than it would to leave it in. again like mentioned above the ciatic nerve. and I do have trouble walking but not because of that, its called being fat and having a horrable knee as a result of football.
 
I work in the xray dept of a fairly large hospital and get to see first hand what various types of bullets and shotgun pellets can do to a person. A .22 bullet will usually not exit and can deflect into another part of the body upon striking bone. And they are small enough to enter major arteries and veins and travel to the heart or lungs. Bad news! When someone is struck in the skull, the bullet usually doesn't exit, but rather "rattles around" a bit before stopping somewhere in the brain. I have seen this one first hand in autopsy xrays I have taken of suicide victims.

Richard,
As to your question, if there is a foreign body logded in you but isn't causing any problems, they will usually leave it alone. Going in after it may cause more problems than it solves. For instance, risk of infection, nerve damage, etc. I actually saw an old xray of a guy who was holding a live .22 round in his mouth and accidentally inhaled it. It ended up settling near the bottom of the left lobe of his left lung. In this case, they chose to leave alone instead of tearing up lung tissue trying to retrieve it.

Kyle
 
Ok so the bullet is in there to stay. Whats the deal about getting lead poisoning from a bullet over the years to come? GENE'O
 
.22lr's shouldn't be taken lightly. Story time: In the next county over from me all .22's are banned from shooting (as well as higher calibers). But the reason the .22's got banned from shooting is a few years back someone decided that it would be fun to fire off a few rounds into the air. Hey, what the heck? It was out in a field, so big that you couldn't see anything but field. You would assume it to be safe. Not so, one of the bullets went the distance of a mile and killed a small girl as she was riding her tricycle in the driveway of her home. Ever since the county has a ban on shooting .22's (along with other calibers), but the thing is even though the larger calibers where already banned, .22's where not. And the thinking was they couldn't do any damage being such a small caliber. That certainly changed in a hurry. A sad story, but true. So if you don't think a .22 has the ability to do damage at long ranges, think again.
 
I know of a couple of poachers in our area who have taken bull moose in the 800+ pound class with a .22 long rifle. Some where shot in the head and others in the rib area (heart & lungs). Most animals traveled a short distance but all died.
 
I've got video of a couple of local deer poachers killing deer with .22 subsonics. Those deer hit the ground like you poleaxed 'em with a sledgehammer. I wasn't there, but I did get the video. Shortly thereafter came the trial, then the jail time, then the fines, then the hunting revocations.

GJ
 
Back
Top