Sorry to revive an old thread, but I just couldn't believe the things I was hearing about the .22lr on here. I'd like to point out a few things:
In any round quick succession shots to the same region of the body (e.g. double-tapping or triple-tapping) does not just add to the stopping power/incapacitation % done by a linear factor, it actually multiplies x3 for each tap. Example: a double tap is 3x the effectiveness/damage of a single round, and a triple tap is 9x the effectiveness of a single round. Realizing this you start to understand that a double tap to the chest with .22lr is as damaging as a 9mm round to the chest, and a triple tap to the chest with .22lr is not that far removed from being shot in the chest point blank with an m16. Given how easy it is to rapid fire accurately with .22lr this makes it an amazingly deadly round when a person familiar with the weapon that understands the value of multiple taps is firing.
My father in law is an ex navy seal. He told me that to take out sentries their weapon of choice was a little sneakiness and a .22lr pistol. The relatively quiet firing combined with the ability to place multiple rounds quickly from short range made it the most useful firearm for the job, and with multiple taps it was plenty effective. If it's good enough for a seal to use it standing 20 ft from a hostile armed sentry then honestly it should be great for many self defense situations (again, if you are skilled with the weapon and understand the value of double and triple taps).
I have stats to support this too. Buckeye Firearms did an analysis of over 1800 gunfights over a 10 year period. Of those being shot with a .22lr more ended up dead than any other type of handgun round. In fact the only more effective weapon type were shotguns (all the handgun rounds were actually very close in those statistics, most falling in about 25%-35% end fatalities with .22lr winning by barely edging out .357, but shotguns of course dominated the whole group with 65%...they are the true best self defense weapon of course, but I digress...). This did not take into account how many rounds were required, but it gets across the point that the .22lr is very deadly. But that same study did also study first round incapacitations (incapacitated whether it lead to death or not). .22lr of course didn't win this statistic relative to other handgun rounds, but it did hang in with many more popular/larger self defense calibers with a 1st round incapacitation rate of 31%. By comparison .45 and .38 special both were 39%, and 9mm was 34%. .22lr isn't always as deadly with 1 shot, but statistically it's more deadly overall than many larger rounds. I personally presume these results are because it's a round that's extremely easy to double or triple tap in the blink of an eye while still keeping zeroed on target.
