Has a .22 ever come apart and hurt someone?

M

Moe

New member
I was wondering if anyone knows if a .22 pistol or rifle can have a failure of a part(s) that results in injury to the shooter. Anyone have any first hand experience? I know that it is possible with centerfire guns but was wondering if it ever hapens with rimfires.

Thank you.
Moe
 
Yes it can happen. My late grandfather had a 22 rifle, I don't know what brand, Kb on him. He wasn't wearing eye protection and it left his vision permanently damaged.

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So many pistols, so little money.
 
About 35yrs ago, I had a single shot .22rifle;I think it was a Mossberg,and I got a box of Remington .22 LR High-speed that must have been defective as almost every round exploded the base of the brass. Pieces of the brass cut my forarm and the gun would not extract the spent brass after that. I was just a kid at the time so I didn't think of a lawsuit or even telling Remington. I burned the remaining rounds for the fun of it and traded the rifle for something else. Didn't lose any eyes, but could have.
 
A buddy of mine bought a .22 revolver out of a catalog (about 30 years ago). Don't think it even had a brand, "El Cheapo". It blew the cylinder out on the first shot. Couldn't rotate or remove the cylinder to unload it either. Lucky their was no injury.
 
My Uncle had a Marlin 22 rifle blow up on him. He was lucky that he only had stitches in his arm instead of loosing an eye. He hates Marlins now... won't shoot them
 
I had an Iver Johnston TP-22 (ppk look-alike) that came apart. Fortunatley, it was while loading it so nothing happened other than me having this strange look on my face wondering what the heck happened. The metal on the frame around the trigger pin is just WAY too thin and gave up the ghost breaking both above and below that pin. I sent it back to get repaired, it happened again. I was going to send it back again but i think they went out of business so I sold it for parts at a gun show. I was just dang glad it didn't decide to break while it was being fired.
 
No injury involved, but I have had a .22 rim fire case fail.

I was target shooting with a Ruger 22/45, using Remington Golden Bullet ammo. I had been shooting for quite a while, several hundred rounds. The pistol was getting quite dirty.

In the middle of a string of fire, the normal .22 "crack" was about 3 times louder, and the case did not eject. When I inspected I noticed the bolt area was really hot. I opened the action and locked back the bolt and dropped out the mag. I had to pop the case out of the chamber with a small screwdriver. The area where the case wall meets the rim base was blown away for just over half it's circumference.

I still have the case on my desk as a reminder of how much power those "little .22s" have.

Stay safe...

Joe






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Go NRA
 
I was in a indoor range last month and the guy next to me was renting a silenced Ruger MKII. He must have had a squib load because a bullet became jamed in the barrel. After that he continued to fire about 20 more rounds into the barrel/silencer. The barrel/silencer was bowed out all the way around, but did not rupture. The owner of the shop showed me the gun after the guy had left. The barrel silencer was completely ruined.
 
My brother-in-law had a jennings J-22 come apart on him while he was shooting. The slide came back and bonked him in the forehead. Luckily no damage reulted other than a mild bump on the noggin.

Weird occurance too. I had just run a couple clips through it with no problems. For him the second shot of the gun sent the slide flying. When we examined it, nothing was broken! The gun spontaneously field striped itself! I reassembled it after inspecting all the parts and test fired it again (not at eye level). It functioned fine in a couple more nags as far as I could tell. Still, a disturbing occurance and one that would incline me towards replacing the gun if I were him.
 
Thanks all for your input. It seems then that although it is possible to happen the chance of serious injury is nil. Provided that one has shooting glasses on.

Moe
 
This thread demonstrates that the .22 is an energetic little cuss, and that cheap guns are never a good buy. I guess I have shot or seen shot about a milyun rounds of .22 in a long lifetime of plinking, hunting and competition, and the only gun failure I ever witnessed was a Feather carbine, which blew off its rear retaining cap. The guy was not hurt, and no report was ever made of it...but I still laugh when I see one of those offered for sale at an elevated price. Sometimes you'll have a rf case failure, but these are seldom catastrophic, and not the fault of the gun. --slabsides
 
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