Sunday, October 11, 2020

Scenes from the range

Comment from Carl reminded me of these:
"I need some .22 long bullets."
"No problem", since we had some.
Few minutes later he came back, "These won't work in my gun."
Some questions followed, and I told him to unload it and bring it out.
It was an old, very nice High Standard marked '.22 LR'.
"Ok, that's the problem, this uses .22 Long Rifle, not Longs."
"But it's not a rifle!"
Explanation of Shorts, Longs and LRs followed.  Got him set up with the right stuff, and he left later a happy man.

Few days ago, this started with a coworker:
"I need some bullets for my .38 Special."
"For practice or defense?"
"Defense."
"Ok, the only ones we have are these Winchesters that are +P, will your pistol handle those?"
"It's a .38 Special."
At that point he waved me over, I explained what the +P meant, and asked if her revolved had that mark on it."
"No, it's a .38 Special!"
Etc.
I asked what kind it was(you guessed!), and then what brand.  She had no idea and couldn't understand why we couldn't sell her the right bullets.  Even after I pointed out that if it wasn't rated for those it would not be safe to use them.

Sometimes you just about want to scream.

4 comments:

JNorth said...

I'll admit, I'd never heard of .22 long, all my pistols use .22 LR or .22 mag., not sure if there would be a problem firing .22 shorts out of my Single Six, can't imagine why I'd want to.

Firehand said...

.22s come in Short, Long, and LR. Generally any bolt-action, slide-action, revolver, or single-shot will use any of them with no trouble.

Anonymous said...

So, hypothetically, if you're in a state with a 10-round magazine limit the cops can double the capacity of your tubular magazine by filling it with 22 short?

Firehand said...

Wouldn't quite double it, but it will hold a number more. That's an interesting thought.