.22 versus .22 LR - what is .22?

Sure is confusing. I shot just about everything available through my old Cooey 75. There were longs and long rifles available at the country store when I was a kid. Basically they had shorts, long and long rifle. All worked as they were shorter versions of the long rifle. Probably the long predated the long rifle.
 
you used to be able to get about 4 common flavors in 22- 22 bbcap, 22 short , long and long rifle- each was a few cents more at the hardware store- basically, if i remember correctly a long used a long rifle case, but a short bullet( under 36 grains)and the long firle uses what we see today- about 35 to 40 something grains- powder charge was lighter too
 
The long preceded the long rifle by about 16 years, uses the same case but a 29 grain bullet producing less velocity and less energy than the LR hence it became obsolete.

By coincidence, a shop I spoke with today had a .22 (not .22 S or .22 LR, just .22) and its a... wait for it... .22 long.
 
"...22 bbcap..." And CB caps. One is primer powered, the other has a wee bit of powder. I forget which is which.
.22 usually means .22 LR, but not always. However, few semi-auto's will shoot Shorts, Longs and Long Rifles. Bolt actions don't always either. Feeding issues.
.22 Longs are getting difficult to find. Not impossible, but not easy either.
Swiped this fair and square.
"The .22 Long uses a .22 Long Rifle case (.595 in), but is loaded with a .22 Short bullet (29 gr.). The overall length of a .22 Long is .880 in, while the .22 Long Rifle is .975 inches long."
 
some of the subsonics come in the long configuration. Many gallery rifles only came chambered for .22 short or even shorter for economy. Most of these gallery rifles were pumps with limited action length and the long was the maximum that they could be rechambered and still function as a repeater without a redesign. Because of corrosive ammo and high shot counts throat erosion became a problem in these gallery pumps and as many of these shooting galleries ran very competetive shoots all the major manufactures ran exchanges. New gallery short .22 for the worn and then rehabbed it by rechambering it and reselling it with the "hot " new hunting .22 long cartridge. Local gunsmiths caught on and did the same. My grandfather remembered travelling galleries doing the fair circuit .01cents per 10 shots and very heavy betting amongst good shots, and my dad told me of filling 10shot loading tubes steadily to keep up with the shooters, even in the 1950's I can remember the galleries at .25 per ten at the Peterborough Ex and a shoot off between Winchester and Remington proffesionals at the Sportsman show in Toronto. It would be interesting to tabulate the actual numbers of shorts actually fired and compared by decades.
 
My dad's got an old Cooey , oh, I think its a 60, with a tube magazine that handles all 3 loads (s,l,lr), and Uncle Barber having a box of each, mostly LRs, but he kept shorts and longs for close in shots off the deck :)
 
lineofsight said:
Am reading about Cooeys, twice there was a model offered in both .22 and .22 Long Rifle. What was the .22 then? Is the .22 a short if its not stated that it is .22 Long or Long Rifle?
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If it's a semi, it's likely .22 LR; if it's a bolt-action then it's more likely to be short/long/long-rifle (s/l/lr).
 
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Likely "Long" as noted in stead of "Long Rifle". I used to by CCI "CB Long" which was a low power/low speed round. Once CCI "Quiet-22" came out (a LR case I believe) it seemed the CB Longs started to disappear. I bet I still have some.

Tube mag guns tend to be most forgiving, and can often shoot any length of 22 rimfire ammo interchangeably as the case/bullet are the same diameter. If it can grab them/feed them=they'll likely work. One of the few reasons to like tube mags. lol (+capacity with shorts)
 
To me a .22 refers to .22 rim fires... while .22 LR is a specific cartridge. The vast majority of Browning Pump .22's ( the Trombone) are .22 L.
 
grauhanen said:
There are other ways to boost a post count than reviving a thread that's been idle since 2008. This thread was posted 16 years ago.
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But it was, like, my second user access plea post and as a native northumberland county-er clearly my closest point of relation! šŸ˜‚
 
The shorter varieties of .22 rimfire used to be a lot easier to find, but the world seems to have standardized on .22 LR and the others have become historical footnotes. Maybe there are too many semis now, that will only feed one length. And where you'd use .22 Short before, at close range or for less noise, you have underpowered .22 LR offerings like CCI Quiet and Aguila Colibri in their place.
 
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