ammunition, gun-safety, .22lrI’m curious in the differences between these two. In particular, is a pellet lethal if fired from a cartridge gun at a distance of 10ft or greater? How far do pellets generally penetrate at this range?
@Bill Martin I’ll assume you mean mean a pellet fired from an air pistol (if not, let me know and I’ll edit this answer). A .177” pellet (the most common kind), weighs about 10 grains (7000 grains to the pound; 10 grains is 0.65 grams). You can expect a pellet to leave the muzzle of an air pistol in the neighbourhood of dgm’s 400fps figure.
By “.22” you probably mean a .22 rimfire. This cartridge has a 40 grain bullet, which fired from a pistol will have about 1000fps muzzle velocity (from a rifle you’ll get about 1250fps).
As you can see the .22 is much more powerful - its bullet is four times as heavy as the pellet, and it is moving 2.5 times as quickly. This gives it 25 times as much kinetic energy as the pellet.
At 10ft, a pellet will embed itself a well into a 3/4” thick softwood board but won’t penetrate. It will easily embed itself in flesh and it would destroy an eye.
At 10ft, the bullet from a .22 will completely penetrate several 3/4” thick software boards and is easily capable of producing a lethal wound.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.