BL> At close range, a .22 is the weapon of choice for the Mafia, for instance. 
BL> The bullet stays in there,

 BG> Sure, it's cheap and effective at close range.  One shot in the back
 BG> of the head will generally do the trick, but I think you'll also find
 BG> that part of the reason they use .22s is that they're very cheap,
 BG> extremely quiet, harder to match gun with projectile because the .22
 BG> is plain lead, and fragments quite dramatically when it hits bone,
 BG> plus they can also be fitted with silencers (which only work properly
 BG> with subsonic rounds anyway).

i saw a gun on sale in a shop in paris. it was a bolt action pistol with a
barrel about 9" long and had a silencer and tele sight. the blurb
stated that it was .22 calibre, and fired subsonic ammo. it makes you
wonder which market they were catering to.

BL> and is quite as lethal as a 76mm at a thousand yards.

 BG> Sorry Bob, but at 1000m the .22 has used almost all of its muzzle
 BG> energy, and is at the extreme end of its maximum range (and only then
 BG> if it's been fired at an angle of say 30-40 degrees).  At that
 BG> distance, it would likely not even penetrate the skin of a victim. 
 BG> Not so the 7.62mm NATO cartridge though.  Those things still have
 BG> quite a large amount of ME remaining at 1000m, and are quite capable
 BG> of killing at even 2000m (not accurately, of course).

there was a case some years ago in canberra when a guy picknicing at cotter
dam just dropped dead in front of his family. it turned out that some kids
had been shooting at a tree about 500 metres away (and quite a lot further
up the hill), and missed. you'd have to say that the guy was very unlucky,
but a .22 *can* be fatal to quite a distance.

                       keith
@EOT:

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