2009 may be remembered as the year of the .22

If you've had your head in the sand for the last 6 months, you may not have noticed that the price of ammo is going sky high and that is IF you can find ammo at all. Some calibers have become flat out impossible to find. This trend will really hurt the firearms training industry because people can't find or can't afford enough ammo to complete the courses they'd like to take. At the same time, concealed carry classes are booked solid. The shop I used to work in is now putting 75 people per week through the class and said they could easily do 100 if they had another instructor. That is just in one single shop.

For all those reasons, more and more shooters are turning to the .22 Long Rifle cartridge. It is cheap and at least for the moment it is still fairly easy to find. You can shoot all day for $20 worth of ammo. In comparison, I spent 1 hour at the range this past weekend and used up $90 worth of ammo shooting mostly 9mm and a little 12 gauge. If I had been shooting .45ACP I can't even imagine how much I would have spent.

There is a lot of value out of a day at the range with a good .22. Without the recoil and without the limited quantity of ammo, you can spend your time working on proper sight alignment, trigger control or drawing from a holster. I truly think you can improve your shooting just as much shooting a .22 as you can shooting your chosen self defense caliber. Now, of course you need to practice some with the caliber and gun you will use for self defense, but I think if you put 200 rounds of .22 down range in an afternoon (about $8 worth of ammo) and then a single box of your chosen self defense caliber, you'd be just fine.

Save some money, shoot more often and have more fun. If you've forgotten your .22 pistol or rifle in the back of the safe for a while, pull it out and give it some use. If this ammo shortage continues, that .22 might be your new best friend.

Stay safe out there... and watch your six.