Look, I don’t care how many firearms you own, if you don’t own at least one firearm chambered in .22 Long Rifle (LR), then you don’t have a survival battery! When I worked for the late Colonel Rex Applegate, he had more than 850 firearms in his collection. Quite a few of them were chambered in .22 LR. If the good Colonel needed firearms in .22 LR, then so do you.
For many years, I used to recommend that the first firearm people purchased, should have been a 12 gauge shotgun of some type. I was wrong! I honestly believe that, if you are into survival in any situation then the very first firearm that you purchase should be chambered in .22 LR– period! You can do more with a .22 LR chambered firearm than you can with most other calibers. Plus, not counting the current ammo drought we are in – once again – all things considered .22 LR ammo is relatively inexpensive. You could purchase a brick of 500-rounds for under $20. These days, you are lucky if you can find any .22 LR at all. And, I fear, it will be this way for a long, long time – maybe years! However, if you look around, you can still find some .22 LR – some place! My very first rifle was a Marlin .22 LR. This was a model that was styled to look like an M1 Carbine. I wish that I still owned it – have no idea what I did with it.
A friend of mine, now long deceased, was raising two kids on his own, and he was always short of funds. He was a teacher in the same two-room schoolhouse where my wife worked, many years ago. He had a tough time, as you can imagine, feeding two growing kids – and he resorted to poaching some deer in our area. Everyone knew he did it, and no one reported him. His weapon of choice for his poaching? A .22 LR rifle. A head shot would put the deer down instantly. Now, don’t get me wrong, poaching is wrong. However, I can look the other way, if that is the only way that a person can feed their family. So, save your hate e-mails.
Over the years, I’ve hunted all sorts of small game, and have literally taken thousands of ground squirrels on my in-law’s 2,000-acre ranch. They are such pests that the landowners would even offer to supply .22 LR ammo to anyone who wanted to come and hunt those little critters. So, I know the effectiveness of the .22 LR round on small and even medium-sized game – with proper shot placement and the right bullet. For a lot of small game, a good hollow point bullet puts them down fast. For self-defense, and I’m not advocating you carry a .22 LR handgun, for self-defense. But if it is all you have, then load it with hollow point ammo. We all have to live within our budgets, and if you can only afford something in .22 LR – then go for it – it sure beats a sharp stick or throwing rocks for self-defense.
The handgun under review today is the fairly new Glock 44. This model is chambered in .22 LR. How I came about owning this gun, is somewhat funny, but sad at the same time. My beautiful wife, who can shoot with the best of them – isn’t totally gun-savvy for the most part. Our local small box store told her that they had “a Glock 22” and she purchased it for me – as a gift. Turns out the store clerk was wrong, it was NOT a Glock Model 22, it was a Glock 44, that shoots .22 LR ammo – of course, being a small box store, that only sells new firearms, they wouldn’t take the gun back. Not the end of the world, that’s for sure. You can’t go wrong owning a Glock – of any type. At first, I was a little disappointed because I was looking forward to owning another Glock 22, chambered in .40 S&W – but like I said, it wasn’t the end of the world – but my wife still feels bad she made such a mistake – it wasn’t entirely her fault, the clerk was wrong!
Folks waited a long, long time for Glock to come out with a .22 LR pistol. Oh sure, lots of companies out there making an adaptor kit for your Glock, so you can shoot .22 LR ammo in them – but none were 100% reliable, and they are pretty expensive, too. The Glock 44 is the same size as the Glock 19, but it ends there. We have a 4.02-inch Bbl, the same as the 19, and it appears to be a 19, but at first glance. We have a polymer frame, just like all Glocks have. However, the slide isn’t all metal, it is a mix of materials, making it very lightweight. The gun only weighs 12.63-ounces without the magazine in it, and only 14.62-ounces with the empty magazine inserted. So, we are talking about one very lightweight .22 LR handgun.
We have the same old standard Glock trigger – mushy! The same stippling on the frame, and there is even a Picatinny-type rail for mounting lights and/or lasers on the frame. There is an ambidextrous slide release/stop – that’s nice! The front sight is polymer with one white dot, and the rear sight is fully adjustable with the white outline that makes for a fast sight picture. The extractor is overkill – its big, but better a big unit than a flimsy one, eh? We have slide serrations f
ore and aft on the sides of the slide.
When we get to the barrel, you can see it is very thin – a good clue that this isn’t a center-fire pistol. And, there is a full-length recoil spring set-up as well. The gun comes with 4 extra grip adapters, so you can surely find one that will fit your hand…I didn’t install any of them, just left the grip as-is, because it fits my hand perfectly. The magazines, two of them – they are polymer, and have a very stout spring – you have two tabs on either side of the mags, that you can pull down, to make loading the 10 rounds into the mag a lot easier. I ordered a couple more spare 10-round mags and they are a bit hard to come by these days, but I like to have several spare mags on-hand. The 44 breaks down for cleaning just like the other Glock handguns do – that’s nice. And, we do NOT have a fixed barrel instead it can be removed from the slide – you rarely see this on semi-automatic .22 pistols – most of the time the barrel is fixed in place.
I found that the mushy-feeling trigger smoothed out quite a bit after about 300 rounds of shooting. And, I fired about a brick of ammo through this neat pistol. I won’t list all the different brands of .22 LR ammo I used, but it was a big mix of various brands and bullet weights. I didn’t have any subsonic ammo, and I’ve read that the Glock 44 isn’t 100% reliable with them – no surprise here as far as I’m concerned. The Glock 44 fed this very wide variety of ammunition quite reliably. As to accuracy – I was getting groups down there under three inches most of the time, without any trouble, and a few groups right at 2-inches – so this gun can shoot – probably better than I can.
After my wife ran a few mags through this gun, she didn’t feel nearly as “guilty” as she did, when she found out it wasn’t a Glock Model 22 – the model chambered in .40 S&W. She remarked how smooth the gun seemed to operate – and it does! The only hunting I’ve done with this gun, has been in my own front yard – we have several squirrels who are digging holes all around the place – I haven’t nailed one – yet – but I will.
We don’t have a shortage of firearms chambered in .22 LR at all – and I wasn’t really looking for another .22 LR firearm – when this one came into my hands – by mistake. To be honest, this little Glock 44 has turned out to be a real blessing in disguise. With the current ammo drought, I hate going out and just “wasting” 9mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP unless I’m working on an article. But when I want to unwind, this little .22 LR is sure a lot of fun to shoot – and I can afford to shoot it all I want – without digging too deeply into my ammo stash. Of course, like everyone else, I keep an eye out for some .22 LR ammo – at a decent price – I’m not going to pay $75 for a brick of 500 rounds! The local small box store told my wife a few days back, that they were completely out of .22 LR ammo, and didn’t expect any – anytime soon – maybe not for a long, long, long time.
If you’re in the market for a great .22 LR handgun, then be sure to check out the Glock 44. It is one sweet shooting pistol, and retail price is about $420. Presently they are hard to come by. Even at full retail, it is a great pistol to have for your survival battery…you won’t be sorry you got one – if you can find one!
Fully agree, Pat, that with any semi-auto .22 you need extra magazines. My standard is to have five magazines for any .22, and that is the case with my G44. It hasn’t jammed yet after
several hundred rounds without a cleaning (on purpose). Highly recommend as a trainer and ammo saver for your centerfire Glocks and for introduction of a new shooter to Glocks, as well. Thank you for this review – most folks are leaving the .22s in the showcase and buying the centerfires where I live. If you own a Glock centerfire, this is a smart purchase for continued practice in these spare times. best, redclay7
I got my Glock 44 to use as a training pistol for my little grand daughter…..the noise, recoil and muzzle blast are non existent with this little .22….also useful for introducing a retriever pup to gunfire….there’s no need to start a beginner off on a hand cannon….that can make them gun shy real quick……I’ve been a Glock owner since 1987 and believe in the brand.
I’m a Glock fan and the designations can be confusing.
Go buy the Taurus TX 22, it comes with two 16 round mags and over a hundred dollars cheaper than the Glock. Once you shoot the Taurus you will probably put the Glock away and it will just become a dust collector.
I like Glocks but I bought a TX 22. Over 2200 rounds through it and still having too much fun. I wish all my guns had that trigger.
Hmm, I remember yrs ago of hearing some class mates in high school bragging about spot lighting deer ( 50’s and 60’s ) and later I worked with guys who bragged about doing the same thing. I later worked in the stockyards part of a packing plant where we always use a .22 lr to put down sick and diseased and crippled animals ( both hogs and cattle ( with some of the cattle weighing as much 1500 lbs or more )). My Dad one time tried to ” scare ” a dog with a .22lr at a quarter of mile and ended up killing the dog ( the dog died three days later ). A few yrs ago, a retired secret service agent made the statement that 50% of the people killed in the U.S. are shot and killed with a .22lr. So I know what the ” lowly ” .22lr can do, at least in my line of experience. Just my two cents.
By the way, nice article about the Glock 44 ( .22lr ), but I’m not a glock fan
Blessings in disguise, ya gotta love it. Luckily I don’t think you can go wrong with a Glock. I tell people they are like the small block Chevrolet of the gun world. They come from the factory bare bones, reliable, simple and utilitarian, you can run them like that but they’ll lend themselves to being turned into just about anything you can imagine from a home defense gun with a WML, night sights and extended mags to a lightweight race gun with a milled slide, fancy trigger a mag well adapter.
One can never have too many good .22s. We’ve been shooting a lot more of it since the ammo drought started, since I have quite a bit of it. I’ve been on the lookout for a Glock 44, now I’ll have to intensify the search. We have several Glocks in our family, so adding another one is a no brainer. Thanks for the review.
My local gun shop has a new Glock 44 right now for $329. I guess I should go get it.
God Bless the wife, that will buy her husband, a firearm as a surprise. … +In the Casio house, it must be said often, “You can’t go wrong with another Glock around the house.”
The Glock shape doesn’t really fit my hand very well. … But, Glock has a well earned reputation for dependability to work, when ~needed. +Accurate enough to hit the intended target too; with a well aimed shot.
A .22lr is inexpensive to shoot, comparatively. &(Yes, there is an ammo shortage). People need to practice shooting to be good at it. We live in dire times.
I misspelled Cascio as Casio. There’s a difference between a Casio and Cascio. …. The Cascio is always right, all the time.
I recently got to try one of those that a friend had and it was a neat little shooter. However No collection is complete without the timeless Ruger 10/22.
Legalities aside CCI Stinger at up to 40yds in the gourd is a sure thing but from a rifle.
We are grown folks and we know the ramifications in good times but knowledge isn’t harmful.
I can not tell you about a handgun in the scenario however I can tell ya a 40gr solid Remington that puts a hole in a critters lungs, regardless of said critters size, requires patience, time and a little tracking skill.
Distance to target would be close for a handgun to get enough penetration.
Having had several .22LR semi-autos and a couple of .22LR revolvers, if I had to depend on just one, it would be a revolver. Having a semi-auto fail to cycle is not a rare event. Having a .222LR fail to fire in a revolver isn’t rare either, but the next shot is just a trigger pull away.
Chris, I tend to agree with your revolver recommendation. My experience with the Walther P22 3″ 22LR are ahem … ammunition sensitive. I could blame ‘dirty gun’ more than the ammo it is a very close 2nd. Many moons ago I developed a grudge against the single action revolver 6 shot , but I could see a double action in my future. My daughter enjoys the P22s as long as they run.
Pat-
I’m just down the road a spell… If you wish to relieve yourself of that spare Glock 44, I am sure we could work an equitable trade!
I have looked for one for the past few weeks and have failed my mission. I ended up with a Heritage 22LR/22Mag as a compromise because I have buckets of both rounds.
In all seriousness though, I am nearby and have various sorts of barter, trade, and currency.
Try the local Bi Mart. Mine seems to have one all the time.
Nothing wrong with the Heritage. I picked one up because it was so cheap. It quickly became my favorite pistol for around the farm. It is very accurate with 22mag and pretty good with LR. I’ve never had a light primer strike and the sights on mine are the HiViz variety. The added bonus was I already had a holster that fit the Heritage like a glove.
Pat ,,,,,,in nam we used a high standard with 22shorts to take care of problems ,,,no can just barrel against the target. In arm pit
Glock sells a drop-In, factory replacement, threaded barrel, in case you are wanting to compensate it,
https://www.brownells.com/handgun-parts/barrel-parts/barrels/barrel-g44-threaded-prod133487.aspx?avs%7cMake%7e%7eModel_1=Glock__44
I really wanted a .22 handgun that was reliable. I researched and bought a Walther P22. I’m disappointed. It misfires fairly often, on the second or third round of a full 10 round mag. It sounds from this article and comments that the G44 may be more reliable.
I have a Glock 17 and it has never misfired or jammed. Not even once. I wish I could get something close to that reliable in a .22 handgun. Maybe the G44?
I just have to share this with you. As for carrying a 22lr I agree and I had that conversation with my mom who carried concealed a 9 shot 22lr revolver. I was trying to talk her into “At Least” a 380 but when we when to the range and she emptied that revolver in just a couple seconds and had a 2 inch grouping right on the target’s Heart area and then she pulled out it’s twin (that I didn’t even know she had) and repeated it, I SHUT UP!!! My mom was a shooter her whole life & taught me a lot, but that lesson brings a smile to my face every time I remember it.