Sure, it looks cool. But is it up to the task?
I'm not even going to lie, just like the author of this post discusses, I too have carried a little .22LR for self defense purposes back in the time period in which I had no real other choice for personal defense. I've since moved on to greener pastures and larger calibers, but I still have my little Walther P22 and enjoy shooting it just as much as the big boys.
But would I bet my life on it? Well... no. The truth is that unless you're using pretty high quality .22LR ammo, you can't expect 99.9999% reliability with a semi-auto .22LR pistol. Too much variance in the pressure to assure consistent slide action, and rim-fire ammo isn't any where near as reliable as center fire ammo. I'm not a gun guru, so I've only fired a couple thousand rounds of .45ACP and 9mm, but I've only hit one bad round out of all of those, and that one was an obvious error that the manufacturer made right by me. With .22LR, I probably hit two or three bad primers in a bulk box of 550 rounds. That's not what I would call awe-inspiring reliability.
Still; the gun you have is better than no gun, and I certainly can't argue against carrying one if it's all you have. But for pete's sake, move up the power scale! Even a .25ACP, though still tiny, is still more reliable.
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