iakdrago
02-20-2012, 08:18 PM
Couple weeks ago i purchased an M&P 22 in order to save some money while training marksmanship fundamentals. I was sceptical of it's reliability--as i previously owned the maligned P22. I could not run the gun reliably with anything by cci ammo--any kind of bulk ammo would cause some kind of malfunction every couple of magazines (which is great if you want to work on clearing them, but it was not what i was looking for). However, after reading some of the reviews online, in particularly the ones on gunnuts.net, i was a bit reassured. $359 later i held it in my hands. As a religious reader of this forum and pistol-training.com i was inspired by Todd's torture tests. Alas, my pockets are not deep enough to afford the ammo expenditure of center fire ammo... However $20 will get you 500+ rounds of .22 cal bulk ammo. WIth that price tag in mind, i decided that i wanted to run a 2000 round challenge through this gun over the weekend.
Bellow is the summary of my results:
Ammo Used: Remington Golden Bullet: ~2625 (+/- a couple rounds as i'm sure there is some variance in the quantity of rounds among the bulk packs) 10 rounds of American Eagle.
Drills Preformed: WHO 7,10,15 meters. SHO 7,10,15 meters. 3x5 card 7/10/15/25 meters. Draw, fire one shot @ 3x5 card 7,10,15 m. A lot of accuracy shooting at 25 meters.
Number of total stoppages: 9 + (10).
8 Stoppages were with the Remington golden bullet. First one occurred within the first 100 rounds. The gun went click, but did not fire. I rotated the cartridge in chamber, and fired again--it went bang. 2 were FTE, with one of them the slide closed on a completely turned around case. The other six were failure to chambers. With a new mag inserted, using the slide release to chamber the round, the tip of the bullet would get caught in the chamber. A tap with the palm of the hand on the rear of the slide would force the round in. Interestingly of these occurred in the the 1000-1500 range, and 4 more in the 1500-2000 range. With 0 instance in the 2000-2500 range. As you can see from the pictures the gun was getting extremely dirty towards the end, so i thought that the stoppages were being caused by excessive fouling on the pseudo feed ramp/chamber area. However due to the lack of the same malfunction in the higher round count, i'm beginning to think that it might have been caused by "over-slamming" the magazine into the magwell--thus the bullet being on a higher than normal plane as it tried to enter the chamber.
10 of the stoppages were back to back with the American Eagle. This occurred on my 3rd range trip. I fired a brick of golden bullet ammo at each instance--however on the third day i forgot the ammo at home, and the range was all out of it in the "bulk" variety (only having it by the box of 100). This would have meant that 500 rounds would have been $29 vs $20. Being the cheapo that i am, i bought a brick of the american eagle. Whether it was due to the gun already being dirty (1000 rounds fired), or the AE ammo being weak--every round fired would not extract the empty casing. I ended up forking over the $29 to continue my range session.
Accuracy:All my shooting was done unsupported, and i suck (so take that into account). As you can see from the pictures, at 7 yards the gun basically shoots a ragged hole. At 25 yards the gun shoots within 3-4 inches for me. Like i said--i suck, your results will probably be better.
On shooting .22: It's critical to maintain a strong grip on the gun. Due to the lack of recoil, even a timid grip on the gun will prevent it from moving in the hands. When switching back to centerfire calibers, if the same grip is mantained, the gun jumps in your hands--this shift creates inconstancy which attributes to poorer accuracy at range.
Here is a link to the pictures from the test. https://picasaweb.google.com/115272351369451244844/MP22?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ-ZoNWkrf-gkwE
Unfortunately due Paypal's inability to retrieve my password, i don't think i have the required data usage to post them in forum (i plan to remedy that as soon as paypal gets back to me).
Bellow is the summary of my results:
Ammo Used: Remington Golden Bullet: ~2625 (+/- a couple rounds as i'm sure there is some variance in the quantity of rounds among the bulk packs) 10 rounds of American Eagle.
Drills Preformed: WHO 7,10,15 meters. SHO 7,10,15 meters. 3x5 card 7/10/15/25 meters. Draw, fire one shot @ 3x5 card 7,10,15 m. A lot of accuracy shooting at 25 meters.
Number of total stoppages: 9 + (10).
8 Stoppages were with the Remington golden bullet. First one occurred within the first 100 rounds. The gun went click, but did not fire. I rotated the cartridge in chamber, and fired again--it went bang. 2 were FTE, with one of them the slide closed on a completely turned around case. The other six were failure to chambers. With a new mag inserted, using the slide release to chamber the round, the tip of the bullet would get caught in the chamber. A tap with the palm of the hand on the rear of the slide would force the round in. Interestingly of these occurred in the the 1000-1500 range, and 4 more in the 1500-2000 range. With 0 instance in the 2000-2500 range. As you can see from the pictures the gun was getting extremely dirty towards the end, so i thought that the stoppages were being caused by excessive fouling on the pseudo feed ramp/chamber area. However due to the lack of the same malfunction in the higher round count, i'm beginning to think that it might have been caused by "over-slamming" the magazine into the magwell--thus the bullet being on a higher than normal plane as it tried to enter the chamber.
10 of the stoppages were back to back with the American Eagle. This occurred on my 3rd range trip. I fired a brick of golden bullet ammo at each instance--however on the third day i forgot the ammo at home, and the range was all out of it in the "bulk" variety (only having it by the box of 100). This would have meant that 500 rounds would have been $29 vs $20. Being the cheapo that i am, i bought a brick of the american eagle. Whether it was due to the gun already being dirty (1000 rounds fired), or the AE ammo being weak--every round fired would not extract the empty casing. I ended up forking over the $29 to continue my range session.
Accuracy:All my shooting was done unsupported, and i suck (so take that into account). As you can see from the pictures, at 7 yards the gun basically shoots a ragged hole. At 25 yards the gun shoots within 3-4 inches for me. Like i said--i suck, your results will probably be better.
On shooting .22: It's critical to maintain a strong grip on the gun. Due to the lack of recoil, even a timid grip on the gun will prevent it from moving in the hands. When switching back to centerfire calibers, if the same grip is mantained, the gun jumps in your hands--this shift creates inconstancy which attributes to poorer accuracy at range.
Here is a link to the pictures from the test. https://picasaweb.google.com/115272351369451244844/MP22?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ-ZoNWkrf-gkwE
Unfortunately due Paypal's inability to retrieve my password, i don't think i have the required data usage to post them in forum (i plan to remedy that as soon as paypal gets back to me).