Look, I don’t care how many rifles you have, if you don’t have at least one firearm chamber in a 22 long (LR) rifle, you don’t have a survivable battery! When I worked for the late Colonel Rex Applegate, he had over 850 firearms in his collection. A number of them are rounded to 22 gauge. If the good colonel needed a .22 LR pistol, so do you.
For years I recommended that the first firearm be a 12 gauge rifle, so to speak. I was wrong! I truly believe that if you want to survive any situation, the very first weapon you buy should be a .22 LR! You can do more with a .22 LR chambered barrel than with most other calibers. Furthermore, aside from the current ammunition drought, we are in a situation where anything that is considered .22 LR ammunition is relatively inexpensive. You can buy a 500 round brick for less than $20. These days you’re lucky if you can even find a .22 LR. And I’m afraid this will be the case for a long, long time – maybe years! However, if you look around, you can always find .22 LR – somewhere! My first gun was a .22 Marlin. It was a model in the style of the M1 rifle. I still want to own it. I have no idea what I did with it.
A friend of mine, who died a long time ago, was raising two children by himself, and he was always short of money. He was a teacher at the same second-rate school where my wife worked many years ago. As you can imagine, it was difficult for him to feed his two growing children – so he resorted to poaching deer in our area. Everyone knew he was doing it and no one reported him. Are guns for poaching? .22 LR rifle . A shot to the head would neutralize the deer immediately. Don’t get me wrong, poaching is wrong. However, I can look the other way if that is the only way someone can feed their family. So leave your hate mail alone.
Over the years, I’ve hunted all kinds of small game and killed literally thousands of ground squirrels on my father-in-law’s 2,000-acre ranch. They are so harmful that landowners even offer to provide 22 LR ammunition to anyone who wants to come and hunt these little animals. So I know the effectiveness of the .22 LR cartridge on small and even medium game – with proper shot placement and the right bullet. For many types of small game, a good hollow point bullet is a quick solution. In self-defense, and I’m not advocating that you carry a .22-caliber pistol for self-defense. But if that’s all you have, load them with hollow-point ammo. We all have to live within our budget, and if you can only afford something in .22 LR – go ahead – it will certainly hit you with a sharp stick or throw rocks at you to defend yourself.
The gun we are examining today is a fairly new Glock 44. This model is numbered .22 LR. The way I came to own this gun is kind of funny, but sad at the same time. My dear wife, who can shoot with the best of them – most of them – doesn’t really know how to shoot a gun. Our little local shop told her they had a Glock 22 and she bought it from me – as a gift. It turned out the seller was wrong, it wasn’t a Glock Model 22, it was a Glock 44 firing .22 LR ammo – of course, being a small store that only sells new guns, they don’t take them back. It’s not the end of the world, that’s for sure. You can’t go wrong with owning a Glock, any kind. I was a little disappointed at first because I was expecting another Glock 22 to be included in the .40 S&W – but like I said, it wasn’t the end of the world – but my wife still feels bad about making such a mistake – it wasn’t entirely her fault, the seller was wrong!
Glock 44
People have been waiting a long, long time for Glock to get the .22 LR. Of course, many companies make adapters for your Glock so you can fire 22 LR ammo in it – but none of them are 100% reliable and they’re also quite expensive. The Glock 44 is the same size as the Glock 19, but that’s about it. We have a 4.02 inch barrel, which is the same as a 19, and it looks like a 19 at first glance. We have a polymer frame, like all Glocks. However, the sled is not made entirely of metal, but of a mixture of materials that makes it very light. The gun weighs just 12.63 rounds without a magazine and just 14.62 rounds with an empty magazine. So it is a very light gun type .22 LR.
We have the same old standard Glock trigger – spongy! The same rigidity on the frame and even a picatinny rail for mounting lights and/or lasers on the frame. There is a double sided slide stop/unlock system – that’s great! The front viewfinder is made of polymer with a single white dot, and the rear viewfinder is fully adjustable with a white border for quick shooting. The extractor hood is excessive – it’s big, but better a big appliance than a fragile one, right? We carved sleds f 
min and on the back of the side of the sled.
When we get to the barrel, you’ll see that it’s very thin – a good indication that it’s not a centerfire gun. And then there’s the big spring unit. The gun comes with 4 additional grip adapters, so you’re sure to find one that fits your hand…. I didn’t install any of this, but I left the handle as it is because it fits my hand perfectly. The magazines, two of which are polymer, have a very strong spring – you have two clips on each side of the magazine that you can pull down to make it easier to load 10 cartridges into the magazine. I ordered two more spare magazines for 10 copies. They’re hard to find these days, but I like to have a few spare magazines on hand. The 44 breaks down for cleaning like other Glock guns are wonderful. And, we do NOT have a fixed barrel, instead it can be removed from the slide – you rarely see semi-auto .22 pistols where the barrel is usually fixed.
I found that the shell trigger flattened a lot after about 300 shots. And I shot over a brick with bullets from this neat gun. I’m not going to list all the different brands of 22 LR ammo, but it was a great mix of different brands and bullet weights. I didn’t have subsonic ammo, and I’ve read that the Glock 44 isn’t 100% reliable with them – that’s no surprise. The Glock 44 delivered this very wide range of ammunition in a very reliable manner. As for accuracy – mostly I have groups under three inches, no problem, and a few groups within two inches – so this gun can shoot – probably better than I can.
After running several magazines through this gun, my wife didn’t feel so bad when she found out it wasn’t a Glock model 22, but a model with the S&W .40 chamber. She noticed that the gun worked well – and it did! The only hunting I’ve done with this gun has been in my own backyard – we have several squirrels that dig holes all over the house – I haven’t shot one yet – but I do.
We have no shortage of .22 LR firearms and I was not looking for another .22 LR by mistake when that gun fell into my hands. Honestly, the little Glock 44 turned out to be a real blessing. With the current ammo shortage I hate to go wasting 9mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP unless I’m working on an item. But when I want to relax, this little .22 LR is a lot of fun, and I can afford to shoot what I want without going through my ammo supply too much. Of course, like everyone else, I have my eye on 22 LR caliber ammo – at a decent price – I’m not going to pay $75 for a 500-cartridge brick! The small local store told my wife a few days ago that they were completely out of 22 LR ammo, and that they weren’t expecting any more – anytime soon – maybe not for a long, long time.
If you’re looking for a good .22 LR pistol, look at the Glock 44. It is a very pleasant gun to use, and the retail price is about $420. These days, they’re hard to find. Even at full sale, it’s a great weapon for your survival battery…. You won’t regret it – if you can find it!
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