Myth! .22 LR can go over 1 Mile

Everyone has heard it, We’ve all seen it on the back of the box. Claims of .22LR traveling over 1 mile away. Let’s talk more about this. 

Short answer, can a .22LR travel over a mile? Yes it can. HOWEVER you really really need to put some fucking effort into that shot. A simple look at a bullet drop calculator will show what it takes to make the mile long 22lr shot. 

Some quick things to talk about before we pretend to be physicists.  

1 yard is 3 feet       1 mile is 5280 feet    1760 yards is 1 mile

For this test I’m mainly going to be talking about elevation (up and down) . I may touch on the windage ( left and right) a tiny bit at the end. 

Another thing to keep in mind, Energy in Foot-pounds. There is no clear answer (that i can find) on what the minimum amount to fatally injure a human is. Its somewhere between 50-100 ft-Lbs

The Type of .22 i’m using for this test is CCI Mini-mag 40g @ 1235 FPS 

Range (yrd)	Velocity (ft/s)	Energy (ft-lb)			Time  (sec)	Drop  (in)	Adjust (MOA)
0	1,235	135			0.000	0.00
100	998	88			0.274	13.49	-2.00
200	875	68			0.596	61.30	14.41
300	785	55			0.958	153.31	34.61
400	711	45			1.361	300.11	58.41
500	646	37			1.804	512.85	85.88
600	587	31			2.291	805.81	117.56
700	533	25			2.828	1,197.51	154.30
800	483	21			-1.168	199.24	8.10
900	438	17			-0.513	37.48	-12.66
1,000	396	14			4.790	3,200.30	303.19
1,100	357	11			5.588	4,262.18	370.62
1,200	322	9			6.481	5,617.53	451.26
1,300	289	7			7.448	7,275.91	542.81
1,400	259	6			8.475	9,245.17	643.49
1,500	230	5			9.553	11,530.71	751.83
1,600	202	4			10.672	14,135.43	866.57
1,700	176	3			11.828	17,059.93	986.62
1,800	151	2			13.016	20,302.84	1,111.03

So there is something I want to really stress here. 

 At 1700 yards (60 yards under 1 mile) you need to aim 17,059 inches above your target!!!!

17,059 inches is 1421 feet! Let me put that into perspective for you. The Sears Tower (Willis Tower) is 1450 feet high, this isn’t including the antennas. 

 

Before I explain this, DO NOT FUCKING DO THIS, I’m just explaining this in terms anyone can understand. Because if you did this you would get arrested in 2 seconds. 

So if your target was a 16 foot box truck parked in front of the Sears Tower, and you’re exactly 1 miles away from the truck. You would have to aim your rifle 29 feet below the top of the building, by doing this you would arch the bullet way up high and it would come down and hit the truck. This is also in a perfect world where wind doesn’t exist. 

Let’s talk about muzzle energy. At 1700 yards we are at 3 FT-LBS of energy. As I stated above, it takes a lot more energy to fatally injure someone with this size projectile. High velocity BB guns shoot higher than 3 FT-LBS of energy, yes the projectile is lighter but in some cases the energy can be the same or greater than a .22RL at 1700+ yards.    

Fuck it, Lets talk about wind. I’m not going to link a chart with a bunch of numbers. But with a 10MPH wind blowing perfectly horizontal to the right. You would have to aim 756 inches (63ft) to the left of the target. 

So in conclusion. Is it possible for a 22LR to go 1 mile? Yes, but fuck dude you really really gotta try. So don’t point them straight up in the air, don’t aim 1421 feet over your target. But also don’t let those Fudds push you around. 

Feel free to fact check my numbers. I went to Chicago public schools, so someone way smarter than me can feel free to correct me. But I’m fairly certain my numbers are correct or pretty close.