Status

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 13-0) Status: Introduced on January 9 2024 - 25% progression Action: 2024-01-09 - Introduced, Referred to Assembly Judiciary Committee Pending: Assembly Judiciary Committee Text: Latest bill text (Introduced) [HTML] Status

Sponsors

Rep. Verlina Reynolds-Jackson [D]Rep. Louis Greenwald [D]Rep. Lisa Swain [D]Rep. Christopher Tully [D] Rep. Linda Carter [D]Rep. Reginald Atkins [D]Rep. Benjie Wimberly [D]Rep. William Spearman [D] Rep. William Moen [D]Rep. Herbert Conaway [D]Rep. Annette Quijano [D]Rep. John Allen [D] Rep. Michael Venezia [D]

Summary

Provides that firearms purchaser identification card is valid for four years; requires training prior to issuance of firearms cards and handgun purchase permits; revises procedures for passing of firearms to heir or legatee.
"1. N.J.S.2C:58-3 is amended to read as follows:"
" ~(1) Upon the death of the owner of a firearm, the administrator or executor of the estate who does not possess a valid firearms purchaser identification card or permit to purchase a handgun shall surrender custody of the firearm within 30 days to the chief law enforcement officer of the municipality in which the decedent resided or, if the municipality does not have a police department or force, the superintendent. The chief law enforcement officer or superintendent, as appropriate, shall retain custody of the firearm until the heir or legatee obtains a valid permit to purchase a handgun or firearms purchaser identification card. If the heir or legatee does not obtain a permit to purchase a handgun or firearms purchaser identification card, the heir or legatee shall sell the firearm to a licensed retail dealer or arrange for the sale of the firearm by the licensed retail dealer. The licensed retail dealer shall provide the heir or legatee with a receipt and shall record the date of surrender, the name of the heir or legatee, and the serial number, manufacturer, and model of the surrendered firearm.~"
So if your kids have any mental health treatment they will have to check yes and go thru the forensic clearance or extra letters if they check yes on FPIC app to get your collection post A843 passing. Democrats are making sure collections get destroyed/confiscated and firearms ownership does not move on to the next generation without a lengthy life investigation which in most cases gets delayed illegally, and costly permits. Also 30 days is absurd and malicious, Canada which has no right to bear arms allows heirs 6 months to get firearms permits and a will functions as their gun permit for 6 months. We are becoming more draconian than countries with no right to bear arms. If you have inherited guns and no FPIC expect to hear show me your papers one day when your guns are legal because you are a heir under current law, either to join a range or in a police interaction then the burden of proof is on you to prove you are a legal heir under current law. Please email write and call your assembly people and senators to stop this draconian bill or if you have a collection to pass to family when you die and don't want them to have to pay money and be investigated to receive it.
New Jersey Legislative Roster of Members NJ Legislature (state.nj.us)
NJ Legislative District Map NJ Legislature (state.nj.us)

Status

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 13-0) Status: Introduced on January 9 2024 - 25% progression Action: 2024-01-09 - Introduced, Referred to Assembly Judiciary Committee Pending: Assembly Judiciary Committee Text: Latest bill text (Introduced) [HTML] Status

Sponsors

Rep. Verlina Reynolds-Jackson [D]Rep. Louis Greenwald [D]Rep. Lisa Swain [D]Rep. Christopher Tully [D] Rep. Linda Carter [D]Rep. Reginald Atkins [D]Rep. Benjie Wimberly [D]Rep. William Spearman [D] Rep. William Moen [D]Rep. Herbert Conaway [D]Rep. Annette Quijano [D]Rep. John Allen [D] Rep. Michael Venezia [D]

Summary

Provides that firearms purchaser identification card is valid for four years; requires training prior to issuance of firearms cards and handgun purchase permits; revises procedures for passing of firearms to heir or legatee.
"1. N.J.S.2C:58-3 is amended to read as follows:"
" ~(1) Upon the death of the owner of a firearm, the administrator or executor of the estate who does not possess a valid firearms purchaser identification card or permit to purchase a handgun shall surrender custody of the firearm within 30 days to the chief law enforcement officer of the municipality in which the decedent resided or, if the municipality does not have a police department or force, the superintendent. The chief law enforcement officer or superintendent, as appropriate, shall retain custody of the firearm until the heir or legatee obtains a valid permit to purchase a handgun or firearms purchaser identification card. If the heir or legatee does not obtain a permit to purchase a handgun or firearms purchaser identification card, the heir or legatee shall sell the firearm to a licensed retail dealer or arrange for the sale of the firearm by the licensed retail dealer. The licensed retail dealer shall provide the heir or legatee with a receipt and shall record the date of surrender, the name of the heir or legatee, and the serial number, manufacturer, and model of the surrendered firearm.~"
So if your kids have any mental health treatment they will have to check yes and go thru the forensic clearance or extra letters if they check yes on FPIC app to get your collection post A843 passing. Democrats are making sure collections get destroyed/confiscated and firearms ownership does not move on to the next generation without a lengthy life investigation which in most cases gets delayed illegally, and costly permits. Also 30 days is absurd and malicious, Canada which has no right to bear arms allows heirs 6 months to get firearms permits and a will functions as their gun permit for 6 months. We are becoming more draconian than countries with no right to bear arms. If you have inherited guns and no FPIC expect to hear show me your papers one day when your guns are legal because you are a heir under current law, either to join a range or in a police interaction then the burden of proof is on you to prove you are a legal heir under current law. Please email write and call your assembly people and senators to stop this draconian bill or if you have a collection to pass to family when you die and don't want them to have to pay money and be investigated to receive it.
New Jersey Legislative Roster of Members NJ Legislature (state.nj.us)
NJ Legislative District Map NJ Legislature (state.nj.us)

Let’s just address the elephant in the room right out of the gate:
The .22 LR is NOT the best choice for self-defense
There, we said it.
No one will deny that the .22 Long Rifle cartridge is a great training tool for new shooters thanks to its nonexistent recoil. It’s amazing for plinking and pest control, but the simple truth is that larger calibers like the 9mm, 38 Special, and 45 ACP make better self-defense cartridges than the 22 LR.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the 22 LR, but it simply doesn’t cause a large enough wound channel to reliably put down bad guys (and FBI ballistic gelatin tests confirm this).
As such, every time I walk out the door I’m grabbing my Glock 26 and not my Walther P22.
BUT!
If all you own is a short-barrel 22 LR Ruger LCR or Taurus TX22, and it’s between carrying that or a pointy stick…Then all I’ll say is that a 22 LR in the pocket is better than a 45 ACP on the nightstand any day.
Can the 22 LR protect your life in a self-defense situation? You bet your rimfire rear-end it can! However, if you want to increase your chances of surviving a self-defense situation using a rimfire handgun, then you need the right ammo to get the job done.
Below you’ll find our top 5 picks for the best 22 LR self-defense loads on the market today (plus a few honorable mentions!)
For those of you who want to place an order now, grab a few boxes of the Browning Performance 36 Grain CPHP. But if you want to explore the best .22 LR rimfire ammunition for self-defense, keep reading.
If you’re new to buying .22 LR ammo, check out our Buyer’s Guide HERE to learn more. Otherwise, just scroll down a little more for the top 5 best .22 LR ammo you can buy to defend your life.

The Best .22 LR for Self-Defense

• Browning Performance 36 Grain CPHP
• CCI Stinger 32 Grain CPHP
• Winchester Super-X 40 Grain CPHP
• Aguila 38 Grain CPHP
• Federal Punch Defense 29 Grain FMJ

Best 22LR for Self-Defense - Overall

Browning Performance 36 Grain CPHP

Specs

• Bullet Casing: Brass
• Bullet Type: CPHP (Copper Plated Hollow Point)
• Bullet Weight: 36 Grain
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,280 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 131 foot-pounds

Pros

• Affordable
• Easy to find
• CPHP offers some fragmentation

Cons

• Questionable reliability is some handguns

Why We Chose It

As far as rimfire cartridges go, you aren’t going to find many .22 LR rounds that are versatile enough for plinking, varmint hunting, and self-defense. To make the best .22 LR ammo for self-defense, we had to consider reliability, price, performance, and availability. For us, that’s the Browning Performance 36 Grain CPHP.
A simple copper-plated hollow point round with a solid lead core, this ammo is versatile enough to stop threats from home intruders to rabbits and squirrels. Due to the copper-plated encasement, the projectile penetrates well and won’t deform before creating a deep wound channel.
It’s a non-corrosive round with a high velocity that maximizes kinetic energy transfer (stopping power) and can be used in self-defense scenarios. However, make sure that you test this ammo in your preferred rimfire handgun before you decide to CCW it, as I had some reliability issues with Browning rimfire ammunition in my Walther P22.
However, if you find that your handgun likes this ammo, then you won’t be disappointed by its performance.

Honorable Mention

Winchester Silvertip 37 Grain Segmented Hollow Point - Another hard-hitting, fast .22 LR cartridge is the Winchester Silvertip. This cartridge also maximizes stopping power for a small-caliber bullet with high velocity and a hollow point projectile.
However, it can be a bit difficult to find, so when you can get your hands on a box of the Winchester Silvertip, snatch it up.

CCI Stinger 32 Grain CPHP

Specs

• Bullet Casing: Nickel-Plated Brass
• Bullet Type: CPHP (Copper Plated Hollow Point)
• Bullet Weight: 32 Grain
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,640 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 191 ft-lbs

Pros

• Extremely affordable
• Reliable
• Hollow point provides some expansion
• High availability

Cons

• Lower velocity in typical CCW handguns

Why We Chose It

If you want incredibly reliable .22LR ammo that goes “Bang” every time you squeeze the trigger, then make sure to grab some CCI Stingers.
One major bonus of the CCI Stinger is that it utilizes a nickel-plated brass case that is incredibly smoot feeding. This is important for self-defense ammunition, because clearing a jam can mean the difference between life and death.
CCI Stingers also have some of the highest muzzle velocities available for rimfire ammo, outstripping CCI Mini-Mag and CCI Velocitor ammo by quite a wide margin.
Similar to the Browning ammo mentioned earlier, the 32 Grain CCI Stinger fires a copper-plated hollow point to initiate bullet fragmentation inside the target. But there are some notable differences. For example, the CCI stinger has a much higher muzzle velocity than the Browning (although this may vary depending on barrel length).
Ultimately, it’s a varmint round, but it can also be effective in other scenarios. The copper-plated hollow point tip keeps the bullet from expanding too quickly and gives us penetration of 11” and 13” (in a gel test).
One thing to keep in mind is that most (not all) manufacturers report their muzzle velocities from test barrels that are typically longer than 16". I don’t know about you, but I’m not planning on EDC’ing a Ruger 10-22!
Short barrel 22 LR pistols like the Ruger LCP will generally have a lower muzzle velocity than what’s listed on the box, and this is true for most all manufacturers. This is not to say that the rounds are ineffective, but it’s something you should be aware of before carrying a 22 LR handgun for self-defense.
However, CCI Stingers are very affordable and easy to buy in bulk to stockpile for multiple purposes. Take a few boxes to the range and ensure your .22 LR pistol (or rifle) likes the ammo, then keep the rest at home for the worst-case home defense scenario.

Winchester Super-X 40 Grain CPHP

Specs

• Bullet Casing: Brass
• Bullet Type: CPHP (Copper-Plated Hollow Point)
• Bullet Weight 40 Grain
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,435 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 108 ft-lbs

Pros

• High velocity for a heavier bullet
• Very affordable
• High availability

Cons

• Reliability

Why We Chose It

You can’t go wrong with Winchester. The company has delivered excellent, high-quality, and effective rounds for generations. Of course, the Winchester Super-X 40 Grain is another excellent option for self-defense for those who want or need to use a .22 LR.
This high-velocity cartridge has a copper-plated hollow point that has more kinetic energy transfer (often referred to as “stopping power”) due to the projectile’s opening on the tip.
Compared to other bullet types, the CPHP’s copper jacket decreases fragmentation. While expansion is typically great for other calibers, the lower-powered .22 LR must stay intact to increase penetration.
The wider meplat (bullet tip) combined with higher velocity and copper-plated tip means there’s a larger wound channel on impact. You’ll also get adequate penetration and more kinetic energy transfer.
Of course, it’s probably no surprise that, like all ammo, some shooters experience feeding and accuracy issues with the Winchester Super-X. Fortunately, it’s a pretty low-cost round, so getting to the range to test it (as you should any self-defense rounds) isn’t going to break the bank.

Honorable Mention

Federal Champion 40 Grain LRN - The Federal Champion is a 40 Grain bullet with a led round nose (LRN) that’s reliable, accurate and hits pretty hard. You’re bound to get excellent penetration with a 1,200 fps muzzle velocity and the higher-weight grain.

Aguila 38 Grain CPHP

Specs

• Bullet Casing: Brass
• Bullet Type: CPHP (Copper Plated Hollow Point)
• Bullet Weight: 38 Grain
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,280 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 138 ft-lbs

Pros

• Very accurate
• High reliability at this price point
• Lowest cost/round on our list

Cons

• Lower muzzle velocity

Why We Chose It

The Aguila 38 Grain copper-plated hollow points is one of the lower-cost options on our list. But it isn’t lacking in quality. On the contrary, Aguila is well-known for producing high-quality rounds that feed well (in most cases) and have excellent accuracy.
This cartridge has a lower muzzle velocity than other .22 LR recommendations for self-defense, but it also has excellent penetration and isn’t likely to expand too quickly. As with many other recommendations you’ve seen, the Aguila has a solid lead core encased in a copper-plated jacket to keep the projectile from breaking apart on impact.
Of course, what’s better is that for less than one dime per round, you can easily stockpile it, practice with it, and keep a few boxes on hand if you ever find yourself or your family in harm’s way.

Honorable Mention

Fiocchi 38 Grain CPHP - The weight, design, and velocity of the Aguila 38 Grain CPHP are incredibly similar to the Fiocchi 38 Grain CPHP. It’s an excellent .22 LR cartridge that can be used for self-defense as well as small game hunting and varmint control. If, for any reason, you can’t get the Aguila we’ve listed above, grab a few boxes of Fiocchi instead. You won’t be disappointed.

Federal Punch Defense 29 Grain FMJ

Specs

• Bullet Casing: Nickel-plated brass
• Bullet Type: FN (Flat Nose)
• Bullet Weight: 29 Grain
• Muzzle Velocity: 1080 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 75 ft-lbs

Pros

• Specially designed for self-defense
• Affordably priced
• High-quality

Cons

• Availability

Why We Chose It

The .22 LR has plenty of drawbacks when it comes to self-defense. The smaller projectiles with lower muzzle velocities can veer off course and often have too little penetration to stop a threat effectively. Federal’s engineers recognized these drawbacks and designed this cartridge to overcome them.
As far as rimfire cartridges go, this one is designed to maximize penetration and weight retention. Whereas some of the other options on our list are designed to expand, the Federal Punch 29 Grain, surprisingly, does the opposite.
This cartridge has a flat nose, and its lead core is encased in a heavy nickel-plated jacket. The design allows the bullet to penetrate deeper than other .22 LR ammo while also keeping a straighter path on impact.
Furthermore, this round’s brilliant design and increased muzzle velocity help it exceed the FBI standard of 12” penetration in ballistic gel (penetrating nearly 14” with a 16-inch barrel). The listed muzzle velocity from Federal Premium comes from a 2-inch barrel, which is what most responsible civilians will choose to concealed carry.
While it won’t replace a solid self-defense caliber like the 9mm or .45 ACP, all of these features combined definitely increase its effectiveness.

Parting Shots

While we wouldn’t run out and buy a .22 over a Glock or a Ruger 9mm (or another semi-auto firearm that packs more punch), we would rather have a .22 than a pointy stick or baseball bat.
While many tout the .22 LRs’ ineffectiveness in personal defense, it also has its benefits (especially if you’re using the best self-defense ammo available). For example, it’s an excellent caliber shooters who are extremely recoil sensitive or have weak hands.
So, if you plan to keep a few boxes of .22 LR ammo around in case the worst should happen, order one of the options above. If you want to pick up a few other boxes for plinking or target shooting, head over to our .22 LR ammo page for more cartridges.
Top 5 Best .22 LR for Self-Defense: The Itty Bitty Defender originally appeared on Ammo.com

Let’s just address the elephant in the room right out of the gate:
The .22 LR is NOT the best choice for self-defense
There, we said it.
No one will deny that the .22 Long Rifle cartridge is a great training tool for new shooters thanks to its nonexistent recoil. It’s amazing for plinking and pest control, but the simple truth is that larger calibers like the 9mm, 38 Special, and 45 ACP make better self-defense cartridges than the 22 LR.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the 22 LR, but it simply doesn’t cause a large enough wound channel to reliably put down bad guys (and FBI ballistic gelatin tests confirm this).
As such, every time I walk out the door I’m grabbing my Glock 26 and not my Walther P22.
BUT!
If all you own is a short-barrel 22 LR Ruger LCR or Taurus TX22, and it’s between carrying that or a pointy stick…Then all I’ll say is that a 22 LR in the pocket is better than a 45 ACP on the nightstand any day.
Can the 22 LR protect your life in a self-defense situation? You bet your rimfire rear-end it can! However, if you want to increase your chances of surviving a self-defense situation using a rimfire handgun, then you need the right ammo to get the job done.
Below you’ll find our top 5 picks for the best 22 LR self-defense loads on the market today (plus a few honorable mentions!)
For those of you who want to place an order now, grab a few boxes of the Browning Performance 36 Grain CPHP. But if you want to explore the best .22 LR rimfire ammunition for self-defense, keep reading.
If you’re new to buying .22 LR ammo, check out our Buyer’s Guide HERE to learn more. Otherwise, just scroll down a little more for the top 5 best .22 LR ammo you can buy to defend your life.

The Best .22 LR for Self-Defense

• Browning Performance 36 Grain CPHP
• CCI Stinger 32 Grain CPHP
• Winchester Super-X 40 Grain CPHP
• Aguila 38 Grain CPHP
• Federal Punch Defense 29 Grain FMJ

Best 22LR for Self-Defense - Overall

Browning Performance 36 Grain CPHP

Specs

• Bullet Casing: Brass
• Bullet Type: CPHP (Copper Plated Hollow Point)
• Bullet Weight: 36 Grain
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,280 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 131 foot-pounds

Pros

• Affordable
• Easy to find
• CPHP offers some fragmentation

Cons

• Questionable reliability is some handguns

Why We Chose It

As far as rimfire cartridges go, you aren’t going to find many .22 LR rounds that are versatile enough for plinking, varmint hunting, and self-defense. To make the best .22 LR ammo for self-defense, we had to consider reliability, price, performance, and availability. For us, that’s the Browning Performance 36 Grain CPHP.
A simple copper-plated hollow point round with a solid lead core, this ammo is versatile enough to stop threats from home intruders to rabbits and squirrels. Due to the copper-plated encasement, the projectile penetrates well and won’t deform before creating a deep wound channel.
It’s a non-corrosive round with a high velocity that maximizes kinetic energy transfer (stopping power) and can be used in self-defense scenarios. However, make sure that you test this ammo in your preferred rimfire handgun before you decide to CCW it, as I had some reliability issues with Browning rimfire ammunition in my Walther P22.
However, if you find that your handgun likes this ammo, then you won’t be disappointed by its performance.

Honorable Mention

Winchester Silvertip 37 Grain Segmented Hollow Point - Another hard-hitting, fast .22 LR cartridge is the Winchester Silvertip. This cartridge also maximizes stopping power for a small-caliber bullet with high velocity and a hollow point projectile.
However, it can be a bit difficult to find, so when you can get your hands on a box of the Winchester Silvertip, snatch it up.

CCI Stinger 32 Grain CPHP

Specs

• Bullet Casing: Nickel-Plated Brass
• Bullet Type: CPHP (Copper Plated Hollow Point)
• Bullet Weight: 32 Grain
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,640 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 191 ft-lbs

Pros

• Extremely affordable
• Reliable
• Hollow point provides some expansion
• High availability

Cons

• Lower velocity in typical CCW handguns

Why We Chose It

If you want incredibly reliable .22LR ammo that goes “Bang” every time you squeeze the trigger, then make sure to grab some CCI Stingers.
One major bonus of the CCI Stinger is that it utilizes a nickel-plated brass case that is incredibly smoot feeding. This is important for self-defense ammunition, because clearing a jam can mean the difference between life and death.
CCI Stingers also have some of the highest muzzle velocities available for rimfire ammo, outstripping CCI Mini-Mag and CCI Velocitor ammo by quite a wide margin.
Similar to the Browning ammo mentioned earlier, the 32 Grain CCI Stinger fires a copper-plated hollow point to initiate bullet fragmentation inside the target. But there are some notable differences. For example, the CCI stinger has a much higher muzzle velocity than the Browning (although this may vary depending on barrel length).
Ultimately, it’s a varmint round, but it can also be effective in other scenarios. The copper-plated hollow point tip keeps the bullet from expanding too quickly and gives us penetration of 11” and 13” (in a gel test).
One thing to keep in mind is that most (not all) manufacturers report their muzzle velocities from test barrels that are typically longer than 16". I don’t know about you, but I’m not planning on EDC’ing a Ruger 10-22!
Short barrel 22 LR pistols like the Ruger LCP will generally have a lower muzzle velocity than what’s listed on the box, and this is true for most all manufacturers. This is not to say that the rounds are ineffective, but it’s something you should be aware of before carrying a 22 LR handgun for self-defense.
However, CCI Stingers are very affordable and easy to buy in bulk to stockpile for multiple purposes. Take a few boxes to the range and ensure your .22 LR pistol (or rifle) likes the ammo, then keep the rest at home for the worst-case home defense scenario.

Winchester Super-X 40 Grain CPHP

Specs

• Bullet Casing: Brass
• Bullet Type: CPHP (Copper-Plated Hollow Point)
• Bullet Weight 40 Grain
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,435 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 108 ft-lbs

Pros

• High velocity for a heavier bullet
• Very affordable
• High availability

Cons

• Reliability

Why We Chose It

You can’t go wrong with Winchester. The company has delivered excellent, high-quality, and effective rounds for generations. Of course, the Winchester Super-X 40 Grain is another excellent option for self-defense for those who want or need to use a .22 LR.
This high-velocity cartridge has a copper-plated hollow point that has more kinetic energy transfer (often referred to as “stopping power”) due to the projectile’s opening on the tip.
Compared to other bullet types, the CPHP’s copper jacket decreases fragmentation. While expansion is typically great for other calibers, the lower-powered .22 LR must stay intact to increase penetration.
The wider meplat (bullet tip) combined with higher velocity and copper-plated tip means there’s a larger wound channel on impact. You’ll also get adequate penetration and more kinetic energy transfer.
Of course, it’s probably no surprise that, like all ammo, some shooters experience feeding and accuracy issues with the Winchester Super-X. Fortunately, it’s a pretty low-cost round, so getting to the range to test it (as you should any self-defense rounds) isn’t going to break the bank.

Honorable Mention

Federal Champion 40 Grain LRN - The Federal Champion is a 40 Grain bullet with a led round nose (LRN) that’s reliable, accurate and hits pretty hard. You’re bound to get excellent penetration with a 1,200 fps muzzle velocity and the higher-weight grain.

Aguila 38 Grain CPHP

Specs

• Bullet Casing: Brass
• Bullet Type: CPHP (Copper Plated Hollow Point)
• Bullet Weight: 38 Grain
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,280 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 138 ft-lbs

Pros

• Very accurate
• High reliability at this price point
• Lowest cost/round on our list

Cons

• Lower muzzle velocity

Why We Chose It

The Aguila 38 Grain copper-plated hollow points is one of the lower-cost options on our list. But it isn’t lacking in quality. On the contrary, Aguila is well-known for producing high-quality rounds that feed well (in most cases) and have excellent accuracy.
This cartridge has a lower muzzle velocity than other .22 LR recommendations for self-defense, but it also has excellent penetration and isn’t likely to expand too quickly. As with many other recommendations you’ve seen, the Aguila has a solid lead core encased in a copper-plated jacket to keep the projectile from breaking apart on impact.
Of course, what’s better is that for less than one dime per round, you can easily stockpile it, practice with it, and keep a few boxes on hand if you ever find yourself or your family in harm’s way.

Honorable Mention

Fiocchi 38 Grain CPHP - The weight, design, and velocity of the Aguila 38 Grain CPHP are incredibly similar to the Fiocchi 38 Grain CPHP. It’s an excellent .22 LR cartridge that can be used for self-defense as well as small game hunting and varmint control. If, for any reason, you can’t get the Aguila we’ve listed above, grab a few boxes of Fiocchi instead. You won’t be disappointed.

Federal Punch Defense 29 Grain FMJ

Specs

• Bullet Casing: Nickel-plated brass
• Bullet Type: FN (Flat Nose)
• Bullet Weight: 29 Grain
• Muzzle Velocity: 1080 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 75 ft-lbs

Pros

• Specially designed for self-defense
• Affordably priced
• High-quality

Cons

• Availability

Why We Chose It

The .22 LR has plenty of drawbacks when it comes to self-defense. The smaller projectiles with lower muzzle velocities can veer off course and often have too little penetration to stop a threat effectively. Federal’s engineers recognized these drawbacks and designed this cartridge to overcome them.
As far as rimfire cartridges go, this one is designed to maximize penetration and weight retention. Whereas some of the other options on our list are designed to expand, the Federal Punch 29 Grain, surprisingly, does the opposite.
This cartridge has a flat nose, and its lead core is encased in a heavy nickel-plated jacket. The design allows the bullet to penetrate deeper than other .22 LR ammo while also keeping a straighter path on impact.
Furthermore, this round’s brilliant design and increased muzzle velocity help it exceed the FBI standard of 12” penetration in ballistic gel (penetrating nearly 14” with a 16-inch barrel). The listed muzzle velocity from Federal Premium comes from a 2-inch barrel, which is what most responsible civilians will choose to concealed carry.
While it won’t replace a solid self-defense caliber like the 9mm or .45 ACP, all of these features combined definitely increase its effectiveness.

Parting Shots

While we wouldn’t run out and buy a .22 over a Glock or a Ruger 9mm (or another semi-auto firearm that packs more punch), we would rather have a .22 than a pointy stick or baseball bat.
While many tout the .22 LRs’ ineffectiveness in personal defense, it also has its benefits (especially if you’re using the best self-defense ammo available). For example, it’s an excellent caliber shooters who are extremely recoil sensitive or have weak hands.
So, if you plan to keep a few boxes of .22 LR ammo around in case the worst should happen, order one of the options above. If you want to pick up a few other boxes for plinking or target shooting, head over to our .22 LR ammo page for more cartridges.
Top 5 Best .22 LR for Self-Defense: The Itty Bitty Defender originally appeared on Ammo.com

“Questioning elicited the information that he feels almost as if there is a veil between him and other people through which they cannot reach him, but he prefers this veil to remain intact.”
—
Sometimes he looks around him, horrified by the weight of it all, the career of paper. He sits in the data-spew of hundreds of lives. There’s no end in sight. When he needs something, a report or transcript, anything, any level of difficulty, he simply has to ask. The Curator is quick to respond, firm in his insistence on forwarding precisely the right document in an area of research marked by ambiguity and error, by political bias, systematic fantasy. But not just the right document, not just an obscure footnote from an open source. The Curator sends him material not seen by anyone outside the headquarters complex at Langley, material that includes the results of internal investigations, confidential files from the Agency’s own Office of Security.
—
Knowledge was a danger, ignorance a cherished asset. In many cases the DCI, the Director of Central Intelligence, was not to know important things. The less he knew, the more decisively he could function. It would impair his ability to tell the truth at an inquiry or a hearing, or in an Oval Office chat with the President, if he knew what they were doing in Leader 4, or even what they were talking about, or muttering in their sleep. The Joint Chiefs were not to know. The operational horrors were not for their ears. Details were a form of contamination. The Secretaries were to be insulated from knowing. They were happier not knowing, or knowing too late. The Deputy Secretaries were interested in drifts and tendencies. They expected to be misled. They counted on it. The Attorney General wasn’t to know the queasy details. Just get results. Each level of the committee was designed to protect a higher level. There were complexities of speech. A man needed special experience and insight to work true meanings out of certain murky remarks. There were pauses and blank looks. Brilliant riddles floated up and down the echelons, to be pondered, solved, ignored.
The members of the committee would allow only generalities to carry upward. It was the President, of course, who was the final object of their protective instincts. … The White House was to be the summit of unknowing. It was as if an unsullied leader redeemed some ancient truth which the others were forced to admire only in the abstract, owing to their mission in the convoluted world.
But there were even deeper shadows, strange and grave silences surrounding plans to invade the island. The President knew about this, of course—knew the broad contours, had a sense of the promised outcome. But the system still operated as an insulating muse. Let him see the softer tones. Shield him from responsibility. Secrets build their own networks, Win believed. The system would perpetuate itself in all its curious and obsessive webbings, its equivocations and patient riddles and levels of delusional thought …
—
“The invasion failed because high officials didn’t examine the basic assumptions. They got caught up in a spirit of compelling action. They were eager to accept other men’s perceptions. There was safety in this. The plan was never clear. No one was ever responsible. Some of them knew a disaster was in the works. They let it ride. They put themselves out of reach. They wanted it over and done.”
—
“Some things we wait for all our lives without knowing it. Then it happens and we recognize at once who we are and how we are meant to proceed. This is the idea I’ve always wanted. I believe you’ll sense it is right. It’s the high risk we need. We need an electrifying event. You’ve been waiting for this every bit as much as I have. I believe that or I wouldn’t have asked you to come here. We want to set up an attempt on the life of the President. We plan every step, design every incident leading up to the event. We put together a team, leave a dim trail. The evidence is ambiguous. But it points to the Cuban Intelligence Directorate. Inherent in the plan is a second set of clues, even more unclear, more intriguing. These point to the Agency’s attempts to assassinate Castro. I am designing a plan that includes elements of both the American provocation and the Cuban reply. We do the whole thing with paper. Passports, drivers’ licenses, address books. Our team of shooters disappears but the police find a trail. Mail-order forms, change-of-address cards, photographs. We script a person or persons out of ordinary pocket litter. Shots ring out, the country is shocked, aroused. The paper trail leads to paid agents who have disappeared in Venezuela, in Mexico. I am convinced this is what we have to do to get Cuba back. This plan has levels and variations I’ve only begun to explore but it is already, essentially, right. I feel its rightness. I know what scientists mean when they talk about elegant solutions. This plan speaks to something deep inside me. It has a powerful logic. I’ve felt it unfolding for weeks, like a dream whose meaning slowly becomes apparent. This is the condition we’ve always wanted to reach. It’s the life-insight, the life-secret, and we have to extend it, guard it carefully, right up to the time we have shooters stationed on a rooftop or railroad bridge.”
—
Historic names, pen names, names of war, party names, revolutionary names. These were men who lived in isolation for long periods, lived close to death through long winters in exile or prison, feeling history in the room, waiting for the moment when it would surge through the walls, taking them with it. History was a force to these men, a presence in the room. They felt it and waited.
The books were struggles. He had to fight to make some elementary sense of what he read. But the books had come out of struggle. They had been struggles to write, struggles to live. It seemed fitting to Lee that the texts were often masses of dense theory, unyielding. The tougher the books, the more firmly he fixed a distance between himself and others.
He found enough that he could understand. He could see the capitalists, he could see the masses. They were right here, all around him, every day.
—
Pocket litter. Win Everett was at work devising a general shape, a life. He would script a gunman out of ordinary dog-eared paper, the contents of a wallet. … They wanted a name, a face, a bodily frame they might use to extend their fiction into the world. Everett had decided he wanted one figure to be slightly more visible than the others, a man the investigation might center on, someone who would be trailed and possibly apprehended. Three or four shooters would vanish completely, leaving scant traces of their affiliation. … Then one other figure, one slightly clearer image, perhaps abandoned in his sniper’s perch to find his own way out, to be trailed, found, possibly killed by the Secret Service, FBI or local police. Whatever protocol demands. This kind of man, a marksman, near anonymous, with minimal known history, the kind of man who surfaces in murky places, disappears, is arrested for some violent act, is released to drift again, to surface, to disappear. Mackey would find this man for Everett. They needed fingerprints, a handwriting sample, a photograph. Mackey would find the other shooters as well. We don’t hit the President. We miss him. We want a spectacular miss.
—
It was all so curiously funny. It was rich, that’s what it was. Everyone was a spook or dupe or asset, a double, courier, cutout or defector, or was related to one. We were all linked in a vast and rhythmic coincidence, a daisy chain of rumor, suspicion and secret wish.
—
Somewhere in his room of theories, in some notebook or folder, Nicholas Branch has a roster of the dead. A printout of the names of witnesses, informers, investigators, people linked to Lee H. Oswald, people linked to Jack Ruby, all conveniently and suggestively dead. In 1979 a House select committee determined there was nothing statistically abnormal about the death rate among those who were connected in some way to the events of November 22. Branch accepts this as an actuarial fact. He is writing a history, not a study of the ways in which people succumb to paranoia. There is endless suggestiveness. Branch concedes this. There is the language of the manner of death. Shot in back of head. Died of cut throat. Shot in police station. Shot in motel. Shot by husband after one month marriage. Found hanging by toreador pants in jail cell. Killed by karate chop. It is the neon epic of Saturday night. And Branch wants to believe that’s all it is. There is enough mystery in the facts as we know them, enough of conspiracy, coincidence, loose ends, dead ends, multiple interpretations. There is no need, he thinks, to invent the grand and masterful scheme, the plot that reaches flawlessly in a dozen directions.
Still, the cases do resonate, don’t they? Mostly anonymous dead. Exotic dancers, taxi drivers, cigarette girls, lawyers of the shopworn sort with dandruff on their lapels. But through the years the violence has reached others as well, and with each new series of misadventures Branch sees again how the assassination sheds a powerful and lasting light, exposing patterns and links, revealing this man to have known that one, this death to have occurred in curious juxtaposition to that.
—
“U-2 planes. The planes that spotted the missiles the Soviets were putting into Cuba. We used to call the photos pornography. The photo interpreters would gather to interpret. ‘Let’s see what kind of pornography we pulled in today.’ Kennedy looked at the pictures in his bedroom as a matter of fact. … Spy planes, drone aircraft, satellites with cameras that can see from three hundred miles what you can see from a hundred feet. They see and they hear. Like ancient monks, you know, who recorded knowledge, wrote it painstakingly down. These systems collect and process. All the secret knowledge of the world. … I’ll tell you what it means, these orbiting sensors that can hear us in our beds. It means the end of loyalty. The more complex the systems, the less conviction in people. Conviction will be drained out of us. Devices will drain us, make us vague and pliant.”
—
He would put someone together, build an identity, a skein of persuasion and habit, ever so subtle. He wanted a man with believable quirks. He would create a shadowed room, the gunman’s room, which investigators would eventually find, exposing each fact to relentless scrutiny, following each friend, relative, casual acquaintance into his own roomful of shadows. We lead more interesting lives than we think. We are characters in plots, without the compression and numinous sheen. Our lives, examined carefully in all their affinities and links, abound with suggestive meaning, with themes and involute turnings we have not allowed ourselves to see completely. He would show the secret symmetries in a nondescript life.
An address book with ambiguous leads. Photographs expertly altered (or crudely altered). Letters, travel documents, counterfeit signatures, a history of false names. It would all require a massive decipherment, a conversion to plain text. He envisioned teams of linguists, photo analysts, fingerprint experts, handwriting experts, experts in hairs and fibers, smudges and blurs. Investigators building up chronologies. He would give them the makings of deep chronos, lead them to basement rooms in windy industrial slums, to lost towns in the Tropics.
—
Life is hostile, he believed. The struggle is to merge your life with the greater tide of history.
—
Maybe what has to happen is that the individual must allow himself to be swept along, must find himself in the stream of no-choice, the single direction. This is what makes things inevitable. You use the restrictions and penalties they invent to make yourself stronger. History means to merge. The purpose of history is to climb out of your own skin. He knew what Trotsky had written, that revolution leads us out of the dark night of the isolated self. We live forever in history, outside ego and id.
—
Two weeks later he followed directions to a house in the Sanya district of Tokyo. He made his way through a ragpickers’ village built with material scavenged from other parts of the city. Old women jogged through the alleys carrying empty bottles, broken chair legs, pieces of indefinable junk. Houses were shoulder-high, made of old packing crates and strips of sheet metal, the walls stuffed with cardboard and rags. There were lines of people selling blood at mobile units, people who seemed hollow-bodied, so small, in such collapse. It would never bottom out. No matter how far down you went into the world, there were distances still to go, worse things to see and experience. He made it a point not to hurry through the area. He wanted to see what was here.
—
It produced a sensation of the eeriest panic, gave him a glimpse of the fiction he’d been devising, a fiction living prematurely in the world.
—
Nicholas Branch has unpublished state documents, polygraph reports, Dictabelt recordings from the police radio net on November 22. He has photo enhancements, floor plans, home movies, biographies, bibliographies, letters, rumors, mirages, dreams. This is the room of dreams, the room where it has taken him all these years to learn that his subject is not politics or violent crime but men in small rooms.
Is he one of them now? Frustrated, stuck, self-watching, looking for a means of connection, a way to break out. After Oswald, men in America are no longer required to lead lives of quiet desperation. You apply for a credit card, buy a handgun, travel through cities, suburbs and shopping malls, anonymous, anonymous, looking for a chance to take a shot at the first puffy empty famous face, just to let people know there is someone out there who reads the papers.
Branch is stuck all right. He has abandoned his life to understanding that moment in Dallas, the seven seconds that broke the back of the American century. He has his forensic pathology rundown, his neutron activation analysis. There is also the Warren Report, of course, with its twenty-six accompanying volumes of testimony and exhibits, its millions of words. Branch thinks this is the megaton novel James Joyce would have written if he’d moved to Iowa City and lived to be a hundred.
Everything is here. Baptismal records, report cards, postcards, divorce petitions, canceled checks, daily timesheets, tax returns, property lists, postoperative x-rays, photos of knotted string, thousands of pages of testimony, of voices droning in hearing rooms in old courthouse buildings, an incredible haul of human utterance. It lies so flat on the page, hangs so still in the lazy air, lost to syntax and other arrangement, that it resembles a kind of mind-spatter, a poetry of lives muddied and dripping in language.
Branch doesn’t know how to approach this kind of data. … It is vital to his sense of responsible obsession that everything in his room warrants careful study. Everything belongs, everything adheres, the mutter of obscure witnesses, the photos of illegible documents and odd sad personal debris, things gathered up at a dying—old shoes, pajama tops, letters from Russia. It is all one thing, a ruined city of trivia where people feel real pain. This is the Joycean Book of America, remember—the novel in which nothing is left out.
Branch has long since forgiven the Warren Report for its failures. It is too valuable a document of human heartbreak and muddle to be scorned or dismissed. The twenty-six volumes haunt him. Men and women surface in FBI memos, are tracked for several pages, then disappear—waitresses, prostitutes, mind readers, motel managers, owners of rifle ranges. Their stories hang in time, spare, perfect in their way, unfinished.
Photographs. Many are overexposed, light-blasted, with a faded quality beyond their age, suggesting things barely glimpsed despite the simple nature of the objects and the spare captions. ... But Branch feels there is a loneliness, a strange desolation trapped here. Why do these photographs have a power to disturb him, make him sad? Flat, pale, washed in time, suspended outside the particularized gist of this or that era, arguing nothing, clarifying nothing, lonely. Can a photograph be lonely?
This sadness has him fixed to his chair, staring. He feels the souls of empty places, finds himself returning again and again to the pictures of the second-floor lunchroom in the Texas School Book Depository. Rooms, garages, streets were emptied out for the making of official pictures. Empty forever now, stuck in some picture limbo. He feels the souls of those who were there and left. He feels sadness in objects, in warehouse cartons and blood-soaked clothes. He breathes in loneliness. He feels the dead in his room.
—
It was his goodbye to Russia. It signified the official end of a major era in his life. It validated the experience, as the writing of any history brings a persuasion and form to events.
Even as he printed the words, he imagined people reading them, people moved by his loneliness and disappointment, even by his wretched spelling, the childish mess of composition. Let them see the struggle and humiliation, the effort he had to exert to write a simple sentence. The pages were crowded, smudged, urgent, a true picture of his state of mind, of his rage and frustration, knowing a thing but not able to record it properly.
Always the pain, the chaos of composition. He could not find order in the field of little symbols. They were in the hazy distance. He could not clearly see the picture that is called a word. A word is also a picture of a word. He saw spaces, incomplete features, and tried to guess at the rest.
He made wild tries at phonetic spelling. But the language tricked him with its inconsistencies. He watched sentences deteriorate, powerless to make them right. The nature of things was to be elusive. Things slipped through his perceptions. He could not get a grip on the runaway world.
Limits everywhere. In every direction he came up against his own incompleteness. Cramped, fumbling, deficient. He knew things. It wasn’t that he didn’t know.
Even in the rush of filling these pages, he was careful to leave out certain things that could be used in legal argument against his return to the U.S. Yes, the diary was self-serving to a degree but still the basic truth, he believed. The panic was real, the voice of disappointment and loss.
He knew there were discrepancies, messed-up dates. No one could expect him to get the dates right after all this time, no one cared about the dates, no one is reading this for names and dates and spellings.
Let them see the struggle.
He believed religiously that his life would turn in such a way that people would one day study the Historic Diary for clues to the heart and mind of the man who wrote it.
—
Plots carry their own logic. There is a tendency of plots to move toward death. He believed that the idea of death is woven into the nature of every plot. A narrative plot no less than a conspiracy of armed men. The tighter the plot of a story, the more likely it will come to death. A plot in fiction, he believed, is the way we localize the force of the death outside the book, play it off, contain it. The ancients staged mock battles to parallel the tempests in nature and reduce their fear of gods who warred across the sky. He worried about the deathward logic of his plot. He’d already made it clear that he wanted the shooters to hit a Secret Service man, wound him superficially. But it wasn’t a misdirected round, an accidental killing, that made him afraid. There was something more insidious. He had a foreboding that the plot would move to a limit, develop a logical end.
—
He thought the only end to isolation was to reach the point where he was no longer separated from the true struggles that went on around him. The name we give this point is history.
—
“It’s the job of an intelligence service to resolve a nation’s obsessions. Cuba is a fixed idea. It is prickly in a way Russia is not. More unresolved. More damaging to the psyche. And this is our job, to remove the psychic threat, to learn so much about Castro, decipher his intentions, undermine his institutions to such a degree that he loses the power to shape the way we think, to shape the way we sleep at night.”
—
It was remarkable how often he talked to her about these things. The Agency was the one subject in his life that could never be exhausted. Central Intelligence. Beryl saw it as the best organized church in the Christian world, a mission to collect and store everything that everyone has ever said and then reduce it to a microdot and call it God. She needed to live in small dusty rooms, layered safely in, out of the reach of dizzying things, of heat and light and strange spaces, and Larry needed the great sheltering nave of the Agency. He believed that nothing can be finally known that involves human motive and need. There is always another level, another secret, a way in which the heart breeds a deception so mysterious and complex it can only be taken for a deeper kind of truth.
—
He’d stopped commenting on this oddness of hers. She said the news clippings she sent to friends were a perfectly reasonable way to correspond. There were a thousand things to clip and they all said something about the way she felt. He watched her read and cut. She wore half-glasses and worked the scissors grimly. She believed these were personal forms of expression. She believed no message she could send a friend was more intimate and telling than a story in the paper … Because these are the things that tell us how we live.
—
In the Old Senate Caucus Room they asked him to name the members of the Real Control Apparatus. This is like naming particles in the air, naming molecules or cells. The Apparatus is precisely what we can’t see or name. We can’t measure it, gentlemen, or take its photograph. It is the mystery we can’t get hold of, the plot we can’t uncover. This doesn’t mean there are no plotters. They are elected officials of our government, Cabinet members, philanthropists, men who know each other by secret signs, who work in the shadows to control our lives.
—
On his fourth day with Castro he shot a government scout, aiming through a telescopic sight. It was uncanny. You press a button and a man drops dead a hundred meters away. It seemed hollow and remote, falsifying everything. It was a trick of the lenses. The man is an accurate picture. Then he is upside down. Then he is right side up. You shoot at a series of images conveyed to you through a metal tube. The force of a death should be enormous but how can you know what kind of man you’ve killed or who was the braver and stronger if you have to peer through layers of glass that deliver the image but obscure the meaning of the act? War has a conscience or it’s ordinary murder.
—
The Curator sends the results of ballistics tests carried out on human skulls and goat carcasses, on blocks of gelatin mixed with horsemeat. There are photographs of skulls with the right cranial portion blown away. There are bullet-shattered goat heads in close-up. Branch studies a picture of a gelatin-tissue model “dressed” like the President. It is pure modernist sculpture, a block of gelatin layered in suit and shirt material with a strip of undershirt showing, bullet-smoked. There are documents concerning exit velocities. There is a picture of a human skull filled with gelatin and covered with goatskin to simulate a scalp.
—
He sends an actual warped bullet that has been fired for test purposes through the wrist of a seated cadaver. We are on another level here, Branch thinks. Beyond documents now. They want me to touch and smell.
—
The Oswald shadings, the multiple images, the split perceptions—eye color, weapons caliber—these seem a foreboding of what is to come. The endless fact-rubble of the investigations. How many shots, how many gunmen, how many directions? Powerful events breed their own network of inconsistencies. The simple facts elude authentication. How many wounds on the President’s body? What is the size and shape of the wounds? … [Branch] concedes everything. He questions everything, including the basic suppositions we make about our world of light and shadow, solid objects and ordinary sounds, and our ability to measure such things, to determine weight, mass and direction, to see things as they are, recall them clearly, be able to say what happened.
He takes refuge in his notes. The notes are becoming an end in themselves. Branch has decided it is premature to make a serious effort to turn these notes into coherent history. Maybe it will always be premature. Because the data keeps coming. Because new lives enter the record all the time. The past is changing as he writes.
—
“Signs that you exist. Evidence that Lee Oswald matches the cardboard cutout they’ve been shaping all along. You’re a quirk of history. You’re a coincidence. They devise a plan, you fit it perfectly. They lose you, here you are. There’s a pattern in things. Something in us has an effect on independent events. We make things happen. The conscious mind gives one side only. We’re deeper than that. We extend into time. Some of us can almost predict the time and place and nature of our own death. We know it on some deeper plane.”
—
“Think of two parallel lines,” he said. “One is the life of Lee H. Oswald. One is the conspiracy to kill the President. What bridges the space between them? What makes a connection inevitable? There is a third line. It comes out of dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self. It’s not generated by cause and effect like the other two lines. It’s a line that cuts across causality, cuts across time. It has no history that we can recognize or understand. But it forces a connection. It puts a man on the path of his destiny.”
—
The Agency forgives. There wasn’t a man in the upper ranks of the four directorates who didn’t understand the perils of clandestine work. They would be pleased by his willingness to cooperate. What’s more, they would admire the complexity of his plan, incomplete as it was. It had art and memory. It had a sense of responsibility, of moral force. And it was a picture in the world of their own guilty wishes. He was never more surely an Agency man than in the first breathless days of dreaming up this plot.
—
To Nicholas Branch, more frequently of late, “Lee H. Oswald” seems a technical diagram, part of some exercise in the secret manipulation of history.
—
Street by street the crowd began to understand why it was here. The message jumped the open space from one press of bodies to the next. A contagion had brought them here, some mystery of common impulse, hundreds of thousands come from so many histories and systems of being, come from some experience of the night before, a convergence of dreams, to stand together shouting as the Lincoln passed. … They were here to surround the brittle body of one man and claim his smile, receive some token of the bounty of his soul.
—
The media crowds collected and rocked in the corridors. They were waiting for the prisoner to come down to the interrogation room here on the third floor of the Police and Courts Building. TV cameras sat on dollies and there were cables slung over windowsills, trailing through the offices of deputy chiefs. Nobody checked credentials. Reporters took over the phones and pushed into toilets after police officials. Total unknowns walked the halls, defendants from other parts of the building, witnesses to other crimes, tourists, muttering men, drunks in torn shirts. It was a roughhouse, a confoundment. Every rumor flew. Disk jockeys arrived to fill in, blinking, flinching, wary. A reporter wrote notes on a pad he balanced on the back of the chief of police.
Hours going by. Blank faces arrayed against corridor walls. Men crouched near the elevators waiting. They sensed the incompleteness out there, gaps, spaces, vacant seats, lobbies emptied out, disconnections, dark cities, stopped lives. People were lonely for news. Only news could make them whole again, restore sensation. Three hundred reporters in a compact space, all pushing to extract a word. A word is a magic wish. A word from anyone. With a word they could begin to grid the world, make an instant surface that people can see and touch together.
—
Whenever they took him down, he heard his name on the radios and TVs. Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounded extremely strange. He didn’t recognize himself in the full intonation of the name. The only time he used his middle name was to write it on a form that had a space for that purpose. No one called him by that name. Now it was everywhere. He heard it coming from the walls. Reporters called it out. Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounded odd and dumb and made up. They were talking about somebody else.
—
They took him back to the cell. He stripped to his underwear and sat on the bunk, thinking, feeling the noise of the assembly room still resonating in his body. A cell is the basic state, the crude truth of the world.
He could play it either way, depending on what they could prove or couldn’t prove. He wasn’t on the sixth floor at all. He was in the lunchroom eating lunch. The victim of a total frame. They’d been rigging the thing for years, watching him, using him, creating a chain of evidence with the innocent facts of his life. Or he could say he was only partly guilty, set up to take the blame for the real conspirators. Okay, he fired some shots from the window. But he didn’t kill anyone. He never meant to fire a fatal shot. It was never his intention to cause an actual fatality. He was only trying to make a political point. Other people were responsible for the actual killing. They fixed it so he would seem the lone gunman. They superimposed his head on someone else’s body. Forged his name on documents. Made him a dupe of history. He would name every name if he had to.
—
Lee Harvey Oswald was awake in his cell. It was beginning to occur to him that he’d found his life’s work. After the crime comes the reconstruction. He will have motives to analyze, the whole rich question of truth and guilt. Time to reflect, time to turn this thing in his mind. Here is a crime that clearly yields material for deep interpretation. He will be able to bend the light of that heightened moment, shadows fixed on the lawn, the limousine shimmering and still. Time to grow in self-knowledge, to explore the meaning of what he’s done. He will vary the act a hundred ways, speed it up and slow it down, shift emphasis, find shadings, see his whole life change.
This was the true beginning.
They will, give him writing paper and books. He will fill his cell with books about the case. He will have time to educate himself in criminal law, ballistics, acoustics, photography. Whatever pertains to the case he will examine and consume. People will come to see him, the lawyers first, then psychologists, historians, biographers. His life had a single clear subject now, called Lee Harvey Oswald.
He and Kennedy were partners. The figure of the gunman in the window was inextricable from the victim and his history. This sustained Oswald in his cell. It gave him what he needed to live.
—
If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It’s the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.
But maybe not. Nicholas Branch thinks he knows better. He has learned enough about the days and months preceding November 22, and enough about the twenty-second itself, to reach a determination that the conspiracy against the President was a rambling affair that succeeded in the short term due mainly to chance. Deft men and fools, ambivalence and fixed will and what the weather was like.
The stuff keeps coming. The Curator sends FBI surveillance logs. He sends a thirty-five-hour film chronology of unedited network footage shot during the weekend of November 22. He sends a computer-enhanced version of the Zapruder film, the 8mm home movie made by a dress manufacturer who stood on a concrete abutment above Elm Street as the shots were fired. Experts have scrutinized every murky nuance of the Zapruder film. It is the basic timing device of the assassination and a major emblem of uncertainty and chaos. There is the powerful moment of death, the surrounding blurs, patches and shadows.
(Branch’s analysis of the film and other evidence leads him to believe the first shot came much sooner than most theories would allow, probably at Zapruder frame 186. Governor Connally was hit two point six seconds later, at Zapruder 234. The shot that killed the President, crushingly, came four point three seconds after that. Even though he has reached firm conclusions in this area, Branch will study the computerized version of Zapruder. He is in too deep to stop now.)
The Curator sends a special FBI report that includes detailed descriptions of the dreams of eyewitnesses following the assassination of Kennedy and the murder of Oswald.
There are worrisome omissions, occasional gaps in the record. Of course Branch understands that the Agency is a closed system. He knows they will not reveal what they’ve learned to other agencies, much less the public. This is why the history he has contracted to write is a secret one, meant for CIA’s own closed collection. But why are they withholding material from him as well? There’s something they aren’t telling him. The Curator delays, lately, in filling certain requests for information, seems to ignore other requests completely. What are they holding back? How much more is there? Branch wonders if there is some limit inherent in the yielding of information gathered in secret. They can’t give it all away, even to one of their own, someone pledged to confidentiality. Before his retirement, Branch analyzed intelligence, sought patterns in random scads of data. He believed secrets were childish things. He was not generally impressed by the accomplishments of men in the clandestine service, the spy handlers, the covert-action staff. He thought they’d built a vast theology, a formal coded body of knowledge that was basically play material, secret-keeping, one of the keener pleasures and conflicts of childhood. Now he wonders if the Agency is protecting something very much like its identity—protecting its own truth, its theology of secrets.
The Curator begins to send fiction, twenty-five years of novels and plays about the assassination. He sends feature films and documentaries. He sends transcripts of panel discussions and radio debates. Branch has no choice but to study this material. There are important things he has yet to learn. There are lives he must examine. It is essential to master the data.
—
He believes people are distorting his words even as he speaks them. There is a process that takes place between the saying of a word and when they pretend to hear it correctly but actually change it to mean what they want.
—
He is miscast, or cast as someone else, as Oswald. They are part of the same crime now. They are in it together and forever and together.
—
The camera doesn’t catch all of it. There seem to be missing frames, lost levels of information. Brief and simple as the shooting is, it is too much to take in, too mingled in jumped-up energies.
—
There was something in Oswald’s face, a glance at the camera before he was shot, that put him here in the audience, among the rest of us, sleepless in our homes—a glance, a way of telling us that he knows who we are and how we feel, that he has brought our perceptions and interpretations into his sense of the crime. Something in the look, some sly intelligence, exceedingly brief but far-reaching, a connection all but bleached away by glare, tells us that he is outside the moment, watching with the rest of us.

Hello, new here. I recently bought Fallout 4 as well as its DLC's and made the decision to play the game with mods as I wasn't pleased with Fallout 4's perks and power armor, so I decided to download mods in attempt to replicate Fallout New Vegas. I got pretty far into the game progressing up to the point that the Brotherhood of Steel come to the Commonwealth on the Prydweyn, and I thought I should complete Far Harbour prior to completing the game. Everything was running smoothly until I teamed up with Old Longfellow and engaged my first group of enemies. My game just suddenly crashed, I thought it was my mods so I decided to do a clean save on Far harbor and slowly load my mods in 5 at a time. But no matter the order it just keep crashing, another issue is that I have been using Humble Perks and Be Exceptional the entire time so I would like to avoid having to delete my current character.
My mods (All are up to date as I check daily)
Address Library,
Automatically Lowered Weapons,
Be Exceptional- Skills and Perks,
Bhaals better sorting 7.01,
Caliber Complex V3,
Classic Holstered weapons,
Clock Widget,
Companion infinite ammo and unbreakable Power Armor
Enchanced Lights and FX
Fallout 4 Particle Patch
F4SE
Gloomy Glass
Hellcat Power Armor + Fix
Hot Diggity Redux
HUD Framework
Humble Perks Pack
Longer power lines
Machineguns rebirth
Militarised minute men
Mod Configuration menu
Mogorama's Power Mods
More Power armor mods
More smart Compaions mod
Pip=boy flashlight Power Armor Animation changes
Power Armor Impact effects
Prime Hi tech Power Armor Sound Rework
Prime Plus Hydraulica
Psycho LUT
Quieter Settlements
Robco Patcher
Service Rifle
Start Me Up
Vanilla Weapon replacer Service rifle
Gunner outfits
and We are the Minutemen.

i really want to like this game but i have a few major concerns.. this was also shared in the survey which if you haven't already you should fill out here: https://first.nexon.com/thinkedirect/public/survey/BCz6rXQnbe
Gameplay:
i think right now the moment to moment gameplay could use a few adjustments but for the most part its really well done. i had a great time testing all the descendants and i feel the gunplay feels great.
The single biggest issue i have with the game right now is grind time relative to reward. during the beta i decided to try farming a few things to test out how long it would take. while most things are simply unavailable in the beta i quickly realized that having 2 levels of RNG with all 4 parts of an object split out feels bad and artificially inflates grind time. if you have to grind for boxes that have a 20% chance to drop THEN grind opening those boxes with only a 15% chance to get what youre after that feels way worse than if you just had a 15 or even 10% chance to obtain the item from 1 piece of content.
on top of this id much rather see multiple parts of an item all come from the same piece of content so that even if you end up getting duplicate parts you have a much better chance of getting something you actually want when farming, and can go "i want weapon X so i just need to farm content Y" instead of needing to do X Y Z and A for an abysmal chance to get just 1 part of one item.
The balance of Time to acquisition is extremely important for the health of this kind of game. you should feasibly be able to get a new descendant over a weekend or two and a new weapon in a day or less. the grind keeps people playing but if it doesn't reward you for your time often enough it becomes a really boring grind and will drive people to quit the game entirely.
Descendants:
they all feel unique and i had a great time playing most of them. they could use a bit of polish though and heres a couple notes i had:
Kyle:
His 2nd ability the shield should block enemies from passing through it. since his playstyle is typically aggressive and in the fray ive noticed enemies will often walk through the barrier to shoot at team mates and melee enemies ignore it completely. preventing enemies from passing through it would make it a lot more fun to use without making it too much more powerful
his 4th ability often clips the ceiling and detonates causing you to waste all your built magnetic charge. not a huge deal but it would be nice if it could detect whats above you and adjust how high you fly accordingly.
Jayber:
could get better with higher levels and more mods but right now his turrets feel very underwhelming compared to other descendants abilities especially the assault turret.
Viessa:
im sure range mods increase the range of her 1st ability but IMO the range should be much longer with range mods mainly only affecting the size of its AOE.
Blair:
his 1st could use just a bit more starting size
Bunny:
Right now bunny is pretty OP and kinda braindead to play. my suggestion to fix this is to reduce the drain of her 2, but increase the drain on her 1 and 3.
This would make her speed more reliable and let her run for longer but require her to be more tactical with her other abilities.
this would be a nerf but make her more fun to play with more speed for longer but require her to actively pick her targets to zip in and nuke rather than just nuking maps as a vacuum of death
Grappling hook:
right now it feels like you lose all momentum the moment you touch the ground. i would suggest adding a sort of "slide" to the end of a grapple to maintain some momentum as right now it feels really sticky like you always land in a glue trap.
other than that it feels good to use and i love that it can be customized some with modules
Monetization:
overall i dont mind the monetization with a few exceptions listed below
Battle pass:
the battle pass is kind of underwhelming with too much filler. the "battle coin" system is also very concerning to me. if i purchase a battle pass i should be able to get everything in said pass without having to worry about some weird battle pass currency especially because you can buy battle coins and they are lost at the end of the season.
you should also be able to progress a battle pass you've purchased after the end of a season. losing the chance to acquire things you've paid for is predatory and frankly shouldn't even be legal.
Paints:
i actually like the random element of paints and dont mind them being locked to a specific thing you use them on. HOWEVER if youre going to make it random, consumable and paid it needs to be way easier to get way more paint. assuming an exchange rate of 100 caliber per $1 USD 5 paints cost $3. this means if i want 15 RANDOM, one time use consumable colors that will cost me around 10$. this is way too much money for too little.
for comparison in warframe you can acquire an entire color palette with 90 infinitely reusable colors for around $6 USD with no random element meaning you can get exactly the colors you want. there are also numerous free color palettes in game and lots of ways to acquire the paid ones with some grinding. ive happily shelled out a good chunk of change for colors in warframe and wouldn't touch the current system in TFD with a 10 foot pole.
the paint per $ ratio needs to be AT BARE MINIMUM doubled to 10 paints per 300 caliber and paint materials should be farmable in game at a reasonably attainable rate.
Bag space:
i dont mind having to pay for bag space upgrades but the current system feels horrible. first of all the "Consumable" (should be renamed material) storage should not have a limit at all. end of story, period. remove this limit.
the default amount of equipment slots is too low and the price for more slots is too high. assuming the previous conversion rate 15 slots costs roughly 4$ and you will absolutely need to spend at least 20$ to have an even remotely comfortable amount of equipment slots. increase the default slots and or reduce the price of slots. right now it feels really bad and predatory forcing you to stop and scrap stuff multiple times per mission, which in multiplayer often means being left behind or losing stuff because you took too long.
Overall im still hesitantly optimistic for the game. the core gameplay is really fun but this game is very much going to live or die based on how fair the monetization systems are and how reasonable the grind for things is. right now the monetization seams kind of scummy and the grind seams like its going to be too unrewarding for the game to succeed long term.

Okay, I am honeslty curious if a pumping of a token through the rise of a community of this caliber has happened in the past? Of course there is $DOGE and such that was pumped by Elon and many members, but has any coin progressed at this rate of growth in the past and how did it end up? $ZACK

pistols in question being the Model 39 and Ruger P89, though Ruger could also rerelease the P90 in .45 caliber.
I do believe we've seen there's a market for retro handguns, and yes while I know you can pick up a secondhand one of these relatively cheap having a modern production one or at the very least knowing these companies are at least making new parts for them would be nice.
as well I could see them doing a special line of retro pistols with modern additions. Like Polymer frames with rails, optic cuts, threaded barrels, even new calibers like maybe a Ruger P90 in 10mm.
Granted I am biased because I like hammer fired pistols and it seems like all these companies can come up with anymore is a striker fired Glock clone.

My neck pain is becoming disabling... I'm going to post one of my CT scans of my neck ...please give me some advice on dealing with this ... I am also dealing with 2 herniated discs in lower lumbar
FINDINGS: Loss of the normal cervical lordosis. Vertebral body heights and alignment are maintained. Marrow signal is within normal limits. Cord is normal in caliber and signal intensity. There are spondylotic changes in the cervical spine with disc height loss, disc spur complexes and facet and uncovertebral joint arthropathy. Question background of mild congenital spinal canal stenosis. C2-C3: No significant spinal canal stenosis or foraminal narrowing. C3-C4: Disc protrusion indents the thecal sac. Mild degenerative and congenital spinal canal stenosis. Facet and uncovertebral joint arthropathy with mild-to-moderate right and mild left foraminal narrowing. This has progressed from 2020. C4-C5: Disc protrusion indents the thecal sac and causes mild ventral cord deformity. There is mild spinal canal stenosis. Facet and uncovertebral joint arthropathy with mild bilateral foraminal narrowing. C5-C6: Disc osteophyte complex, facet and uncovertebral joint arthropathy with mild-to-moderate right and mild left foraminal narrowing. C6-C7: Disc osteophyte complex compresses the thecal sac. Moderate spinal canal stenosis. Facet and uncovertebral joint arthropathy with mild left greater than right foraminal narrowing. C7-T1: No significant spinal canal stenosis or foraminal narrowing.
Any advice is appreciated i am suffering so bad only thing that helps is oral steroids

Name: U.S.E.C [REDACTED] Callsign: Reaper Location: Hideout Time: 2200 Hours
Well, these past few days have been interesting, to say the least. Aside from putting myself back together, I've been making this old bunker more like home. I finally found a spark plug and got the generator running, still no lights but I have plenty of candles. I took the time to go scrounging around and was fortunate enough to find some things in an abandoned house not too far away. I set myself up with a small cooking station, mattress, and med station. I got a little adventuress and looted an old gun shop, it took me hours to clean out all of the junk and rubble that was piled up before I could get myself my own shooting range set up. During that little excursion, I managed to find some tools to work on my own gear so I could modify my weapons.
There were a few other things that I got into, blowing a hole in the wall to install a better door as well as getting a toilet so I don't have to go shit outside, it gets cold as fuck at night. Once I had finished up my own shit, I went looking for some work. Skier decided he wanted me to find him some armor and a gun for his guys because apparently, he was too cheap to go buy it. The asshole also wanted me to go kill P.M.C.s with a handgun for some fucking reason. Who the fuck asks someone to do that? Either way, I got it done while I was taking care of some shit for this new chick who rolled into town. She calls herself "Lotus" and I can't say I care too much for her at the moment, she came to make money off of this conflict. Apparently, the others I've been working with are happy with my work and referred me to her. As a way to prove myself, she told me to go drop bodies across the region. So I went and did it, I didn't earn the nickname Reaper from my team for nothing.
It almost feels like this place won't let me forget where I came from, or at least these people won't. Prapor wanted some fucking wine from the business center while Lotus sent me to go mark some fuel tanker. Once that was squared away, I met up with Mechanic so I could have him patch up my plates and he said he wanted to introduce me to a friend of his. The guy is a hunter called "Jaeger", how original, who apparently lives out in The Priozersky Natural Reserve. Instead of casually introducing us, he sent me out to grab a note from the guys' camp, he told me a plane went down near it as the only clue as to where I needed to look. I decided I would change things up with my gear and pulled out a Remington 700 that I had brought with me. Pulled out a good old M45A1 I had found and upgraded a bit, feels amazing in the hand. Weaving my way through a minefield I entered the reserve from the south and made my way to the camp I was supposed to be stationed at. Before the collapse, Prapor had sent some guys through the area and they didn't arrive at their destination. I had a pretty good idea as to why when he told me about the team of U.S.E.Cs I was supposed to join having a camp in the area. I didn't think it was a good idea to tell him that I was supposed to be stationed there.
After a long trek, I found the camp, and it looked like the guys had left in a hurry. There was a ton of gear left behind as well as their vehicles. To a couple of poor Scavs' misfortune, they ran into me, needless to say my pistol tasted blood. The camp had one hell of an overlook on the main road and I caught sight of the convoy. Upon quick inspection, it was clear that the guys from the camp did their job well. It was a classic ambush and they executed it with perfection. Moving on from there, I headed toward Jaeger's camp, making a quick stop to remove the head of some sniper overlooking what seemed to be a sawmill. I scouted the area with my rifle for a minute before pushing on. I had to introduce some locals to the M45 before I could get the note I was told to find. Getting curious, I looked over what seemed to be some sort of camp by an old R.U.A.F roadblock that had a T-90 by it, would be kind of cool to get my hands on a working one.
While looking over this little camp, I spotted a lone guy wandering outside of it. After some very, very, bad shooting, I managed to kill him. While I made my way over, I heard the bark of a high-caliber rifle and the familiar crack of lead going past me. Pushing across the field, I dove into cover at the exterior wall of the camp. Upon entering, the camp looked to be some sort of medical center the military had been using. Moving slowly through it, I heard the shooter moving just outside what looked like the main entrance. I hammered a few rounds at the fucker and backed off to put another magazine in. When I didn't hear anything, I peeked out again, finding him with a few new holes in his face. After the adrenaline wore off and I knew I was alone, I looked around and found a few bodies. Two of them were B.E.A.R.s while the other two were Scavs, which made me a little worried. One of them was carrying a vector, another an RSASS, and the guy I killed had an M1A. All of them had armor-piercing ammunition and grenades, explaining how they took out trained personnel.
Grabbing what I could, I took off and exfiltrated from the area. I was getting nervous from the constant and distinct bark of an SVD. After reporting in to all of my interested parties, I took my new assignments and headed back here to my hole in the ground. Tomorrow I'll go speak with Jaeger and see what I can't get from him. I can't say I like it, but it's starting to feel normal going out and getting my ass shot at to do jobs for these people. God only knows how long until I'll be able to get out of this place, or if I'll even survive in this hell hole. All I can do now is keep my head up and keep pushing because this place will run you over if you let it. God I miss my team and family, when I get out of here, I'm finding the fuckers who run Terra Group and I'm going to kill them, every fucking last one of them.
Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/SPTarkov/comments/1cwy71l/the_first_time_always_hurts/

Starfield Screenplay and Feedback
Hi everyone! I represent an up and coming actowriter who has written a fan-based interpretation pilot episode based on the acclaimed video game from Bethesda, Starfield. It delves into a more dramatic take of the beloved video game and is what we believe the beginning of something special. We are posting this in hopes of gaining a little traction and seeing how fans would react to a show of this caliber while also trying to gain both the attention and possible collaboration of Bethesda themselves. We have also entered the script into multiple competitions to gain feedback from industry professionals and already have some to share.
See below both the script and the first of the feedback. We would love to hear from all of you. We will also make our own thread so you can stay up to date on all the progress!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y_CsvJlMjZt4Uglr-vBpSyqv9CBjFdaf/view?usp=drivesdk
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Fr3dCaZG9IskTu7pTgpP3keaT92tC-view?usp=drivesdk

Hi everyone! I represent an up and coming actowriter who has written a fan-based interpretation pilot episode based on the acclaimed video game from Bethesda, Starfield. It delves into a more dramatic take of the beloved video game and is what we believe the beginning of something special. We are posting this in hopes of gaining a little traction and seeing how fans would react to a show of this caliber while also trying to gain both the attention and possible collaboration of Bethesda themselves. We have also entered the script into multiple competitions to gain feedback from industry professionals and already have some to share.
See below both the script and the first of the feedback. We would love to hear from all of you. We will also make our own thread so you can stay up to date on all the progress!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y_CsvJlMjZt4Uglr-vBpSyqv9CBjFdaf/view?usp=drivesdk
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Fr3dCaZG9IskTu7pTgpP3keaT92tC-view?usp=drivesdk

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I had wanted to play this game (technically a mod, but it feels like so much more) for a super long time but only had a Mac and PS5 so didn’t get the chance. After getting a Steam Deck last year I didn’t immediately remember but one day it just hit me that I could now play this, and I was so pumped to basically have a whole new Portal game to play.
I played on Advanced mode (the OG difficulty before user complaints led to a Story mode patch) and it was certainly challenging in spots. Some puzzles even took me a couple days—not full days of playing but moments where I wasn’t making any progress so I just put it down for a bit and then a day or two later would be lying in bed trying to fall asleep and the solution would just jump out at me. This was such a uniquely satisfying feeling and it happened multiple times throughout this playthrough.
I absolutely adore both Portal games but when I first finished them I was really craving some sort of “Expert” or “Hard” mode to really put all the concepts I’d learned to the test. And while the Advanced Chambers in Portal 1 did satisfy this somewhat, they still felt like standalone puzzle rooms as opposed to a cohesive experience with the narrative continuity and stellar pacing that makes Portal so special. So this mod was an absolute dream come true for me.
So far I’ve been effusive with praise, so I feel I should at least mention that it’s not perfect. The humor, writing, and VO work, for example—while quite impressive for such a small team of volunteers on what is essentially a fan-made passion project—is definitely not of the same caliber as the main games. But that’s a pretty high bar to clear. There were very few moments where it got anything more than a faint chuckle out of me, but honestly the top-notch gameplay, level design and puzzles mostly outweighed this for me.
Overall I had such a blast with this game and would highly recommend it to those who finished the mainline games and want to be pushed much further in their portal-thinking skills. The puzzles and their (sometimes) multiple solutions were wildly inventive and left me feeling immensely satisfied when it was all over.
But now I wanna open it up to you guys. How did you feel about the mod and did you play on Advanced mode or Story mode? And if you haven’t played it yet, whats kept you from checking it out? Dissenting opinions are totally welcomed!