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Ammo Question.

simongirty
I know theres a rule of thumb about using ONLY the type of ammo the gun is made for but I have a question about using ammo in a rifle which it is not marked for. I have a Winchester model 190 and the marks on the barrel says its ".22 L, LR". I have seen other rifles like the Sears-Winchester model 121 which looks exactly like the Winchester 190 and the marks on it say you can shoot shorts through it. My brother has my Moms old Winchester 290 and its marked ".22 S,L, LR". Many people have told me the only difference between the 290 and the 190 is the furniture.I tried shooting shorts through the model 190 and it cycles them just fine. Is there any reason I should be worried about damaging the rifle? I also wanted to get some input on .410's that are marked 3".Its NOT marked 3" ONLY like some of the gun i have seen.Is it fine to shoot 2 3/4" shells in them or is there a shoulder in the barrel that could be boogered up if you shoot the 2 3/4" shells in a gun marked 3"? Thanks for any input.
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7 comments

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  • simongirty
    I was thinking of getting a nagant pistol. but i cant seem to find ammo. Who and how much. (plus is the nagant accurate at all.)
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  • wpage
    Its a controversial subject with rifles and not recomended. With shotguns you can go shorter.
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  • dbain99
    In regaurds to the .22, I could see a problem if you shot a lot of shorts through then switched back to longs with a dirty chamber, you may have a problem with extracting the longs. Other than that if your gun will cycle the shorts it sounds like you are good to go.
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  • simongirty
    Thanks for the feed back!
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  • andrewsw16
    It is a good GENERAL rule and one that is meant to keep you from blowing off your fingers or losing an eye because of firing too powerful a cartridge from a gun not designed for the pressure. But, there are some exceptions you can find with research. One of the most common examples, besides your .22 example, is the popular practice of shooting .38 Special cartridges in a revolver marked, ".357 Magnum". It gives you greater flexibility in ammo choice and the lighter recoil helps to prevent development of a flinch. There are two drawbacks, accuracy and cleaning. A small accuracy loss is caused by the longer distance the bullet has to free fly in the chamber before encountering barrel rifling. The cleaning problem is because all of that extra free space is now available for powder and lead deposits. The gun will continue to function fine as long as you keep using the shorter ammo. But, if you try to switch back to the longer ammo (.357 Magnum) before cleaning, you will almost certainly find it is difficult to fully insert the longer cartridge and definitely harder to extract the case after firing, due to the cartridge brass encountering the deposits left by the shorter cartridge. Usually, a few strokes with a bore brush, and you are back in action. Happy shooting.
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  • beantownshootah
    You're not going to hurt any normal .22LR gun by shooting .22 shorts through one, particularly in limited quantity. .22 shorts use the same caliber bullet, but run at lower operating pressures than .22LR.

    Obviously, .22 shorts probably aren't going to cycle a normal .22LR semiautomatic gun. Also many repeater guns (semi-auto or not) won't reliably feed .22 shorts, even manually cycling the action.

    You also may see some degradation in accuracy since the .22 short bullet will have to jump further to engage the rifling than a .22LR bullet

    At worst this practice will cause some carbon/dirt buildup in the chamber, and you may need to brush/scrub the chamber to subsequently run normal .22LR again. In theory this could etch your chamber or cause premature throat wear to your gun (and I suppose that's why this practice is controversial), but in practice, I doubt its a problem.

    As far as I know, its perfectly fine to run 2-3/4" shells through any similar gauge 3" shotgun.
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  • simongirty
    My main concern was damage to the semi-auto action. It seems to be cycling them fine. Conical balls don't run through it but regular short work the semi-auto action just fine.I have a pump Rossi model 62, which is the reproduction of the Winchester model 62 and its marked .22lr and thats all it will cycle. Shorts jam the pump action. I think most of the original Winchester 62's handled s,l,or lr unless they where designed as a gallery gun which only handles shorts.
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