By John Jefferson
People often asked me what caliber pistol they should buy. The short answer that wouldn’t get me in trouble was the well-worn dodge – “It depends.”
I imagine that’s not what you were hoping to read. But it does depend on what you expect the firearm to do and what level of experience you have had. One comment I have often heard is, “I have this old .22 pistol, but I want something more powerful that I can depend upon.”
That takes me back to my stint working for a South Texas District Attorney’s office near the border. We only had one murder trial while I was there. Guess what the murder weapon was? It was a .22 caliber rifle. The bullet pierced the woman’s aorta, and she bled to death.
We had numerous cases, though, where someone was shot, usually late at night, and usually in or near a bar. The crime scenes might explain why none of them were fatal. Hollywood may show fancy shooting taking place in a saloon after several drinks, but alcohol seldom ,if ever, improves handgun marksmanship! Just the opposite. And often, the shootings we prosecuted were performed with the same make, model, and caliber, pistol.
The term “Saturday Night Special” had already been around for years. Major manufacturers made quality snub-nosed revolvers. But sometime around the late 1950s, a cheaply made .22 caliber revolver arrived from the Rohm Gun Company in Germany. Small, lightweight, and cheap, they quickly took over the “Saturday Night Special” title. Its official name was the RG 10. Importation was banned by the 1968 Gun Control Act. Later, a U.S. subsidiary of Rohm went out of business. But the little pistols were already widely circulated.
A few months ago, there was a daylight home invasion and robbery nearby while someone slept there. Our neighborhood was highly alarmed. In discussing it with a neighbor, she told me she had two pistols. One was a .22 and the other a .45. The .45 seemed a little much for a petite lady, but she seemed confident with it. Then, she told me something I had never heard of. She said the .22 was “leased” instead of being sold. She still had the lease.
I asked if I could see it. She gladly agreed. The 1964 lease for 99 years was for an RG 10. No price was stated, but by memory and research, those pistols sold for around $10 in the ‘60s. The lease was on a printed form with the seller’s store name atop it and at the bottom, indicating that leases were common.
No one I contacted, including a dealer, had ever heard of that. One suggested it might have involved a security guard with limited funds. But for a $10 gun?
Quality was also a question. Some liked them; some thought they were inferior. The one I shot at least kept all holes in the target, but scattered. Answering the question from the first paragraph, I wouldn’t recommend the RG 10.
JJ
