My memory is hazy, but I’m pretty sure that when I was a preadolescent or younger (late-'60s/early-'70s) I fired real .22 ammo (shorts, not longs or LR) at shooting galleries. ISTR going to a carnival while visiting relatives in Petaluma, CA and shooting .22 there; and I wonder if I shot .22 in Adventureland at Disneyland.
Sometime in the '70s (I don’t know when, as I didn’t go to a lot of carnivals) shooting galleries switched to pneumatic guns firing (I suppose) reusable ball bearings, and last time I saw a shooting gallery (several years ago) it was all electronic.
I recall full-auto BB galleries coming along later. I don’t think I saw one myself until the mid-'70s. (The game was to shoot out every bit of a red star on a card.) The .22s I remember were semi-automatic and had chains on them so that they could not be pointed outside of the shooting area. I remember one attendant (and this does have a Disneyland vibe to it) had a tube full of ammo that he would tip into the tubular magazine on the rifle, then insert the magazine follower tube.
I do remember that in the movie the Murder Man (1935) with Spencer Tracy it was mentioned that live ammo shooting galleries were not a strange sight even in cities.
My memory is a little hazy, but I seem to recall still being able to plink away with the .22 gallery shorts at the shooting galleries at the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz (CA) in the late 60s. Certainly still in the mid-60s. I believe we used semi-autos, not pumps (because you had to be careful how you gripped the rifle so the ejected shell wouldn’t burn your arm).
Elitch Gardens in Denver had a .22cal gallery at least into the mid 70’s. My older brother worked there part of one summer. Ammuntion manufacturers used to make .22 gallery shorts, that were even lower power than regular .22 shorts.
The “Original” .22 “gallery” rounds were 22BB (Bulleted Breech) cap and 22CB (Conical Ball) cap rounds. They were designed for single-shot or revolvers.
Even shorter than a .22 short, they had no gunpowder charge at all, relying on the energy from the primer alone for propellant. Pretty sure they’re not available anymore, but they were supplanted by modern variants using the 22 short case, and thus able to operate in magazine-fed guns that the 22BB/CB would jam.
They don’t provide enough recoil to cycle semi-autos, so work best in single-shot/bolt-action/revolvers.
They’re good for some aspects of training, especially “muzzle flinch” IMO, and indoor plinking as they’re generally safe to use with a “bullet trap” designed for pellet guns.
Also good for pest control, of rats or similar. I used a revolver loaded with them when nightly hunting rats at my first job, working at a poultry farm when I was 16. Wouldn’t recommend them for anything larger than big farm rats, for the likes of possums or raccoons I carried a few high velocity hollow point long rifle rounds.
Important to remember that they’re still bullets, and thus dangerous.
For comparison, a quality 22 pellet gun may have a muzzle energy of 4 to 15 ft/lbs, but a 22 gallery round generally has around 30 ft/lbs. Not a lot, especially compared to a 22LR hunting round with 175ft/lbs or a 9mm FMJ with 350, but still worthy of caution.
Nitpick: Those should be spaces there, or at most hyphens, not slashes. 4 ft/lbs would be four feet divided by pounds, not 4 feet times pounds, as is intended.
I remember guns with a sort of lead stick that came out the back… every time you fired a shot, the stick would feed into the butt and some mechanism would cut a piece off, forming a sort of cylindrical pellet.
I assume the pellet was fired using air pressure or a mechanical firing pin or something.
Johnny L.A., the linked Remington ammo is the older 22 CB CAPS, the Winchesters are the more modern 22 Short version. You can get new factory loads from CCI for about $10 per 100 which is about 2.5 x the price of common 22 LR rounds.
Chronos yep, you’re right, my bad.
Did a bit of searching, it looks like a lot of the modern cartridges are labeled as caps, even when in the short or even long size brass, but there does seem to be new factory 22 caps available at about $25 per 100. Which is damn pricey for 22 ammo.
In case anyone is still interested, I have a few facts about the Disneyland Shooting Galleries. I worked there for 10 years by the way.
There have been 4 galleries at Disneyland, the first being the Main Street Shooting Gallery. This operated from 1955 to 1957. The guns shot real .22s, but I do not know if they were caps or shorts. The gallery was closed because it was not large enough to handle demand. The penny arcade was expanded in its place.
In 1957 the Frontier Shooitn’ Gallery was opened in the area in Frontierland that was the horse corral. This gallery used McGlashan air guns and fired .22 cal. Lead pellets. They were every bit as powerful as the original .22s but they could be loaded faster, and were a bit quieter. We loaded 21 pellets per round which in those days cost 25 cents. The gallery had to be repainted every night.
The Safari Shooting Gallery in Adventureland was the largest of its kind, and opened in June 1962. It was closed around 1980. During that time, it was variously known as the Big Game Safari Shooting Gallery and the Big Game Shooting Gallery.
Finally, there was the Davey Crocket shootin’ arcade in Frontierland, this used the “light beam" type of guns and was popular with kids that could not hold the full-sized air rifles at the shootin’ gallery.
