I hate people who treat them like some toys and fantasize about them. That makes me think they are in some sort of death cult. That they found socially acceptable way to love violence.
I would still get one for safety but it is a tool made for specifically one thing. To pierce the skin and rip through the inner organs of a person.
They can serve a good purpose but they are fundamentally grim tools of pain and suffering. They shouldn’t be celebrated and glorified in their own right, that is sick. They can be used to preserve something precious but at a price to pay.
Let me preface this with I’m very liberal so I’m not attacking anyone but I’m also a physics nerd so…
Anyway, is a .22LR a small caliber? Because the difference between a .22LR (5.66mm) and the typical shell in an AR15 (5.7mm) is only 0.04mm, about the size a small human hair. A better distinction is muzzle energy which is a function of mass of the projectile and velocity of the projectile. I mean a typical paintball is bigger the a 50BMG. It just doesn’t weigh very much or go very fast. So caliber is a terrible measure for your purposes.
There is a distinct difference in terms of sport shooting which I was referencing to - with Olympic shooting .22 lfb is the reference for “small caliber shooting”. Everything above that, including other kinds of .22 are often seen as larger calibre. Therefore I was intentionally referencing the sport context.
While a .22 lfb surely can absolutely kill and has done so, nevertheless the chances of doing so are far smaller compared to 9mm, 5.56,etc.
Everything Olympic related is air guns as far as I know. But I’ve even seen 50cal air rifles. Again these are going to be much much slower.