e-Postal with a Jennings J-22

The Jennings J-22 Semi-Auto Pistol

Here's my e-Postal match entry for the snub-nose class.
98/250 offhand, and 125/250 bench rest for
a total score of 222 out of 500

Accuracy is not a strong point for the J-22 Jennings. The bullets that made these holes were going sideways!

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Ah yes, the Jennings J-22. I guess it embodies all the things that define a saturday night special! It's small, and light, and unreliable. These features, of course, are offset by a total lack of accuracy!

An obvious choice to enter in the snub-nose class of the latest e-Postal handgun match. I don't even have to think up excuses, they're built in!

In spite of all of that, it's a fun little gun to shoot. The prices for these are very low, as .22 auto pistols go, and there's a lot of them around.

I was unable to get more that two or three rounds to fire without some sort of a failure. Failure to eject, failure to feed, failure to fire the round, every second or third shot something didn't work.

The accuracy is probably on a par with a blunderbuss, but not likely that it's any better than that. By looking at the targets, it was obvious that at ten yards the bullets were often tumbling end over end. Not conducive to accuracy! Sometimes, however, the shot went exactly as aimed, but often as much as six inches off, even from the bench rest. If you ever have to fire a Jennings for self-defense, I would recommend having the muzzle in direct contact with what you are shooting at!

With all these faults, why own one of these? Well, if you like doing your own gun work, I think this can be turned into a pretty nice little 22. These were cranked out rapidly to keep costs down, so most machined surfaces are a lot rougher than they should be. A few hours spent polishing and blue-printing one of these little guys could make quite a difference. I'm sure the trigger can be smoothed up considerably. Careful bending and tuning of the feed lips on the magazines can make huge differences in terms of feeding reliability.

OK, so you can get it to function reliably, what about the accuracy, or more correctly, the total lack of any?

I suspect that sometimes the bullet, instead of being spun by the rifling, is actually just getting a groove cut into it, and it's spinning (if at all) much slower than is needed to stabilize it in flight. Perhaps a lower velocity round might be the ticket. I think if you find the right ammo, it might not do too badly. Maybe some of those sub-sonic rounds? It should be worth a try.

If you feel like playing around with one of these little guys, go for it, and let me know how it works out.

Paraphrasing another blogger, it's probably not much of a back-up gun, but it's still better than a rolled up newspaper........