Here in America, we giggle at the muzzle energy and defensive performance of the .25 Auto round. In the land once known as Great Britain, where gun control long ago went from the stupid to the ridiculous, her royal highness’s subjects would welcome something chambered in .25 as a game-changer for defensive purposes compared to what government edicts “allow” them.
Col. Cooper was no fan of .25 Auto, writing . . .
“Carry a .25 if it makes you feel good, but do not ever load it. If you load it you may shoot it. If you shoot it you may hit somebody, and if you hit somebody, and he finds out about it, he may be very angry with you.”
In Blighty, though, a new product — a .50 caliber CO2-powered revolver — has them all aflutter.
Theoretically, a .50 caliber air-powered handgun could be effectuve if it hurls a Minie-ball slug at 800 fps or better. That would indeed command some respect. However, the revolver being hailed by Andy’s Airgun Reviews as “short-range, hard-hitting tool intended for defense” isn’t even remotely in that ballpark.
According to Andy, the Umarex HDR-50 will (are you sitting down?) “batter your assailant with nearly 17 grains of .50 caliber rubber balls firing out at them at 350 feet per second.” That works out to a fearsome (cough) 5.2 foot-pounds of UK-legal energy.
In real-world terms, that’s about two to four times the ballistic performance of your average airsoft pistol. A thump that mighty could temporarily dissuade a naked attacker struck in an eye socket or the nutsack. However, for anyone wearing anything heavier than a paper hospital gown, the shooter will simply anger the person on the receiving end of the pellets.
Here’s the video from Andy’s Airgun Reviews Channel at YouTube.
To further put this new “home defense revolver” into perspective, the Umarex wheelgun has about 8% of the stopping power of a .25 Auto round. Eight. Percent.
At one point in the video, Andy fires three shots with the rubber ball projectiles at a cardboard box. Two of them actually managed to penetrate the cardboard.
Andy further elaborates that he wouldn’t want to be struck with a barrage of projectiles from the HDR-50. He’s apparently never done much paintball shooting. I’ve been hit with plenty of the little projectiles back in my capture-the-flag days. Each of those hit with roughly twice the energy this .50 caliber “home defense revolver” produces.
If that is anyone’s idea of a home defense tool, they should probably stock up on wasp spray and a recording of a big dog barking. Or maybe fashion themselves a sharp stick. Because the HDR-50 is more than liable to make someone you shoot with it terribly angry.