Watched a great show last night on The Outdoor Channel all about Armscor's factory in the Philippines, makers of the Rock Island Armory 1911 pistol along with several other 1911 brands for other vendors like Cimarron....They also manufacture a unique R.I.A 1911 pistol chambered for the .22 TCM as well as the brass for the .22 TCM which is shipped to their factory in Montana to be loaded and assembled ...The Philippine factory was very modern with new CNC equipment being used...The show started with bare steel coming in one end of the Armscor plant and finished 1911 pistols shipped out the other and seeing how they hammer forge the slides and then CNC machine them was very interesting, their quality control was very thorough and my opinion of Philippine imported pistols like Rock Island Armory went way up after watching the show.....

The coolest thing shown was about the .22 TCM round... TCM stands for Tauson Craig Magnum...Martin Tauson is the owner/CEO of Armscor and was behind the development of this rocket of a round...

The original experimental ammo started out as .223 brass turned down to 24mm long then necked down to .22 and used the same bullet as standard .223/5.56 ammo...They started making the TCM headstamped brass in their factory and it is similar to .223 brass but thicker to stand up to over 38000 psi and they use a 40 grain .22 hollow point bullet to make the final product.....

The .22 TCM was designed to compete with the FN 5.7 pistol round but the idea which is way cool was to use it in the 1911 pistol platform in either a standard 5'' barrel or the shorter Colt Commander length which is 4.5" I think....The magazine holds 18 +1 in the chamber so you get High cap, very low recoil (less than 9mm from the looks of it) and incredible terminal performance....They did say the only down side to all this performance was a huge muzzle blast and that the round is extremly LOUD due to the hyper velocity...The same magazines can be used for 9mm so if you buy a spare barrel for your pistol you can have a dual use gun...

Ballistics on the .22 TCM are VERY impressive....With the standard 5" barrel it will rocket the 40 grain hollow point bullet to 2150 FPS which is smoking!!!
The cool part is it's perfect for urban use as the bullet penetrated about 12" of ballistic gelatin but the hydraulic shock and wound channel almost tore the gel block into pieces....If you hit a bad guy with this baby he's going to know it....

They also market a carbine rifle that uses the same magazines as the pistol and it's pretty cool too with over 3000 FPS velocity with NO recoil....Now I had never heard of a .22 TCM before last night but maybe some of you more gun savvy folk have but it sounds like the best thing for pistol shooters since sliced bread....The FN 5.7's only down fall is lack of ammo availability and very high cost like a buck a round pre scare prices but CEO Martin Tauson plans to make his ammo much more plentiful and at a much lower cost since it's being produced at Armscor's Montana plant....

Anybody ever shot one of these little rockets or know any more about the caliber than they showed on the TV program????....Sounds like fun and me want one!!!