I've expressed puzzlement about the sales success of the SR22 when Ruger itself offers a base model fixed-sight 22/45 for a street price not much over $250, which is about as much literal bang for the buck as there is in the gun world.
Sure, a Mk III 22/45, with its mag safety and loaded chamber indicator and chintzy plastic frame, is not the first thing that springs to mind when one is thinking about heirloom-grade .22 plinking pistols, but it will stand up to an incredible volume of shooting and beg for more. Why would somebody pay more for less gun? The answer, of course, lies in the expectations of what a gun needs to do.
In comments over at PDB's place, a guy wrote:
I’ve been shooting an SR22 for close to three years and have yet to have a FTF or FTE in over 3,000 rounds.Ah. I think I see now.
From where I'm standing, 3,000 rounds is not a particularly busy summer for a .22 plinking pistol; I'm pretty sure my 22/45's used up a third of that total and more just in one Blogorado. To somebody else, it might be a lot of shooting. That's cool and okay and all, but it's definitely going to shape one's opinions of a gun's durability. Three thousand rounds might be one person's three years of shooting and another person's minimum cleaning interval.
(Also, not a single FTF or FTE in 3,000 rounds of rimfire? Dude, tell me what brand of ammo you're using, because I need to switch to that stuff.)
I don't think he fed it any Thunderduds.
ReplyDeleteGerry
The upside to this is, they're shooting. That's all I care about. The more people safely shooting the better.
ReplyDeleteAlso, most people I know who buy a crappy gun and are subsequently disappointed with it, do NOT go on to throw it away and stop shooting; they go on to buy other guns, of which I also approve.
Dragging their dead drama llama through gun fora is all part of the fun.
I think you may be underestimating the number of rounds you shot at Blogorado LOL
ReplyDeleteI get 1500 or so rounds between failures to feed or eject in a MKIII with a TacSol upper. Usually. mostly.
ReplyDeleteIf, of course, I clean it every 3-4 hundred rounds.
CCI Standard.
Other brands, not so much.
That is about 2-3 months shooting for me.
You'll take what .22lr ammo is available and LIKE IT like the rest of us! Beggars can't be choosers and I've been begging for .22lr for a long time now.
ReplyDeleteThat looks like a nice little piece for the price, but I'll stick to the Sentinel revolver Dad left me (when I can pry it out of my youngest daughter's hands, that is).
The one big advantage of the SR22 and similar-sized .22's is that they can be easily carried, in a holster or even in a large pocket. I used to recommend the P22 for that purpose to my disabled students, and the more reliable SR22 has now taken its place. The 22/45, Buck Mark, etc. are a lot less concealable.
ReplyDeleteMethinks that commenter better have his Nomex briefs on...
ReplyDeleteI think of FTFs or FTEs as the 22's way of reminding me that I haven't cleaned it since the last malf.
ReplyDeleteFor my MkII, that's a looong time. I have an impulse buy P22 that's been decidedly less than stellar. Going to try shooting it soaking wet and see if it will run that way.
Interesting. Friend of mine just came back from Knob Creek. He said they were asking $75-$100 a BRICK for .22lr. Let's say one spent a $100 for a Brick of 500. My Maths tell me that's 20 cents a pop. My Buddy the Reloader charges me 30 cents a round for 9mm Ball. Or I can get a box of Blazer for <$20. To tell you the truth, I'm looking at spending some money on a good Pellet Pistol for Basics and Warm-ups, then just going to my 9mm for Detail Practice.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I've heard almost every story out there about the .22lr Crisis, and to tell you the truth, until some stability hits the market, I'm not going to waste my time and money on that caliber. I've got enough for Varmint/Pest Control, and I'm not really busy training up New Shooters anyway.
YMMV, of course.
Your buddy is boning you. You're paying almost double what he is spending.
DeleteThe Ruger Mk 1-Mk 3 series are, in my opinion, the best first pistol a newb can buy.
ReplyDeleteI got my Distinguished Expert chit on a heavy barrel Mk 2.
And I didn't have some looney spraying me in the face with a water bottle when I did it.
Dude, tell me what brand of ammo you're using, because I need to switch to that stuff.
ReplyDeleteThose would no doubt be the Chimera .22S, with the Unobtanium plating...
I had Thunderbolts, and I thought I had 8 bad magazines for my Buckmark. Turns out, that Buckmark liked Thunderbolts less than an 8 year old boy likes broccoli.
ReplyDeleteWho among us didn't learn the hard way not to buy novelty guns?
ReplyDeleteIf it's as cheap as the ISSC M22 and more reliable (true of the one (1) SR22 I've seen in the wild, FWLIW), it could be a lot worse.
While I prefer my 22/45 to its companion SR 22 the later has a specific training purpose. It correlates well to handling of my LCP and is a fun little pistol to shoot just for the fun of it. My SR9 is equally fun to shoot, even though my carry gear has been G22/23/27's for twenty or so years.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Bubblehead Les on this one.
ReplyDeleteWhile I have a decent stock of .22LR (well, decent for me, anyway... for Tam it would be maybe a couple days' shooting), right now I see .22 going for anywhere between 20-30 cents/round. I can reload 9mm for less than that. I might as well spend my range time on a full size caliber I can restock relatively easily.
I've no idea when the .22LR supply and demand will come to any kind of stability. I do wish people would quit paying insane prices for it on gunbroker and at gun shows- the sooner the ammo flipping crowd can't turn a profit the sooner we'll be able to find it on a shelf.
My .22lr guns are safe queens. I got maybe a 3000 rounds left so I pull out the pistols and rifles only when I got an absolutely newbie shooter that wants to learn, and who might react badly to something bigger. Some people want to learn, but have an amazing lack of context on how 'bad' it might be - usually women from foreign nations and democratic politicians. I get both. So for them it's the .22 guns, which means we save that scarce 3K rounds for them (we could blast them in two days).
ReplyDeleteLike everyone else said, 9mm is pound for pound a better training round right now (except for the absolutely virgin shooter, for which .22lr will always be the way to go on 'shot one').
And I am with Tam in wanting to know what combo of gun/ammo results in a 3000 round no-error shooting spree with 22 rimfire. I call second her call of "bullshit", even if she was too nice to say it quite that way.
"Marc Pisco said...
ReplyDeleteWho among us didn't learn the hard way not to buy novelty guns? "
Not me! I love my Browning 1911-22 and my Ruger Shopkeeper. Heck, I bought a Taurus 62 as a novelty. (as an aside, it's not bad, but it's not close to a Browning Semi-Auto, as far as breakdown .22 go, but the 62 should shoot short, long, and long rifle)
I plan to buy a Olympic Wolverine and a Remington 51 as novelties also.
I'll be honest -- I bought my P22 for one reason:
ReplyDeleteIt fit my daughter's hands well, and the Ruger MkIII (which Daddy preferred) didn't.
I'll say this for the Walther -- it's "OK". But I really, really, really hate the idea of the ND-inducing magazine disconnect "safety". (I am led to believe that the Ruger's can be, um, "lost", in a manner similar to a GP35's. . . {grin} )
I sold my P22 because whenever my daughter shot it she would regularly get shell casings right between the eyes.
ReplyDeleteBack when .22LR could still be found in stores, a 500-1000 round count per range trip was pretty common for my Mk II.
ReplyDelete3,000 rounds sounds about right for my cleaning interval on just about any of my non-corrosive-ammo-firing guns. Yes haters, that includes my AR15.
At 4 in the morning they are lined up at Wally's to scarf the ammo delivery.
ReplyDeleteSame guys are at the fun show with $100 pricetags for a brick.
Because...Merican.
Huh, I just assumed that the SR22 would be pretty much as reliable as a mkIII. And its controls are actually similar to a "real" gun.
ReplyDeleteThat's the big turnoff for me about most of the good .22's out there. They're good for trigger practice and not much else. With a conversion kit or .22-a-like you can use the same holster, presentation, reloading technique, etc. Always seemed like a better idea for training.
Not $200 more of a better idea, but a better idea all the same.
my local MOD has it on the shelf for $60 a 500 brick. Still can't bring myself to buy it. Those several thousand rounds are just gonna have to last me.
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago I bought a P22 because .22LR.
ReplyDeleteI shot it a bit, but the grip was too small for even my tiny hands. I sold it to a guy teaching his 8yo daughter to shoot with one of the club's heavy-barrel Mk IIIs.
That worked out for both of us.
@Overload CO,
ReplyDeleteOK, I'll rephrase: "Who among me hasn't etc.?
None. None among me, that's who."
That Taurus 62 looks like a heckuva fun toy...
My dad bought my Mk I new in 1980, and it has digested upward of forty thousand rounds. It will be the last to go. The P22 I bought on impulse (Gemtech Outback ad on the back cover of SAR) was one of the first to go in the 1919a4 purge of 2013. It had been buried in the back of the b team safe since shortly after the first range foray ca.2004.
ReplyDeleteI'll replace it with a TPH somewhere down the road.
The real benefit of the SR 22 is that it is ergonomically and functionally similar to many compact 9mm & 380 pistols. Therefore one can train with the SR 22 and have virtually all of its handling identical to a more powerful pistol.
ReplyDeleteI see on a daily basis, folks, primarily women that are new shooters put off by the muzzle blast & recoil of compact firearms. When given an SR 22, they enjoy themselves and learn the basics easily.
Wait... wait!
ReplyDeletePeople clean their 22/45's???