The Ruger 10/22 is popular for a reason. People who don’t have one know about it, and people who do have one…well, they often end up with more than one. So, we’re spreading the word that the Jeep Wrangler of the rimfire gun world, the classic 18.5-inch carbine, is on sale for $210 at Brownells right now (they’re $270 at Cabela’s). That goes for both the standard and synthetic stock versions.
The 10/22 is a pleasure to shoot for anyone, but it isn’t a stretch to call it the best long gun for beginners there is.
To this day, we stand by our classic review of the 10/22:
The Ruger 10/22 is a chameleon, serving as everything from your kid’s first long gun or a varmint rifle, to a deadly-accurate light weapon that can be used for some surprisingly lethal pursuits.
One of the distinctive features of the 10/22: its magazine. The internal, 10-round, rotary magazine is kind of an odd duck in the rifle world. In fact, the only other manufacturer I’ve seen with anything like it would be Calico Arms. Before that, you’d have to go back to the Tommy Gun to see a popular weapon using a rotary mag.
I purchased a stock 10/22 for my then-10 year old daughter, to introduce her to firearms. I’ve found that kids, especially at indoor ranges, have problems with two things: noise and recoil. The Ruger 10/22 has neither. It’s about as quiet as you could ask for a rifle to be (without a noise suppressor). As far as kick, I’ve seen house cats jumping in your lap that will jar you more.
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I had a .22 semi once, forget the manufacturer, which dazzled me with the ability to load .22LR, long, and short cartridges all mixed up in the tube mag, and shoot them just fine. IIRC, it held 21 shorts. Talk about quiet and recoil free, the bolt cycling was the loudest thing when shooting shorts, if you weren’t watching the target you thought it had misfired.
The 10/22 is a rite of passage. Don’t buy one for you. You’re too old. By one for a new shooter. The young’ns need a place to start. A stock 10/22 is the obvious place to begin. Skip your NRA contributions and put your money where it really matters.
Well put some decent peep sights on it (as TechSights) and take the rug rate to an Appleseed. Ruger STILL hasn’t figured out sights.
AND buy it an NRA membership.
Quick! Get one now. This is the best price on an assault rifle you will find!
Remington 552 Speedmaster ? I had one too, nice little rifle.
Or a Remington 550. Have one, first rifle I ever shot, was my Grandfather’s, not for sale at any price. Has a floating chamber that acts as a piston to allow it to cycle short, long and long rifle without adjusting the main recoil spring. Cool design, Carbine William’s idea, pain in the booty to clean.
First rifle I ever shot, as well. I have two 550s. The one my father turned over to me on my tenth birthday in the early sixties and the one I bought for him in the mid-seventies because he kept borrowing “his old rifle.”
I did not know about Carbine Williams involvement. Cool beans.
o7
Have one of these with a scope. Haven’t shot it in 15 years. Need to pull it out. Bought a couple of the 25-round extended mags for it. Loaded with CCI Stingers, these could do some damage to whatever you’re shooting at.
This post is so close to my story I had to check to see if I wrote it.
10/22 is a great rifle
We share a good rifle and a good name in common, Mike!
Love the 10/22. I wish I knew the round count on mine. I did not replace the trigger for decades, once I did I wished I had done it earlier.
Not sure about the deal alert though, PSA and Ana Cortes are showing them for $170 right now; with transfer and shipping, probably about the same as boasted in the article.
The T/CR22 is (at least on paper) an improved version of the 10/22 in just about every regard. T/C is offering a $50 rebate through the end of the year, and grabagun.com is selling them for $290 before the rebate.
https://grabagun.com/t-c-t-cr22-22lr-17-thred-bl-syn-odg.html
Really? America’s favorite .22 rifle? Are you sure? Nah, I don’t think so, not by a long shot. The Ruger 10/22 went into production in 1964 and Ruger has produced over 5 million in 54 years. Just four years earlier Marlin started selling the Model 60 and has outsold the Ruger better than 2 to 1 with more than 11 million total in production. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Ruger pistols and plan on picking up a Ruger wheel gun in the near future, but your claim of “America’s Favorite .22LR Rifle” is just so much hot air.
I would be one of those 11 million people with a Marlin model 60 and I absolutely love it. It shoots like a dream. I have no idea what my round count is.
I am too. Still have the one I bought for $39.95 forty five years ago.
Have to admit the ammo shortage pissed me off enough that when I couldn’t get a box of 22lr for it and there was oodles of 5.56 on the shelves I bought it a bigger brother. No worries anymore though. Plenty of ammo now for the Model 60 and the S&W M&P15.
Have you ever bought a gun and found out it wasn’t all this and a bag of chips?
Maybe people bought the 60 because the 10/22 wasn’t even invented yet??
As a Retailer, I confirm the claim of favorite .22LR Rifle.
Gunner2000 says:
October 3, 2018 at 17:01
Have you ever bought a gun and found out it wasn’t all this and a bag of chips?
Maybe people bought the 60 because the 10/22 wasn’t even invented yet??
That comment is laughable. I have yet to hear a single complaint from any source about the functioning of a Model 60. They eat ANYTHING without fail. Personally, I had a total of one fail to fire from some old loose ammo I found in a shed once(ammo issue, not firearm issue). Never had a failure to feed or eject out of thousands of rounds(some of that while eating chips, I’m sure).
As far as the purchases before the 10/22 was invented, We are talking about 4 years out of 58 that the Marlin was around before the Ruger. So the Ruger has been around 93% of the time of the Marlin, but the Marlin has outsold the Ruger 2.2 to 1.
Man, you guys are sooo quick to take the bait, it’s quite funny.
I just wanted to stir the pot. And it worked, thanks for making my day.
Gunner2000, So beyond “number of accessories” what’s your metric exactly?
It isn’t sales. It certainly isn’t accuracy. It isn’t price.
I’ll acknowledge quality may be a current issue, but Remington has only been dying for the last 5 years or so. There’s still millions more quality 60s out there, than there will be for a couple of decades more of 10/22 production.
Yeah, I bought a 10/22. It jammed a lot regardless of load used and shot pretty poorly even with decent, so I built it out with $500 in cool-guy parts. At the end of the process it still wasn’t a great shooter and continued to jam (had a doggone nice trigger though). Sold to an enthusiastic buyer.
Picked up a used Cerberus-era Model 60 recently and true to fuddlore it stomps the GM barrel I had been using on my 10/22 with the same ammo (CCI SV). Slapped on some DIP parts, bought a speedloader, and never looked back. Flyaway cost on that rifle when I got done part-swapping was about $215, IIRC (excluding the loader). Hard for 10/22s to keep up with that from a cost-efficiency standpoint.
I agree though, seeing the market up close I do think 10/22s outsell Model 60s in the present day. Certainly the total 10/22 market is bigger because there are comparatively few doodads for Marlins.
There’s no doubt that the 10/22 gets all the press, so it’s the favorite at least in that regard. And if it didn’t in the past, I’m pretty sure it outsells everything else now.
That said, I cast my vote for the Marlin Model 60 by buying one. You won’t go wrong with a Ruger, but nothing beats the Marlin in terms of bang for the buck. They just run and keep running — and they’re super accurate, too.
Hounddogdave, thanks, I was getting of tired of being the only one correcting this BS, completely uninformed headline, every time it rears it’s ugly head.
I know the writers are a bunch of kids, who play with “guns”, in between whatever other hobby they’re pursuing. More importantly, they aren’t self-motivated enough to do some simple fact checking, and there is nothing approaching an editor to push them to maybe know something about the content of the story, being you know, correct.
Just because it has a bunch of accessories, doesn’t mean it outsells the Marlin 60.
Oh well, the “writers” are proud of their ignorance, and will enthusiastically tell you they ‘aren’t statisticians’, and don’t check google for silly things like definitions of basic legal terms, etc.
Enjoy the end of Western Civilization!
Well said. Even applies to the use of ‘Deal Alert’ in the title-see my comment upstream.
I have a few Ruger 10/22, including a takedown in camo and an “All Weather.” And my store sold a couple of carbines last week for under $200, so I’m not impressed by a price of $210.
Add $10.00 to the price if you are having them send it to your FFL. From their website “Brownells will charge a $10 FFL processing fee on orders containing FFL items”
Buds has three different 10/22 models for under $200
For beginners I prefer a bolt action 22…like teaching a kid to drive on a stick shift.
I also favor the marlin….I don’t know how the quality is since Remington bought them, but they are a smoother gun out of the box.
Nonsense. Kid needs to learn PMI skills that result in a good 5 round group. You don’t do that when they are not getting/keeping a good consistent cheek weld/sight picture. See 10/22 (or Marlin 60).
Do a rapid mag change on a Marlin 60
Picked up an ATI Draganov poly stock on sale at Brownells last week. For Marlin 60 but I installed on an used Coast to Coast labeled version which had a terribly torn-up stock. 3pc assembly that goes together perfectly. One of the nicest executions of a complex design I can recall.
Buy giftcards on ebay for 20 pct off, use activejunky for 8 pct off and you have a crazy good deal.
Wait until we are closer to the holidays. I bought one last year from a local sporting goods store (which I shall not name because they are turncoats) for significantly less than $200. And I didn’t have to pay shipping or FFL fees. My step son was stoked.
Got a 10/22already. Paid 150 for it and got a better stock for 25 dollars.
“The internal, 10-round, rotary magazine is kind of an odd duck in the rifle world.”
agreed. but it’s not as exclusive as that would suggest. the savage a series (my a17, for instance) utilizes an almost identical rotary mag.
for a 10/ 22, buy the takedown. and the charger model. and then go break some felonies.
The Marlin 60 has sold more no doubt, but I like my 10/22 Collector’s Series II a lot. It’s got a aperture/rail and a super light poly stock.
While I generally like the rotary mag. fine, it is slightly annoying that there is no lock back on the last round.
I always get a kick out of the other .22 rifles at the range when they shoot SV rounds, and all I hear is a tiny “pffick” report. I’ve often wondered what percentage of the cartridge charge energy goes into the kinetic energy of the round. Is it a much higher percentage than most other rifle rounds?
A few minutes with a file and it will lock back on the last round. Or a cheap aftermarket part that does the same. I’ve done it to both of mine, never had an issue.
I bought my 10/22 years ago from a now defunct local dept. store when they would put them on sale at $99.99. The same store used to sell Winchester and Marlin lever action 30-30 rifles for the same $99.99 just before deer hunting season. I sure wish I had bought more “stuff” and less beer back then.
Really now, a new Marlin 336 or Winchester 1894 for $99.99? I’m rather incredulous about that claim. When a used 1 of these in fair condition might go for $400, If I ever saw them for $299.99 I would seriously buy 10 at a time.