Since getting a membership to a local range, I have had the opportunity to take my son shooting far more than I used to. He's still a little small to handle most center-fire handguns, so I spent some time looking for a small .22LR handgun. The other day I walked into the Local Big R, and saw this little guy.



It's a Ruger SR22P with a "tungsten" cerakote frame. I didn't really care about the color of the frame, but it came stock with the fiber-optic front sight, which I'm a fan of. The best part was it was priced the same as the base model.

The gun came with two mags (and a large and small basepad for each) and a large grip sleeve and a small grip sleeve. I prefer the large, but the small is perfect for my son and my wife. The size and weight of the gun as a whole makes it ideal for smaller shooters.



Accuracy is not bad at all. The sights were a little off, which was easy enough to correct, and the gun is capable of decent groups. The reliability is also really impressive, for a rimfire. I fed it several types of bulk ammo, and we probably have about 600 rounds through it at this point. We only had 3 malfunctions, all with American Eagle 38gr plated. I think it short-stroked, as all three times it failed to strip the next round off the mag after extracting the fired round. I'm guessing this is due to weak ammo.

The only real problem I have with the gun is the trigger. In a word, it's awful. The DA is long, heavy, mushy, and it stacks horribly. The SA is not a lot better. If anyone has any idea how to correct this, I'm all ears.

Overall, I feel like it was a decent purchase. My son enjoys shooting it, and gets excited to go the range. It fits him well and is reliable enough, even with bulk ammo, to not be a constant annoyance. I just whish there was something I could do about that trigger...

I have the SR22. Mine digests everything. My trigger is pretty good and accuracy is better than I expected. $$$ well spent.
You might call Ruger and see if they want to do something with the trigger.

I prefer to start new shooters with a gun with a target or near target grade trigger, as learning trigger control on these combat trainer type
Pistols is hard, and trigger control is the key to accurate shooting.
The "small gun" I have is a beretta jaguar made in 1959. Similar size to the sr-22 with an infinitely better trigger. Sights are a bit small but still perfectly adequate.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
I have the SR22. Mine digests everything. My trigger is pretty good and accuracy is better than I expected. $$$ well spent.
You might call Ruger and see if they want to do something with the trigger.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the trigger per-se...I believe it to be in spec, and I doubt Ruger would do anything to improve it. I think it's probably just a crummy design, and I imagine the mechanics of the magazine safety/trigger disconnect have something to do with it.

I agree, I'd rather had a better trigger to teach someone on...but I guess at this point I have to work with what I have.