There's a reason why most good rimfire guns look the way they do.
Yah, I think this is probably very true.
My girlfriend used to have a Ruger 22/45, and we shot it quite a lot. To me, it was always a bit boring though. The P22 (Rest in Peace) was actually a lot of fun. I could fire 10 rounds in under 2 seconds - sometimes I think I must have been getting close to one second. It was a blast to shoot. I shot through a whole 525 round bulk pack of federal "Champion" in one afternoon a bunch of times - and it never really got boring. That gun was great for the two years we had it. Yes, it developed that problem where hand cycling would not lock the hammer back 100% of the time (in hindsight we now know that this was because the slide was developing some kind of micro cracking or stress) but that didn't occur until about a year and a half into about a 500 rounds per week existence. I actually miss that little gun, but I don't think I will get another one. I want to find something else.
I sold my Mosquito in the EE. I see that the guy who bought it has since sold it again. They are o.k., but Mini-mag is sort of half to a third the price of 9mm, whereas it is more like a fifth of the fun of a 9mm - in my opinion anyway. Cheap .22 ammo is more like a 9th or 10th the cost of a 9mm round.
I'm still looking to find a good .22 semi-auto pistol. I don't even know what I would recommend anymore. The SIG conversions look interesting. My girlfriend uses a Beretta 92 Ciener conversion on an old VPD surplus Beretta frame full-time (the slide on the original surplus VPD gun eventually cracked and we sold it off as scrap ... check my posts if interested in the story). That is actually a really nice reliable .22!!! It weighs a ton compared to other .22's but it works great. Those Ciener kits seem really good, but I think they only make a few different models... GLOCK, 1911, Beretta and maybe a few others.
The same names always come up in this debate. The Buckmark and Ruger pistols don't really do it for me, and I've certainly had my fill on the Rugers anyway. That S&W auto and the Beretta Neos look like something out of bad 70's sci-fi. The CZ Kadet seems o.k.. Buy another GLOCK (I sold the 17 I used to have) and get an Advantage Arms kit? That Beretta 87 target pistol? Seems like it could be fun, but sort of reminds me of Robocop's gun.
Sometime I think the right thing to do with .22LR is just get a revolver, like one of those new 5 inch model 63's they have now, or the 617, or a Single Six if you like that kind of thing. I think that the "real" .22-type ammo for auto-pistols is the .25ACP... but we all know that we can't be trusted with such things. The rimmed .22LR cartridge itself seems to be a bit of a square peg to the auto loading pistol's round hole.
I was trying this guy's .25 at the range awhile back. For a guy like me who never owned any handguns until well into the "Brave New Post '95 World", just the look of those small centre-fire rounds is so cool.
Maybe buying a $150 Tokarev and a crate of corrosive ammo is the way to go. I've mostly just been shooting 9mm since January of this year (Mosquito was sold and P22 died at about the same time), but now - with tax - I am paying 30 cents a round for 9mm. Each mag is 3 bucks. Each trip to the range is about $75. If I go every weekend (which I do) that is $3,900 for 2 to 2.5 hours of shooting a week. I can afford it no doubt, but it would be nice to find a cheap blaster to blast off 500 rounds like my old P22. The whole thing is a bit of a conundrum.
() but what can we do.
