Rimfire Ammo

.22 LR is the cheapest way to shoot regularly, and regular shooting is what actually builds skill. It is also the calibre most sensitive to what you feed it — semi-automatic rimfires in particular are notorious for running perfectly on one brand and choking on another, with no obvious reason and no way to predict it except by testing.

Rimfire priming is applied to the case rim rather than a separate primer, which is why quality control varies more than in centrefire ammunition and why the occasional dud is normal rather than alarming. Subsonic loads stay under about 1,100 feet per second and are the ones worth buying if you own a rimfire suppressor — a supersonic round cracks downrange no matter what is on the muzzle.