Pistol Caliber Carbine…

I have actually been interested in this genre since Marlin introduced the Camp Carbine in 1985. The concept of pistol and rifle shooting the same ammunition was well established, but my younger self had not at that point considered it. At the time, I would definitely had been most interested in the 45 Auto version, to accompany my Llama IX-A. Those were the days…

Last week, Cross Timbers held an experimental pistol caliber carbine match. We used essentially IDPA scoring rules and modified the shooting rules to accommodate carbines. Any pistol caliber carbine was allowed, included those shooting 22LR. The Ruger 10/22 was specifically mentioned as a suggestion.

I have had several autoloading 22 rifles over the years. The most interesting was probably the AR-7. Mine is long gone, but I think it was the Charter Arms variant. I’ve also had Marlin Model 60 tube fed rifles. My favorite thus far, however, has been my Ruger 10/22. It is the stainless barrel and hardwood stock, most like this one, but mine came with the 10 round magazine.

I had a 3-9x scope, so I got some Weaver 49711 rings. These are see through rings specifically to mount on the 10/22 and allow use of both iron sights and a 1″ scope. The combination is rather effective.

Since the 10/22 probably has more aftermarket parts available than any other 22LR rifle ever made, it was easy to locate a cheap bullpup stock for it.

Turns out, the Muzzlelite Bullpup Stock for the Ruger 10/22 might be a little too cheap.  I had read several bad reviews of the stock (after ordering it, while awaiting its arrival), mostly about trigger issues, so when installing the rifle into the stock, I tested trigger action essentially at every step and identified some issues that I was able to address right then. Mostly, it is trigger reset problems. Flashing from the mildly sloppy injection molding of the parts can interfere with the trigger assembly return, preventing the 10/22 trigger from resetting. Removing the flashing and making sure that the rifle hardware is mounted as far rearward in the stock as it can go seems to have done the trick.

The stock 10 round 10/22 magazines are low profile and reliable, but not a quick change item. The BX-25 25 round magazine has proven to be reliable for me, but would not fit the Muzzlelite stock due to interference with the pistol grip. Consequently, I picked up two 15 round BX-15 magazines.

I fired the Muzzlelite bullpup with the 15 round magazines exactly 5 times the night before the match, which will come up again below.

I had a BSA red dot optic that I had originally gotten for a crossbow, but had not yet installed. It is supplied with reversible mounting rails that will work with 3/8″ dovetails like many rimfire and air rifles are equipped with or flip them over to mount to Picatinny or Weaver rails. The plastic Picatinny rail on the Muzzlelite worked pretty well.

I boresighted the combination. The offset between the optic and the rifle bore is pretty high, though. I had to pick *some* distance to sight in on and chose approximately the distance from the firing line to the typical target array just in front of the berm at the range.

Match time came and it was a lot of fun. We squaded such that stage 2 was my first stage and I was glad to have gotten it out of my way early. There were 4 legal shooting positions, at least three of which had to be used. You had three ports cut in a sheet of plywood and low cover over the top of the plywood to choose from. Challenging enough, but I had so many feeding issues. Furthermore, one port was a long narrow horizontal slot. The offset between the optic and the barrel meant that I had to cant the rifle over at a significant angle in a (failed) attempt to both see the target and to shoot it without hitting the plywood.

Stage 4 was my worst. The raw time was 73.88, spent mostly clearing jams. I had actually cried uncle, but the SO encouraged me to keep working through it, so I did. When the hits on non-threat targets and simple points down were added, my 93.88 time on that stage was 1.01 seconds faster than the leader got… on all five stages combined 🙂

Next time, and I hope it’s soon, I will run the 10/22 in stock form, with the BSA optic and known reliable magazines. Those all work together. Then again, I might look into some other combination. It is mildly frightening that I find myself considering a KelTec anything, but their reputation is slowly improving and one shooter used a suppressed SUB-2000 at the match and finished very strong.

Meanwhile, I put the 10/22 back to stock and found that the Muzzlelite stock scuffed the barrel slightly where it emerges from it. It is not significant and doesn’t really bother me. It can likely be buffed out with a ScotchBrite pad, but I thought it worth mentioning.