Shooting Illustrated Comes Up with the Ideal Training Rifle

Searching for the perfect training rifle with NRA’s Shooting Illustrated

You’ve got a rifle. You shoot your rifle. Question is, do you really know how to use your rifle?

That’s the subject of Bob Owens’ latest investigation. Take a look at his findings in NRA’s Shooting Illustrated magazine:

The Ideal Training Rifle
Here’s a great way to turn a .22 LR rifle into a platform that will help new and experienced shooters practice marksmanship skills.If you want to train to improve your rifle-marksmanship skills, you need a goal and a rifle. A solid goal to make yourself a rifleman (or riflewoman) is to be accurate to within 4 MOA out to a distance of 500 yards—the “rifleman’s quarter-mile”—with iron sights using a properly functioning military-surplus rifle.

In my research and experience, certain characteristics have emerged in a reasonably-priced training rifle optimized to the 25-meter ranges commonly found at indoor and outdoor ranges. Keep in mind, there is no specific “correct” rifle, but these common characteristics seem to make for a better experience for the majority of shooters.

They include:

● .22 LR chambering
● Semi-automatic operation
● A 1.25-inch G.I. cotton or nylon web sling, as used on the M1 Garand
● Sling swivel studs
● Quick-detachable (QD) sling swivels
● U.S. military-style aperture sights
● At least two detachable magazines with a minimum capacity of 10 cartridges, each
● An enhanced magazine release (Where needed)

modifications into this training-rifle platform, and it will come as little surprise that one of the semi-automatic .22 LRs favored for conversion to an LTR is the Ruger 10/22, in both rifle and carbine configurations.

The 10/22 is an obvious selection, being a very popular rifle because of its relatively low cost, good accuracy potential, modularity and immense aftermarket support. They vary from off-the-shelf rifles to highly-tuned precision variants retailing for more than $1,000.

Common additional modifications made to 10/22s include the previously mentioned extended magazine release, an automatic-release bolt hold-open, an aftermarket extractor and a tuned or aftermarket trigger …

Get the full scoop on the Ideal Training Rifle from Shooting Illustrated.

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