Ruger 10/22 Competition Left-Hand. Andrew McKean Photo

Finally, southpaw rimfire shooters don’t have to endure hot brass in their faces as Ruger presents a competition-level 10/22.

 

I’ve wanted to love Ruger’s 10/22 as much as anybody. It shoots fast and accurate, despite its heavy trigger. It’s endlessly modular. And it is reliable as a roofing nail.

But I’m an unrepentant left-handed shooter, and the right-hand port of the 10/22 often puts ejection gases and shells in my face. Like most southpaws, I’m used to the indignities of the right-handed world of guns and shooting, but the fact that America’s best-selling rimfire rifle hasn’t been available in a left-hand action has meant I exhibit a nervous tic every time I shoulder one. And I’ve tended to stay away from 30-round banana clips altogether because with one in my 10/22, I’m incapable of not dumping it in short order, regrettably subjecting my cheek to copious amounts of brass and gas.

Happily, Ruger’s Custom Shop has fixed this oversight and last year introduced a dedicated left-hand 10/22 chambered in .22 Long Rifle. It’s not in the entry-level wood-stocked model; rather it’s in a fairly high-end competition version, with a threaded and ported barrel, an adjustable laminate stock, and an excellent trigger. The 10/22 Competition Rifle Left-Hand Model retails for about $1,000.

It’s spooky-accurate, handles like a champion, and has an optics-ready 30 MOA Picatinny rail for increased long-range capability. It would make an excellent precision rimfire competition gun in games like the NRL22 or the Precision Rimfire Challenge, but it’s also a capable plinker and rabbit rifle.

Features of this 6-pound rifle include the gray-speckled textured stock and wide, grippy, semi-beavertail forend that help the Ruger handle like a full-size center-fire, thanks in part to its 13-1/2-inch length of pull and hand-filling heft. The adjustable cheek rest is a nice touch not only for customizing the fit of the stock, but also for raising the cheek and eye to as much as two inches above bore, an important consideration for those of us who mount scopes with 50mm and 56mm objective lenses on rimfires. The steel barrel has a 1-in-16 right-hand twist.

The BX-Trigger has a little take-up, but at 2-1/2 pounds is light and crisp, certainly compared with the stock trigger of the basic 10/22, and has a positive reset. The Pic rail accommodates a wide variety of sights, from precision scopes to red-dot and reflex sights. The 30 MOA elevation in the rail can be a bit much, and may frustrate some shooters who run out of internal elevation adjustment when zeroing their scope, but it’s another nod to competition shooters and will allow league shooters to engage close-in targets, and then dial or hold for targets at the very end of the range for .22 bullets.

Anatomy of a Southpaw Rimfire

The heart of the original 10/22 is the innovative rotary magazine that has been copied by decades of competitors. The left-handed 10/22 requires a left-feeding and left-ejecting magazine, which means this new model won’t accept your old righty mags. Happily, Ruger and after-market suppliers sell replacement (or extra) magazines for about $60. Ruger notes that its 10-round left-hand .22 LR magazine is “easily identified by its green follower and the embossed ‘10SHOTLH’ marking on the end cap.”

The magazine detaches with an oversized release lever, which makes magazine swaps easy, but the positivity of the magazine catch means you don’t have to worry about inadvertently dropping one in a course of fire. The magazine well is another point of differentiation from the standard 10/22. In the competition model, Ruger uses a heat-stabilized, glass-filled polymer housing to house the trigger mechanism. This millable material improves manufacturing tolerances and its impact resistance can withstand all the indignities rimfire shooters can dish out.

The cross-bolt safety is also left-handed enabled. As many southpaw shooters know, the safety in the original 10/22 could be converted for lefties (it requires filing the angled notches on the safety to match the detent when the safety is reversed), though most shooters simply got used to pushing the safety from the off-side. Still, it’s nice that this one is a push-through design that won’t tempt shooters to tamper with this important component.

The barrel and receiver also get a much different treatment from the run-of-the-mill 10/22. The receiver is machined from a block of stress-relieved 6061-T6511 aluminum and mates nicely to a heat-treated and “nitrided” machined match bolt. Of special appeal is the oversized charging handle that’s easy to find with gloves and which loads the rifle with authority. The Competition 10/22 incorporates a second bedding lug to boost accuracy, and the cold hammer-forged bull barrel is fluted to reduce weight. The muzzle is threaded in a ½-28 pitch to accommodate silencers or accept the included muzzle brake.

I didn’t shoot the Ruger for record, but I put a wide variety of brands and bullet weights through its 16.12-inch barrel. The best-shooting of the lot was CCI’s 40-grain Green Tag, followed by the 25-grain Federal Small Game load. I shot some zippy CCI Stingers, and a boat-load of Winchester’s 37-grain Super-X hollow points. All printed groups that were within about a half-inch of one another at 50 yards. I’ll put more match loads down the pipe, and expect they will tighten the gun’s precision.

I shot the Ruger both with a suppressor and with the included brake, and both performed well. For hunting and other field shooting, I’d probably go with the brake, as a longer suppressor can throw off the weight and balance of the short-barreled 10/22.

Is It Worth a Grand?

The new 10/22 is a helluva rifle, but any good .22 Long Rifle shooter is a miser, either a penny-pinching kid or a more mature shooter with good sense to demand value for the $959 retail price that Ruger charges for the Competition Shop 10/22. These shooters deserve to know: is the 10/22 worth the money?

I’d say yes, for a couple reasons. First, it’s the only – or nearly the only – dedicated left-handed semi-automatic .22 LR on the market. Second, it’s built to last, and will win competitions. Its components are designed to stay in the game for years and even after thousands — or even tens of thousands — of rounds are sent through it.

If you don’t want to spend the sort of dough the Ruger costs, you have other options. Savage has left-handed versions of two of its excellent rimfires: the B22 and the Mark II. Or you can go with one of my favorites, CZ’s 457 Varmint.

But for a trued left-hand semi-auto, this is a great option, and should stay in Ruger’s catalog for many long years to come. I ended up buying my test model, largely because I need another tack-driving rimfire for my annual optics testing. That Picatinny rail is perfect for quickly swapping in and out a wide variety of scopes. And in the off-season, I expect the 10/22 to get plenty of work in the rabbit fields and squirrel woods of America.

 

Check out Ammo To Go, the ammunition retail sponsor of TTAG gun reviews. Get your bulk and quality ammo for a bargain by visiting their site. 

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

46 COMMENTS

    • It sure has fallen out of use. Using the C-word incorrectly outs you as a firearms-ignorant rube these days. Banana Magazine sounds even dumber than calling a magazine a “clip.”

        • … she’s on the lam with her sidekick Carmen Sandiego, and I was never able to catch up with her on my Commodore 64, no matter how hard I tried… man, we are getting OLD !

        • “… and I was never able to catch up with her on my Commodore 64,…”

          Commodore 64? You little whipper-snapper!

          In my day, all we had was a Commodore VIC-20 that you had find in the dark, uphill, both ways, in the dead of a winter blizzard!

          (The kids these days… 😉 )

          They won’t get a ton of sales, but for those that need one, this is good news…

        • i actually had a timex 2k.
          one kids dad was elated about his trs80. i just didn’t get it.
          my sister was a big fan of the amiga.

        • “i actually had a timex 2k.”

          I actually currently have 2 of them, including one 16K RAM module.

          In the early, early 1990s, I had an Amiga I got as a trade for some other stuff.

          Didn’t really use it, but it was a seriously powerful computer for that era, a true 32-bit machine. Traded it off not long after…

        • My college roomie was an assistant manager at a Radio Shack store. He finished school 2 years ahead of me, and just missed a batch of Apple desktops that came in, so he bought a TRS-80. I got in on a couple very early computer classes. I remember writing a check balancing program for him, and he thought that was the slickest thing since sliced bread. I bought a C64, and used that thing all the way until Win95 SP2 was released. Those old timers are probably worth some decent coin if still working.

  2. In my youth my brother was left handed. One of the reasons Ithaca 37’s became a standard feature around our house.

    Left handed anything was rare as hell then. He was punished in school for writing left handed and when he enlisted it got even rougher.

    • sinestro. wifey recalls her (illegal turkish alien stowaway) pops changing things up as soon as he noticed. crack! no, like this!
      the blunt scissors with the green handles were for those kids.
      i’d give my right arm to be blambadextrious.

        • gave. If they’re going to have auto correct it should recognize context and use the correct word.

        • Little known fact…
          If hacking out a tonsil would make you bilingual, then losing one of the family jewels would make you bisexual.

        • and if i lose a leg i can join an ass kickin’ contest. and if i keep staring at the barkeeps ample cleavage i may go bi- knockular.

      • tsbhoa, I have a friend who is self taught ambidextrous. At least when it comes to firearms. When we turkey hunt we sit side by side a few yards apart. He’s got center/right. I’ve got center/left. He can’t write left handed for shit though.

        • distinct advantage.
          sometimes filling out super repetitive forms i’ll give offhand a go. feels weird, but not as palsy as frisbee or throwing.
          i can shoot pistol lefty though.

    • “Left handed anything was rare as hell then. He was punished in school for writing left handed and when he enlisted it got even rougher.”

      The parochial school nuns wielded that wood ruler like a drill sergeant when I was growing up. Fast and furious.

      (I wonder if that had anything to with my preferring my intimate partners there days to wear a black habit while we’re ‘bumping uglies’? 😉 )

      • what’s black and white and red all over and can’t turn around in an elevator?
        with a spear through her head.

      • I dated a young lady that then joined the order and became a nun.

        I knew a guy that dated the girl next door only to lose her to his sister.

        I knew a guy that divorced his wife to marry her sister.

        You really ain’t that screwed up in the grander scheme of things.

  5. I shute left handed or right handed.
    Usually with a pump shotgunm I shoot left handed. I can work the pump faster. It comes from years of practice in the bathroom,,,,,ahhhhhh not that. I meant standing in front of the mirror to see if I could keep my muzzle straight as I pumped.

  7. As a lefty I just make sure to wear wrap around safety glasses. The flying brass does not bother me but I have gotten light burns from burning powder flakes coming out the ejection port. Why that only happened with Remington subsonic 22 loads I don’t know.

    Most bullpups are out of the question as the ejection port is right were a cheek would need to be.

  8. I shoot a rifle left handed and this is nice to see. Honestly I have never had a problem shooting a 10/22 left handed so I’m a little amused at the “shower of hot brass and gas”

    • Very few non bullpup semis give me an issue either. Slickside M16s, yeah, keep your top button buttoned and use a bandana.

  9. If you’re actually concentrating would you even notice a .25 ounce piece of empty brass being ejected?

  14. The photo is so poor that I have no idea what the rifle looks like. The writer needs a new camera and photography lessons. I suppose ‘spooky accurate’ as a description takes the place of firing measured groups for accuracy at a standard distance.
    Well, Guns and Ammo has a review posted with Ruger supplied images. I doubt the writer over there fired the gun. But there are good images! I realize amateurs must start somewhere but TTAG may not be the place.

  15. Andrew McKean at Lets Go Shooting, if this is the fellow, makes fun and well done videos, excellent really.
    This doesnt look like the same quality of work. If, if it is the same

  16. “Spooky accurate”, yet didn’t shoot it for accuracy. Uh-huh.

    Too long LOP for home defense, too heavy probably for Steel Challenge, and accuracy unknown.

    That’s a lot of uselessness for $959. Do they just sell the receiver and bolt? Then one could put together a useful configuration.

  17. accidentally bought one of those magazines…let me know if someone wants it. Just sitting there in the gun closet, please help me find it a home…

  18. As a fellow left hander, I’ve never gotten hit in the face shooting a 10/22.
    In fact for the most part, aside from a bolt action or bullpup, I’ve never had the issues described shooting any right handed firearms left handed.

Comments are closed.