Walther P22 .22lr Pistol
7 May 2007
Almost two years ago, when I first came into possession of it, I did a brief review of this pistol. I had purchased it for the purpose of teaching my children basic marksmanship with a handgun and to develop their mechanical skills. In particular, at that time, my seven year old had small hands and needed a weapon with little recoil that would be fun for him to shoot. My youngest daughter, 14 at that time, also had fairly small hands but wanted to learn how to shoot. So, since the time I purchased the pistol nearly two years ago, we've put a whole lot of .22lr ammo through it. This is a more thorough review of the weapon and how it has performed for us.
The pistol came in a very attractive case that, in addition to the pistol, also held the following:
1) a five inch barrel
2) the barrel lug tool
3) one spare magazine
4) a different size backstrap
5) a "compensator" to be used with the five-inch barrel
Now, my youngest son - now nine - had no issues with the pistol size two years ago and he's gotten even better with it since then. His challenge is that he's right handed but left eye dominant. This has put us in the position of teaching him to shoot a rifle left-handed, but he does pretty well with the pistol. You can see from the targets shown right that he put a fair number of his hits into these 6" Shoot-n-See bullseyes. Those targets were shot predominantly at the three yard line (top target) but we moved back to the seven for a few shots (bottom target). You can see how the general grouping opened up when we doubled the distance.
The smooth trigger pull on the P22 certainly helps when you're teaching any new shooter basic marksmanship and the light recoil helps them become comfortable with the weapon. The sights are easy to see and, being a .22, the recoil spring isn't so strong as to make racking the slide difficult. Field stripping is fairly easy and, again, springs aren't so strong as to make it difficult for small(er) hands.
The pistol, as you can see, has a light-gray (almost blue looking) polymer frame. The magazine release is ambidextrous, levering down rather than pushing in to release. Both of the magazines I received with my pistol drop free if you push the magazine release down and hold it long enough for the magazine to clear the grips. If you just give it a quick push the mechanism will create enough friction on the magazine to hold it in place. That's not a design flaw. That's a matter of mechanical skills on the shooter's part. The manual safety DOES NOT decock the weapon. This is important when you're teaching basic marksmanship to new shooters. Once the first round has been chambered, the safety will disengage the trigger but you still have a cocked weapon in your hand.
The magazines proved easy to load. If you've spent any time stuffing .45 caliber rounds into magazines, pushing the little .22s into these magazines is almost enjoyable. On either side of the magazine a small knob sticks out allowing you to pull down the magazine follower and literally drop bullets into the magazine. Making sure they face the right direction is the only catch.
The first trigger-pull is a little long and seems to stick near the end, all of the single-action pulls are crisp. The pistol cost right at $350 when we paid for it at the gun show. From what I've found shopping around that seems an average price, though it can be had for a few dollars cheaper and several dollars more.
In the past two years we've probably put about 1,500 rounds through this pistol. We've shot everything from the cheapest .22lr lead round nose ammo we could find at WalMart to decent JHP Stingers. Difference in recoil is negligible and even during a day of shooting hundreds of rounds the recoil never gets abusive.
BE SAFE!
7 May 2007
Almost two years ago, when I first came into possession of it, I did a brief review of this pistol. I had purchased it for the purpose of teaching my children basic marksmanship with a handgun and to develop their mechanical skills. In particular, at that time, my seven year old had small hands and needed a weapon with little recoil that would be fun for him to shoot. My youngest daughter, 14 at that time, also had fairly small hands but wanted to learn how to shoot. So, since the time I purchased the pistol nearly two years ago, we've put a whole lot of .22lr ammo through it. This is a more thorough review of the weapon and how it has performed for us.
The pistol came in a very attractive case that, in addition to the pistol, also held the following:1) a five inch barrel
2) the barrel lug tool
3) one spare magazine
4) a different size backstrap
5) a "compensator" to be used with the five-inch barrel
Now, my youngest son - now nine - had no issues with the pistol size two years ago and he's gotten even better with it since then. His challenge is that he's right handed but left eye dominant. This has put us in the position of teaching him to shoot a rifle left-handed, but he does pretty well with the pistol. You can see from the targets shown right that he put a fair number of his hits into these 6" Shoot-n-See bullseyes. Those targets were shot predominantly at the three yard line (top target) but we moved back to the seven for a few shots (bottom target). You can see how the general grouping opened up when we doubled the distance.
The smooth trigger pull on the P22 certainly helps when you're teaching any new shooter basic marksmanship and the light recoil helps them become comfortable with the weapon. The sights are easy to see and, being a .22, the recoil spring isn't so strong as to make racking the slide difficult. Field stripping is fairly easy and, again, springs aren't so strong as to make it difficult for small(er) hands.
The pistol, as you can see, has a light-gray (almost blue looking) polymer frame. The magazine release is ambidextrous, levering down rather than pushing in to release. Both of the magazines I received with my pistol drop free if you push the magazine release down and hold it long enough for the magazine to clear the grips. If you just give it a quick push the mechanism will create enough friction on the magazine to hold it in place. That's not a design flaw. That's a matter of mechanical skills on the shooter's part. The manual safety DOES NOT decock the weapon. This is important when you're teaching basic marksmanship to new shooters. Once the first round has been chambered, the safety will disengage the trigger but you still have a cocked weapon in your hand.
The magazines proved easy to load. If you've spent any time stuffing .45 caliber rounds into magazines, pushing the little .22s into these magazines is almost enjoyable. On either side of the magazine a small knob sticks out allowing you to pull down the magazine follower and literally drop bullets into the magazine. Making sure they face the right direction is the only catch.
The first trigger-pull is a little long and seems to stick near the end, all of the single-action pulls are crisp. The pistol cost right at $350 when we paid for it at the gun show. From what I've found shopping around that seems an average price, though it can be had for a few dollars cheaper and several dollars more.
In the past two years we've probably put about 1,500 rounds through this pistol. We've shot everything from the cheapest .22lr lead round nose ammo we could find at WalMart to decent JHP Stingers. Difference in recoil is negligible and even during a day of shooting hundreds of rounds the recoil never gets abusive.
BE SAFE!
