Why You Need a Rossi RB22 Compact

By Larry Case

Sure as shootin’ you need a good .22 rifle. Every hunter and shooter needs one. Long ago a grizzled old rifleman and reloader told me, “Son, you need a .22 rifle to just shoot!” What he meant was there are times when you have to get out and shoot, to work on your basics of marksmanship. For a long time the best firearm to do this with has been a.22 caliber rifle. If you are going to be a shooter, you have got to practice. For rifle shooting skills, nothing beats a .22 rifle, and you can buy enough ammo to practice with and not go broke. There are lots of .22 rifles out there, but I think you need to look at the Rossi RB22 Compact.

Getting Started on the Shooting Trail with the RB22

Good shooters are made, not born. (Apologies to Davy Crockett and Alvin York.) And by made, I mean they are made by putting hundreds of rounds downrange. You can begin your young deadeye on a BB gun and that is good start, but eventually you have to make the transition to a firearm. Tradition and availability of ammo make a .22 caliber rifle a great choice, plus you can round up enough ammo to practice and not go broke.

“Plinking” with a .22 rifle is a great way to work on your shooting skills and have fun while doing it. It also is the best way to introduce young people and other new shooters to the sport. When your new shooter, child or otherwise, graduates from the BB gun stage, go directly to the .22. Firearms larger than this in the initial stages can be a mistake. Low recoil and noise factors make a .22 the way to go.

You can “plink” everything from bottle caps, empty shotgun casings, clay pigeons, empty cans and Necco candy wafers! While you are doing this, remember to work on the fundamentals of shooting. Think about proper stance, sight alignment, breathing and trigger control. Don’t go out there and “just shoot.” The key here is to work on those fundamentals and improve your marksmanship while having fun doing it. This is especially important for the new shooter.

While we are talking about new shooters, this is as good a place as any to mention safety. (Disclaimer! After 36 years investigating shooting incidents as a DNR Law Enforcement Officer teaching hunter safety and investigating shooting incidents, I hope you can forgive me for talking about this, but I must.) From day one, you need to emphasize to your student the basics of gun handling safety, so let’s go over some of the basic rules. (Note: There are several more.)

• Treat every gun as if it were loaded, some teach this as “All guns are loaded all the time.”
• Always keep the muzzle of the firearm pointed in a safe direction. If you follow this absolutely – even if you have an accidental discharge – you will avert a tragic incident.
• Positively identify your target every time before you touch the trigger.
• Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire. Think “off-target, off-trigger.”

I want to say one quick thing about sight alignment that I mentioned there. I believe that every shooter should learn to shoot with open sights. (Remember this when we talk about the sights on the Rossi RB22 Compact.) It is just a fundamental that I think we should all learn, like driving a stick-shift car. Once we get to serious hunting, I am all for a good scope on the rifle. I believe initially we need to learn how to shoot open sights; it will make us better shooters.

On the Range with the Rossi RB22 Compact

Let’s do first things first. Right out of the box, this little rifle jumps to the front of the line for young and small stature shooters. Why is that? Simply it’s size. With an overall length of just a hair over 31 inches, a 16-½-inch barrel, and only 3-1/4 pounds in weight, this is a .22 a young shooter can use right away. No too long length-of-pull to struggle with, no excessive weight when carrying the gun or lining up an offhand shot and ease of handling because the gun fits the shooter. In the gun world, we preach shotgun fit is very important; why don’t we do this more with rifles? The RB22 Compact does it right away, so there’s no waiting and telling a young shooter that someday “you will grow into” a larger gun.

On the bench, the RB22 had no problems with the prerequisite attributes any good firearm must exhibit. The gun went bang every time we pulled the trigger and there were no failures to feed or failures to eject. The bolt action is very simple (which is good) and new rifle stiffness problems aside, (there really wasn’t any) the RB22 functioned without a hitch.

Most shooters don’t give the extractors and ejector on a .22 rifle a second thought, but I noticed the RB22 worked really well here. The rifle ejected empty rounds well and the same with live rounds not fired. The ejector is fixed, which (to me) means there is less to go wrong. There is a cocking indicator on the rear of the bolt, which is very handy and makes the rifle all the more safe. The crossbolt safety is sturdy and worked as it should. I actually saw some reviews that might have mentioned the supplied 10-round magazine may not have enough capacity for some. I’m not sure why you would need a magazine with more rounds on this rifle.

For a very economically priced .22 rifle, the sights on the RB22 Compact are exceptional. Front and rear sights have fiber optic tubes, which really help when getting a sight picture. Most notable is the rear sight that is fully adjustable for windage and elevation. The elevation adjustment features a large dial well marked for “Up” and “Down” for ease of sighting in. Same on the windage; a serrated dial on the side with a slot for a screw driver makes adjustments easy. You may find a lot of higher-priced .22 rifles without adjustable sights like this.

The magazine ejector lever is large and roomy, making this action easier and the magazine itself loaded and fed well. The comb on the RB22’s stock is slightly raised compared to other stocks, meaning it allows a shooter’s cheek to weld with it and line up better on the sights. Last but not least … on the gun’s features, it comes with a threaded barrel for a silencer. If you place a suppressor on this little rifle and shoot subsonic ammo, you can really have some fun.

While I don’t think you are going to be doing much competitive shooting at 300 yards with this gun, the RB22 Compact performed well accuracy wise. With open sights, those with better eyes than mine could easily do one-inch groups at 50 yards. As with many .22 rimfires, this rifle preferred match grade ammo over cheaper ones, but the RB22 ate all of the ammunition we fed it. Some, but not all of the ammo tested on the RB22 included Eley .22LR Club, Federal Game Shok and CCI Stinger .22LR.

As I stated before, you can’t become a good shooter without a good .22 rifle to practice, plink, and use for small game hunting. You may find a better rifle for this at a better price ($209.00 MSRP), but I doubt it.

Make sure to check out the line of RB22 rimfire rifles at Rossi’s website.

About the Author

Larry Case has been a devoted outdoorsman since he was a child. He will admit to an addiction to turkey hunting (spring and fall), but refuses any treatment. He enjoys the company of turkeys and Cur dogs that are loud and people who speak the truth softly. He doesn’t consider himself an expert on anything, but has some pretty strong opinions on most everything.

Larry has a long suffering wife that has endured his hunting and fishing escapades for 30 years and two grown children who hope Dad will stop embarrassing them by wearing camo year-round and making comments about field dressing or skinning something in polite company.

He owns too many dogs, not enough shotguns and is usually scheming on a new hunting or fishing spot. Larry served 36 years as a DNR Law Enforcement Officer in West Virginia and retired with the rank of Captain.

He currently has a weekly outdoor, hunting, fishing and gun related column that appears in 8 newspapers in 5 states. He has published in “Outdoor Life,” “American Shooting Journal,” “NRA American Hunter” and “Guns and Ammo.” His website/blog is www.gunsandcornbread.com.