So… I finally bought that .22 pistol that I’ve been talking about needing to do for a while on the way back from the scifi con yesterday. After considerable research and lots of thought between the Beretta NEOS and Ruger MkIII, I went with neither.
Instead, I picked up this:
A Browning Buck Mark with a 5.5″ slab side bull barrel and the upgraded grips. I went with it because most folks seem to consider it on par with the Ruger, and, from what I could find, I could get this for about $100 less than a comparable Ruger. It came with a hard case, one magazine, one of those stupid cable locks that will never see any use from me, and enough safety and warning booklets to kill 3 trees.
I didn’t get back in quite enough time to try it out at the range, but I will say the rubber grips (their “Ultragrip RX” grips) definitely matches my hand wonderfully. As I’ve commented before, I wish there were larger caliber pistols that had grips like this instead of just adding a bunch of stippling and calling it a day.
I got my wife the ruger sr22 pistol and she loves it. The da/sa is the best part for her.
One of the nice things about revolvers are all the nice grips you can get for them. Big + for me is there made out of that old fashioned stuff. Steel
Yeah, my other .22 handgun is a Heritage Arms Rough Rider, which I love. Biggest issues are that 1. the non-target sights on it are difficult to use, and 2. There’s a pretty big difference in trigger time behind a semi-auto pistol and an SA revolver.
My buddy just bought a Buckmark URX Practical because he wanted to get a Ruger, because a friend told him they were good, and which I and another friend told him were garbage. I own a NEOS and I much prefer that, as it is better than the only Ruger Standard Model I ever owned. He saw the Buckmark and fell in love with it. I don’t like the magazine release, but I do like the manual safety better than the one on the NEOS. It does have very stiff controls that need to be worked in quite a bit, and a damndable magazine safety which make me prefer the NEOS over it, but I still like it a lot more than the offerings by Ruger.
Having owned both Rugers and Brownings, a Buckmark may not be built quite as indestructibly as a Ruger, but for some reason I shoot them a bit better. Either the trigger or the grip works better for me on the Buckmark. Enjoy!