Plinkin’ Guns

There are plenty of great firearms choices for plinking fun and you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg. For youngsters, Keystone Sporting Arms makes several models of youth .22 rifles under their Cricket and Chipmunk brands. Savage and Rossi both make nice rifles at a plinkin’ price point and one of my favorite plinkers, the Marlin 60, has been in continuous production since 1960.

If you want to start killing soda cans with handguns, the options are nearly limitless. Heritage makes a line of inexpensive .22 revolvers and the Ruger Wrangler is both wildly popular and a passel of rootin’ tootin’ cowboy fun! Kids love them, even 60- or 70-year-old kids. Of course, you can always ramp it up with Ruger’s Mark IV series and 22/45s are excellent plinkin’ pistols, along with their SR-22 pistols and LCR revolvers which are well-suited for small hands.

Smith & Wesson's M&P line is well represented in .22 caliber in both full-size and compact models while Smith’s Victory Model and the Browning Buck Mark are also wonderful for plinkers. There are also imported western-style revolvers from Taylor’s, Uberti Chiappa and others. This past year Taurus introduced the TX22 semi-automatic .22 and GLOCK introduced the G44 .22. These two handguns mimic mid-size 9mms, making them good trainers — and just fun to shoot, which is one of the main reasons for plinking in the first place!