This week is a bit of an odd duck, as we rather intentionally bought a gun we intend to look nothing like factory in just a few weeks. But since we do have it, we thought why not take a look at it as it sits. We mean of course the Ruger 10/22 Charger, the red-headed stepchild of rimfires.
Prior to the advent of the pistol brace, this gun fit a category for me of “why?” The only plausible reason I could give to have one would be practicing for handgun hunting, like a rimfire trainer for your Thompson Contender. Seriously, it really made no sense. A bipod capable pistol, sure, I can see that. In a caliber with some reach. But 22LR being rather limited by projectile range anyway, why would I shorten it down to a pistol-only grip? And if I wanted a 22 pistol, why would I buy one that pretty much sucks to shoot from anything but a supported position?
In the modern world, does my opinion change? Oh absolutely. We all know by now that a pistol is much easier to purchase than an SBR, and requires none of the ATF nonsense if I decide to take it across state lines. And is a 10.5 inch 22LR in a usable configuration something I need in my life? Without question. Not only can I see the desire for a Charger, I looked high and low to find one.
Why? Because so many cool chassis options exist for them nowadays. We have two on hand we will be covering in the following months, and several more we are looking at. And while we could have just stuck them on a regular rifle 10/22, that loses a lot of the fun. For me at least. 22LR might be optimal from a longer barrel, and opinions range on exactly what length. But for fun, compact, and light, 10.5 is very hard to beat.
Why not just slap an aftermarket barrel onto a 10/22 and call it a pistol? Because in short, the ATF rules on that are dumb. It was settled pretty handily in United States vs Thompson Center, which went all the way to the Supreme Court. A bare receiver, or pistol that was born as a pistol, can be changed over to a rifle at will. And back to a pistol. A rifle, if you shorten the barrel and put a brace on it, remains a rifle. And therefore, an illegal SBR if you don’t have a tax stamp for it. Which is incredibly stupid, but it’s the rules. I wanted a braced pistol with a 10.5 inch barrel, so it was very important to me the receiver say “Charger”. If I had used one of my 10/22 rifles, would I likely get away with it? Yes. Is the rule stupid? Yes. Am I going to risk a felony and 10 years in jail over a $300 receiver? Absolutely not.
Looking at options, the cheapest way to handle this project was to buy a complete Charger pistol from Ruger. Bare receivers, which do exist, are about $200. A complete gun with a barrel can be had on Guns America for about $280. Considering I wasn’t trying to build a precision gun, that was a better deal all around.
Now I want to point something out if you are looking to do the same. Ruger actually sells another version of the Charger with a Picatinny rail on the back of the pistol. This means you could just buy a brace from SB tactical, mount it, and be done. We had full chassis kits already on hand, so we were willing to skip this step. The price difference is about $20, so worth doing if you haven’t already picked up an aftermarket chassis.
Since we have it, we did decide to review the Charger as a classic Charger. Which, I will confess, I find very lacking as a pistol. It is too heavy and long to handhold, I think we would all agree. Mine did come with a UTG bipod, and clearly, they intend you to use it. With the bipod attached, we are once again back to the use. Handgun hunting trainer? Sure. I can see that. It was actually rather nice to be shooting a pistol from the prone, and have it not move under recoil. Like, at all. I can also say I would rather learn the technique with a rimfire than a real handgun hunting cartridge, such as a Thompson Center 308. Having shot a 500 S&W short barrel, I also want nothing to do with a 308 caliber handgun. But to each his own.
What else is the Charger good for? Well, I have a hard time figuring that out. Since it is the same caliber, with the same 22LR range limitations, there is very little or maybe nothing the Charger does better than a rifle. If you are taking difficult shots with a rimfire, the rifle will make that easier. And if you want to use a pistol, a Ruger 22/45 or Mk IV will do it much better.
Why does the Charger even exist, in this particular configuration? Which was also the ONLY configuration until just a few years ago? I really don’t know. But the second this review was done and I slapped it in a Enoch Industries Chassis, I was glad it did. A simple brace adaptor changes one of the most bland guns I have ever picked up into one of the most fun. This means I have to wholeheartedly endorse the Ruger Charger as the best donor barreled action on the market today.
Before all of the active shooting sports existed, more static shooting competitions were a thing. Such as Silhouette and the more diminutive version, Rimfire (Smallbore) Silhouette. I guess toppling chickens and rams got to be too boring, so the Charger started to be looked at as the author perceived it, a curiosity. With a 10 1/2″ bbl. and the included bipod, all one had to do was add a long eye-relief handgun scope (red dots weren’t really here yet) and voila an excellent semi-auto rimfire machine perfect for knocking over pigs & turkeys. If there’s any little kid left in you, it’s still awesome with a binary trigger and a drum mag to pretend you’re in Belgium circa 1944 behind a Ma Deuce! Yeah, I like my Charger.
Off Topic.
Looks like GAD “unsubscribed” me. I was never confronted, my unforgivable transgressions never enumerated.
Guess you guys did not care for my views on another regime change by the infallible the Globalists.
I Just hope someday you bogus supporters of “freedom” and “liberty” understand that this war that the Biden State Department wanted is all at the direction of George Soros. Antony Blinken is a George Soros shill. His father Donald Blinken is running the pervy “opened society” in eastern Europe. To me these are the bad guys. They are the agents provocateur that want sponsored the “dignity revolutions” and the “pussy riots” in Russia and tear down the Orthodox Church while in the US they expose 6 year old children to drag queens.
I’m glad to be an enemy of cencors like you guys.
Definitely didn’t unsubscribe you.
A few weeks ago the NRA won a partial but important victory over NY AG L. James when a suit was tossed to for dissolution of the organization. I figured GAD would follow up on the story since the topic was previously covered by the digest. At some point I noted that I not received an e-mails from GAD for an unusual time period and thought that maybe cancel culture struck again. I did a quick search and found GAD was still online throughout. I checked my new, old and recently deleted e-mails and there was nothing from GAD for around three weeks or more.
I will take Mr. Blannelberry at his word with the note that I was not “unsubscribed.” Last Friday somehow the e-mails were back. Whatever happened was NOT directly caused by me. At one point I have seen GAD use the tech advantage to make an unwelcome but civil exchange go away and dissent was silenced “Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.”
So, I was thinking on principle I should just “unsubscribe” myself like another gent did when he became unwelcome. Instead, maybe I will leave my options opened and if GAD wants me gone then all they have to do is make it official and say so or push whatever buttons all tech masters and third parties may have.
Stick around. Big tech is not our friend.
OK
I bought the base charger a few years ago and it’s unquestionably the pistol that gets the most attention on the range. I upgraded to the Ruger BX trigger pack, added a KAK Shockwave Blade 2.0 brace and recently upgraded to a Vortex Gen. 2 Spitfire Prism scope.
Adding a suppressor to the end of the pistol is where this shines. I can ring steel easy at 100 yards and can cover my shots with a quarter at 25 yards. It’s quieter than a pellet gun.
Clay, Elmer has explained why and what the Charger pistol is for. I guess all those years in SF Ranger retirement home made you SAF.
Thanks Dave – I was confused by his article, because what I did to my Charger is fairly common as I understand.
You can leave the bipod on or take it off, it works pretty good from a bench and is OK as sort of a grip shooting off-hand. You can’t hardly shoot 25 round mags prone and have to work them in on a bench. 15 rounders work good for both, but I still like the BX25.
Pro-tip. Mine loves CCI standard velocity and it’s subsonic. High velocity makes a crack pretty often at that barrel length. The standard velocity rounds are waxy and will gum up my bolt pretty fast with a suppressor attached. It needs to be run oily and cleaned regular.