Search for a .22 Magnum rifle and very few of the answers are semi-automatic. The catalog holds 263 long guns chambered for the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, and 150 of them are bolt actions. Semi-automatics account for 46. Most of that gap comes from the cartridge, and so does the unusual engineering inside the semi-autos that do exist.
What the cartridge is
Winchester introduced the .22 WMR in 1959, and the first Winchester rifle to chamber it was the Model 61 slide action the following year. The case is a lengthened version of the old .22 Winchester Rimfire, 1.055 inches long, and it carries a jacketed bullet of .224 inch diameter rather than the heeled, lubricated lead bullet of the .22 Long Rifle. A 40 grain load leaves a rifle barrel at roughly 1,875 feet per second and a handgun at about 1,500. Much of what the cartridge gains over the .22 LR depends on having a long barrel behind it.
Winchester designed the .22 WMR as a small game and pest cartridge rather than a target or training round. The rifles chambered for it lean toward field guns as a result, and plenty of them wear the heavy barrels and adjustable triggers of a centerfire varmint rifle.
Why the semi-autos are the hard part
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A .22 LR semi-automatic is simple: the case is short, the pressure spike is brief, and a plain blowback bolt held shut by a spring and its own mass is enough. The .22 WMR does not fit that arrangement. Its case is long and thin, and the slow powder that gives it velocity keeps pressure up for longer. If the bolt starts moving while the case is still pressed against the chamber walls, the case sticks, tears or fails to extract.
Makers have found three ways around it, and each shows up in the catalog:
Approach
How it works
Example in the catalog
Delayed blowback
A lug holds the bolt shut until pressure falls
Savage A22 Magnum
Fluted or modified chamber
Gas flows along the case and breaks its grip on the chamber wall
Kel-Tec PMR-30 pistol family
Straight blowback with a heavy bolt and a strong spring
Mass and spring force buy time
Kel-Tec CMR-30
Savage says of its A22 Magnum that an interrupter lug locks the bolt until peak pressure has passed, which also serves as a firing pin block. Kel-Tec's CMR-30 is a straight blowback carbine with a fixed barrel. Kel-Tec's pistol, the PMR-30, uses a fluted chamber to prevent extraction trouble.
Some makers gave up. Ruger's 10/22 Magnum is out of production, and the catalog does not list a single one. Remington built the Model 597 in .22 WMR from 1997 until 2019, when the whole 597 line was discontinued. Listings for the 597 Magnum still turn up describing it as a bolt action, which it never was.
What the market actually builds
By action, the set breaks down like this:
Action
Rifles
Largest makers
Bolt action
150
Savage 39, Ruger 24, Browning 14, Christensen 13
Semi-automatic
46
Magnum Research 12, Rossi 7, Kel-Tec 5, Tippmann 5
Lever action
40
Henry 31
Break action, single-shot and combination guns
23
Chiappa 11, Savage 8
Pump action
3
Rossi 2, Henry 1
One Volquartsen record has no action recorded and is left out of the table.
Most of the bolt guns come from families a .22 LR buyer already knows. Savage's 93 and B22 Magnum lines alone make up 39 records, Ruger's American Rimfire and Precision Rimfire 24, and Browning's T-Bolt 14. The T-Bolt is a straight-pull action, so it gets some of a semi-automatic's speed while the shooter's hand, not the cartridge, opens the bolt.
The Hammerli Force B1 is also a straight-pull rifle, although listings sometimes file it as a semi-automatic. It feeds from Ruger 10/22 pattern magazines, and its barrels swap between .22 LR and .22 WMR without tools.
The semi-automatic shelf is smaller and more mixed. Magnum Research's MagnumLite rifles are the largest group at 12 records. Rossi's RS22 is the budget entry. Tippmann's M4-22 puts the cartridge into an AR-15 pattern rifle, and Kel-Tec's CMR-30 into a compact carbine with a 30 round magazine. Most of the rest are Volquartsens, CZ 512s and Savage A22 Magnums.
If you want a semi-automatic, read the specific rifle's reputation with the specific ammunition you plan to use. Each maker solved the extraction problem its own way, and they do not all like the same loads. See the .22 WMR semi-automatic rifles page for what is listed.
Lever actions are mostly Henry
Henry accounts for 31 of the 40 lever-action records, from the brass-framed Golden Boy to the newer H1 series. Rossi's Rio Bravo, Savage's Revel and Chiappa's LA322 make up the rest. The lever-action chamberings piece linked below covers tube magazines in detail. In short, a .22 WMR tube holds fewer rounds than the same rifle in .22 LR because the cartridge is longer.
A combination gun pairs a rimfire rifle barrel with a shotgun barrel on one break-action frame. Savage's Model 42 pairs .22 WMR over .410, and Chiappa's M6 folding survival gun pairs .22 WMR with 12 or 20 gauge. Chiappa's Little Badger is a folding single-shot, and its Little Sharps and Winchester's 1885 Hunter are single-shots built on falling-block designs. Together these single-shots and combination guns make up 23 records.
Barrel length, and what it buys
Of the 239 records that state a barrel length, 62 fall between 18 and 19 inches and 52 between 16 and 17 inches, making those the two most common sizes. Another 53 records sit under 18 inches. The velocity figure most people quote for the cartridge comes from a rifle barrel, and it drops by several hundred feet per second out of a handgun, so a short carbine gives up some of the reach the cartridge is bought for. Barrels in the 20 to 22 inch range are common on the bolt guns built for pest control, where that reach is the point.
.22 WMR or .17 HMR
The .17 HMR is the .22 WMR's own offspring. Hornady necked the .22 WMR case down to hold a .172 inch bullet for its 2002 introduction, and because the case is the same underneath, a barrel change was enough to convert most .22 WMR rifles. That is why so many of the rifles here are also sold in .17 HMR, from the Savage 93 to the Henry Golden Boy.
The .17 HMR shoots flatter with a much lighter bullet. The .22 WMR carries a heavier bullet that many hunters prefer on larger small game and on anything they want to stop at close range. The .17 HMR bolt-action rifles page holds 186 records, which is more than either .22 WMR bolt tag.
Reading a listing
Check the action against the model. Every Savage A22 is an autoloader, while the 93 and B22 are bolt guns. The A22 Magnum Pro Varmint, with its heavy barrel, is still an autoloader.
A Marlin X7 is a centerfire rifle. Rimfire Marlin bolt guns in .22 WMR are the XT-22 family, and listings sometimes title them as X7s.
A title reading ".22 LR/.22 WMR" on a rifle usually means a switch-barrel gun like the Force B1, not a single barrel that fires both.
Nick Sawinyh - Nick Sawinyh is a father, husband, hobby farmer, and gun enthusiast from Kentucky. He founded GunsNation and writes most of what appears on this blog.
