A True Cowboy Gun: A Range Report on the Ruger Wrangler .22 LR

Fans of the “cowboy culture” will instantly recognize and associate the name Wrangler with a popular line of Western wear.

But clothing isn’t the only “frontier-style” product bearing the Wrangler name; it’s also been bestowed on a rimfire single-action (SA) revolver made by one of America’s Big Three handgun manufacturers. Say hello to the Ruger Wrangler .22 Long Rifle (.22 LR) revolver.

Ruger Wrangler Initial History & Specifications

Sturm, Ruger & Co. Inc. (headquartered in Southport, Connecticut) introduced the Wrangler in 2019, based on their enduringly popular Ruger Single-Six, which in turn dates back to 1953 (four years after the company was founded). As Ruger product manager Graham Rockwell said in an October 2019 interview with J. Scott Rupp of Guns & Ammo Handguns Magazine:

“Our ultimate goal was to provide yet another rugged reliable firearm to our customers at an affordable rate…With the Single-Six as our starting point, we saw an opportunity not only to use different materials but also to bring our single-action manufacturing process up to a modern level. Those two things combined are really what set the Wrangler apart from the rest of our single-action line as far as affordability.”

Those “different materials” include an aluminum alloy cylinder frame, synthetic checkered black grip panels, and a manufacturing process known as investment casting which confers the win-win benefits of being both more durable and more affordable than the manufacturing processes used by competitors such as Colt and Smith & Wesson. The guns also come factory standard with a rust-resistance and corrosion-resistant finish known as Cerakote, with color options such as black, silver, and Burnt Bronze.

Barrel length options include 3.75 inches, 4.62 inches, 6.50 inches, and 7.50 inches. The 4.62-inch version has an overall length of 10.25 inches and a weight of 30 ounces. As with the majority of revolvers, the cylinder capacity is six rounds (hence the slang term “sixgun”).

According to my colleague Peter Suciu, “As of the end of June [2020], the handgun topped the list for the best-selling revolvers to those under the age of fifty and came in second in the category—only after the hugely popular Colt Python—for shooters above the age of fifty (Source: National Shooting Sports Foundation [NSSF] data).”

Range Report and Shooting Impressions

I have thirty-five years of shooting experience under my belt, and I’ve been an actual gun owner for thirty of those years, and those of you who either know me personally and/or have read my previous firearms articles know that I’m more of a pistolero than a long gun person. As far as that pistolero experience goes, I own multiple semiautomatic pistols and double-action (DA) revolvers; in the latter category, I’m especially fond of Ruger’s GP-100 and Redhawk in .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum, respectively.

However, I have comparatively little experience with an SA revolver and have never owned one. Accordingly, I plan to remedy that in the near future by making a so-called “hogleg” my next gun purchase. Moreover, I’m fixin’ to get one in .22 caliber, since an anonymous friend of mine generously donated a giant tub of .22 ammo (mostly .22 LR, but with some .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire [WMR] thrown in for good measure; the former can be used in my beloved Beretta M9A1-22, but not the latter).

With that in mind, I recently went to the excellent XCAL indoor shooting range facility in Ashburn, Virginia, to test out their rental Wrangler; this particular specimen had a 4.62-inch bbl. and the Burnt Bronze finish. To enable my evaluation, I purchased fifty rounds of CCI Mini-Mag 22 Long Rifle Ammo 40 Grain Copper Plated Round Nose ammo and a USPSA/IPSC paper target. I divvied the course into twenty-five rounds of headshots at 7 yards and twenty-five rounds of torso shots at 25 yards, delivered from a Classic Weaver Stance.

Impressions?

It had decent accuracy, once I took “Kentucky windage” and adjusted fire for a 5 o’clock hold at both distances to make up for the fact that the gun was printing extremely high left relative to my point of aim; at 7 yards, my very first shot missed the head completely! After the adjustment, I scored twenty hits in the A-zone box and four in the C-zone of the head. At 25 yards, I got six hits in the A-zone, seven in the C-zone, and the remainder in the D-zone. (For whatever reason, USPSA/IPSC targets omit the B-zone.)

I like the fact that this gun, unlike more old-school SA wheelguns, doesn’t require coming to half-cock for loading & unloading.

It also has a decent trigger.

The bladed front and integral notch rear sights provided for an okay sight picture, but not as user-friendly as those on the DA revolvers from this same manufacturer.

The extraction of empty cartridges was a major pain! Unless you align the individual chamber with the loading gate just right, the empties will stick…and even when I did get the alignment right, I often needed to work the extractor rod multiple times to clear the damn thing, which was not only frustrating as hell but also cut into my 1-hour range reservation time limit (and mind you, I still had another gun to test afterward). Thank God for the invention of both the double-action (DA) revolver (with its swing-out cylinder) and the semiautomatic pistol alike!

Bottom line, while the Wrangler is a decent gun, it doesn’t impress me as much as the company’s DA revolvers. I’m feeling strongly inclined to try out the Heritage Rough Rider, which carries an MSRP of $207.99 —and also comes with a .22 WMR cylinder as extra “bang for the buck”—before I make my final “hogleg” buying decision.

Want Your Own?

True Gun Value states that “A RUGER WRANGLER pistol is currently worth an average price of $226.90 new and $140.27 used. The 12-month average price is $225.55 new and $140.65 used.” Sturm, Ruger’s official website lists an MSRP range of $269.00 to $279.00.

About the Author: Christian D. Orr

Christian D. Orr is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.

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