Yee, and I can’t possibly stress this enough, haaa.
What if you took the Ruger Single Six, made it cheaper and made it in 22LR? Well, you’d get the Ruger Wrangler. The Ruger Wrangler is an inexpensive 6-shot, single-action, 22LR revolver made in the US. Is it any good? The Ruger Wrangler goes for around $180 to $250 in the US, while it goes for $250-350 in Canada (not anymore, you can’t buy handguns here anymore).
Ruger Wrangler Specifications:
- Cerakoat finish in black, silver, bronze, and all sorts of other weird colors
- 22LR (or 22 Long or 22 Short, the cylinder doesn’t care)
- 1.9lbs (850 grams)
- 4.6″ barrel
- Fixed, non-adjustable sights
- Aluminum frame
- Grips compatible with Ruger Single Six grips
Quality
Yeah, it’s a cheap 22 handgun, but the fit and finish is pretty nice all things considered. The cerakoat on this bronze model looked pretty great for a $200-ish revolver. You can see that they saved money on some parts: a few plastic bits here, some cheap springs there, but it still looks and functions great.
Shooting the Ruger Wrangler
Shooting the Ruger Wrangler is . . .slow. You cock the hammer on every shot, you load rounds into the cylinder one at a time through the loading gate, and you eject empties one at a time too.
I measured my trigger pull at 4 lbs which isn’t the lightest single action, but at least it’s crisp and short.
The sights are non adjustable, so hopefully they’re close enough for the kind of shooting you do.
Can Kids shoot the Ruger Wrangler?
Overall, it’s . . .fun. It might be hard for really little kids to open the loading gate to load the gun but if you open it for them, they can unload empties and reload the gun. The hammer is fairly easy to cock: 9 or 10 year olds can do it with 2 thumbs, any older than that and they should be able to do it with 1 thumb. You’ll likely have to remind them to keep their finger off the trigger as they cock the hammer.
The gun’s also got a bit of weight, which is good because it doesn’t recoil too much in their hands.
Safety
The Ruger Wrangler uses a transfer bar mechanism. Because it uses a transfer bar, you can leave the hammer down on a loaded cylinder and there’s no risk of bumping the hammer and the gun going off.
You can’t open the loading gate with the hammer back and you can’t pull the hammer back if the loading gate is open. This is a safety feature as well because you can’t put the gun in a dangerous condition while you’re loading or unloading it.
They include a little plastic cylinder block which makes for a quick way to safety the revolver and keep a really little kid from using it, but it won’t stop bigger kids. Really the only way to lock the gun from kids is to remove the cylinder and put a cable lock through the gaping hole or put a trigger lock on it.
Can you dry fire the Ruger Wrangler? It says you can in the manual, but there are also a few people on YouTube who have experienced some peening which made burrs on the inside of the cylinder lip and they have not been able to load rounds until they filed off the burr. I tried on mine and didn’t see any peening or damage to the cylinder.
Can you fan the Ruger Wrangler? “Fanning” is when you hold the trigger down and slap the hammer back for rapid fire. Yes it works.
Cleaning: Open the loading gate, press the sideways button in front of the cylinder, pull the rod that the cylinder rotates on out of the front, then the cylinder comes right out the right side of the action. Clean the barrel, scrub the leady/carbony parts of the cylinder, good to go.
Summary
It’s a $200-ish dollar Ruger 22LR revolver. Lots of fun, decent quality, good brand name, comes in normal or whacky colors, what more do you need to hear? As a fun little handgun to take to the range and introduce new shooters on, it’s fantastic.
