By Mike Schoby
Every man should own at least one high-quality .22 LR pistol, and he should be proficient with it. My dad was not a handgun guy and only owned one handgun—a Colt Woodsman he acquired when he was a teenager. It always sat in his dresser drawer, never fired. One day we took it to the range and I was shocked to find out he was a hell of a shot.
“I said I don’t like handguns, not that I couldn’t shoot one.” was his only remark (long before Quigley uttered a similar line.)
Shooting Boxers–A Classic Case for the 22 LR
Ernest Hemmingway also owned and carried multiple Colt Woodsmans and wrote “…get a permit to carry one and then drop around to Abercrombie and Fitch and buy a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, Woodsman model, with a five-inch barrel…standing in one corner of a boxing ring with a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, shooting a bullet weighing only 40 grains and with a striking energy of 51 foot pounds at 25 feet from the muzzle, I will guarantee to kill either [boxer] Gene [Tunney] or Joe Louis before they get to me from the opposite corner.”
As fantastic as the Colt Woodsman is, the semi-auto rimfire pistol has evolved. For my generation, the choice in rimfire handguns was simple—a Browning Buckmark or a Ruger Mark II. I picked the Buckmark as both were equally accurate, but it was so much easier to disassemble and clean the Buckmark. The Ruger Mark II was a notorious pain in the ass to disassemble.
Rimfire Reality
In college, working at a gun shop, customers would come in with a rattling paper lunch sack of parts. I’d look up from whatever I was working on and say, “Ruger 22?”
“Yup,” they would respond with a sheepish look. I’d reassemble it for six-pack.
Today all that has changed. With the Ruger Mark IV and 22/45 frames, push a single button on the rear of the frame and the entire upper lifts up and off. Pull the bolt out of the rear and you have full access to swab everything out, which on 22s is mandatory—especially when shooting suppressed.
Of the two modern variants, I believe the 22/45 is far and away the best frame of all semi-auto pistols Ruger ever produced, starting with their first Standard auto pistol in 1949. It is the perfectly shaped 1911 grip design, which points naturally and takes 1911 aftermarket grips—mine has Hogue Overmolds on it.
Volquartsen Mamba Mentality
Volquartsen made its bones offering accurizing parts for Ruger pistols (and they still sell a lot of them today) before offering complete pistols. When the uneducated are first introduced to a Volquartsen the price tag alone often scares them. So, what makes a Volquartsen double the price of a pretty damn nice factory Ruger? As in the case of cars, watches and women…guns are no different—you pay a lot more for the final few percentage points inching toward perfection.
The Mamba line starts with a Ruger frame. But from there cool magic happens. The frames are retrofitted with Volquartsen’s accurizing kit, which is comprised of a CNC-machined disconnector, target hammer, hammer bushing, target sear, and target trigger with plunger and spring. It also comes with pretravel and overtravel adjustments. The frame is then fitted with Volquartsen’s magazine releases and their magazines, increasing reliability.
The other major difference between stock Ruger and Volquartsen is the LLV Competition upper. Essentially this is a stainless steel match barrel shrouded in anodized aluminum. The bolt riding inside is a slicked up piece of work. Coated in DLC (Diamond Like Coating), it doesn’t collect carbon and remains slick and reliable through thousands of rounds of shooting. The extended cocking knob is easy to use under all conditions.
Shooting The Mini Mamba
The Mamba line can be had in 6-, 4-, and 3-inch variants. With the ease of suppressor ownership today, I chose the 3-inch “Mini Mamba” model. With a short suppressor installed such as the SilencerCo Switchback 22 or the Rugged Mustang22, it makes for a “normal-sized” overall-length pistol that fits a variety of holsters and doesn’t make you looks like Bart in “Blazing Saddles” every time you whip it out.
The Mamba comes from the factory with a green fiber-optic front sight and a fully adjustable match-grade rear sight, but since the upper also sports an integrated Picatinny rail section for easy red dot mounting, I choose an Aimpoint Micro H-2. An Aimpoint ACRO or a Trijicon RMR would be an equally fitting addition.
Price: $1,400-1,800.
Pros: Mambas take an already great platform and make it better.
Cons: You will only cry once.
