Rossi RS 22 Rifle

When I think of Brazil a few things come to mind from this South American country, I know little about. Tropical environments, Carnival, fellow contributor Einherjar (he grew up in Rio), and budget minded imported firearms of sometimes dubious quality. As such, one import rifle came into my collection here recently, during my last few weeks working at a big box store. It came as a combo with a less than stellar pistol, which I will review later this year. I got a free 22 LR rifle with it so for me the price was right, the rifle in question is the RS22 from Rossi firearms.

Details (a.k.a I could not come up with a witty title)

The RS22 is made by Rossi Firearms, by CBC, and imported into AMERICA by Braztech International. It is a semi-automatic rimfire rifle that uses a blow-back action. It features a synthetic Monte Carlo stock, as you can see here in superior OD green.  It has a matted finish with an eighteen inch free float barrel, and comes shipped with one ten round detachable magazine.

The Rossi sports a dovetail mount for a scope (something that I do plan on adding something to later on). It comes with your standard cross bolt safety, push forward magazine release.  It does come with a three dot fiber optic sight, a red front post with green in the back. The rear sight is adjustable for windage and elevation, with a set of easy to turn knobs. I will give props to Rossi here for including a front sight shroud in the design of the rifle. This protects a sensitive part, should you find yourself dropping it while making a mall run “Escape from Tarkov style.” In addition to this, it already comes drilled and tapped so that you can put on a small sling if you so choose.

• 

• 

• 

The MSRP for the rifle is on average $130 USD, but with some searching you can find the rifle on sale for around $100 USD. Spare mags were a bit of a pain to find although you can order them directly from Rossi Firearms for $20 USD with shipping.

Why else would you have 10k in .22LR lying around the house for?

Thankfully I was one of those rat bastards who, when the shipment of ammo came in every week, would snag one hundred rounds of ammo each paycheck. That being said, after several years you tend to accumulate quite the collection, so I had a varied amount of ammo to do testing with. I finally settled on some common 22 LR rounds you would find just about everywhere (pictured below).

As you can see the results were not too bad, (though I am sorely out of practice). I’d place them in the squirrel/rabbit hunting category. In total, over two months I put a little bit over five hundred rounds through the gun, doing it 20 rounds at a time. Yeah, it was a bit of a slog.

• 

• 

• 

• 

I only encountered two problems while shooting. One such problem was when I was shooting the “high velocity” 22 LR ammo, namely the CCI Stinger rounds. The picture above shows you the average group I got spread out over about three different range sessions. It was very disappointing. The second issue I came across was with the spare magazine. It would on occasion get stuck when trying to remove it. It did eventually smooth out to a point where reloading was not a problem. But still, this was worth noting. Despite all this, no matter what I ran through the gun, it still functioned well without intermittent cleaning. There is something to be said about a rifle that can do that. In case someone pushes the big red button.

Conclusions

For a cheap 22LR rifle I’m impressed with the value, especially with .22 plinkers being a saturated market.  It was decently accurate with the ammo I used, light weight, and just plain fun to shoot. I will say that yes, this rifle does indeed need a scope on it. I did end up choosing the Primary Arms CLx6 Classic 6x32mm Rifle Scope – ACSS-22LR Reticle that will be reviewed later this year. I would consider recommending this rifle for that one /k/ommando out there on a budget, or if you’re looking to get a rifle in aiding to train a new shooter.  Do consider adding the Rossi RS22 rifle to your collection.