Mostly, it's good, cheap fun. The pistol's been 100% reliable, and I don't know how many rounds I've put through it. It's into the thousands, since sometimes I like shooting a bulk pack in a single range session. I've had the pistol about a year and a half... The only ammo I found that it didn't like was Wolf Match rifle ammo that seemed too tight for the chamber. Oh, well, it loves every single brand of filthy cheap bulk ammo I can get my hands on. I like to run plated ammo because scrubbing lead out of a barrel sucks. Even with the filthy bulk ammo, cleaning is "once in a while". I've only stripped the pistol twice since I owned it.
Being able to shoot more and more often is a good way to hone your pistol skills. I generally keep an overall slow pace, loading five in the magazines, making shots count and taking a lot of breaks. You'll get more out of your range time this way, and fatigue won't cause you to start creating bad habits. There's not much reason to dump ammo through the Ruger, since recoil control isn't an big issue with .22. The perceived recoil is actually a bit on the high side for a .22 because the bolt is pretty heavy, but still nowhere close to a defensive caliber pistol. With the Mk II, I mostly work on my marksmanship while remembering to concentrate on working the trigger properly - prep, break and reset, and even though I'm practicing, I'm still having fun doing it. Yesterday I found out it takes about 100 rounds of .22 to blow the X ring completely out of a CHL target at 10 yards. I'm sure if I'd tried harder, I could have done it faster, by shooting at parts of the target that were hanging on more than I already did, but for the most part, it was just front sight on X, fire. The Mk II is a stupid accurate pistol. More accurate than I am. When I miss, I know it's me and can usually identify the problem as the shot fires.
How accurate? When you get bored shooting a ragged hole in your target, you can switch to shooting shotgun shells that are laying against the berm... on a 25 yard range. Do your part, you'll hit them. I've tried shooting bugs off my target, but haven't quite managed to pull that one off yet (little bastards are hard to track, never going in a straight line and changing direction at random). Shooting at the score zone numbers is fun. So is shooting at the little scoring guide in the upper left corner of a CHL target. Anything to make it more of a challenge, more fun, which in turn winds up increasing your skill with the pistol, which also increases your skill with all pistols.
I like to think the Mk II has saved me a ton of money, but what it's really done is let me shoot a lot more. I definitely can't afford to run this much 9mm or .45.
Go get a .22 target pistol. Thank me later.
