A thing I struggle with is the balance between cost and training. 22lr is really good for some things. Gun handling, transitions practice, ready-ups, long-range-at-short-range, etc. I spend a large part of my year shooting 22lr with the kids on a regular basis. A hundred rounds of 22lr is a bit over five bucks (at current prices). A hundred rounds of 223 is more like $25 (if I reload it).

I shoot a fair bit of outlaw falling steel, and a gun with a reliable high-cap magazine would be terrifically useful for that. Given that I have an M4-22 Elite, being able to use my mags with it would also be great. Enter the Tippmann M4-22 RCR.

I came into this reasonably familiar with the M4-22 from my time as an SASP coach. They have a very good reputation for reliability and not being ammo sensitive. They’re also nice because they take roughly the same furniture as a regular AR-15, and have the same manual of arms. What is pretty neat about the Tippmann guns in particular is that they make use of the buffer tube and a buffer/spring assembly inside it. This gives them a much more AR-like recoil impulse, and probably contributes to their high reliability. Combine all that with a very smart, robust magazine design, and it’s really something of a wonder that these guns are as cheap as they are ($500-$600). Keep in mind that these guns utilize aluminum receivers, too.

If you follow me a bit, you also probably know I have a fleet of tricked-out 10/22s already that my kids use for SASP. So why the M4-22 platform? The answer is simple: it has reliable high-cap magazines. The 10/22’s BX-25 magazines, even with the “shell fix”, are just not reliable enough for sustained usage. I have literally never seen one not choke eventually, even using high quality ammunition like CCI Mini-Mags. The 10rd rotary magazines are acceptable, but the 10/22 platform just doesn’t do well with high-caps.

I’ve experimented with CMMG-style conversions extensively. They have much the same problem. They sometimes come close to good enough, especially if you stuff them full of aftermarket upgrades, but never quite make it there. My suspicion is that the extreme feed angle is a big problem for them. I also find that they get dirty so fast that function is inevitably compromised within about 300-400 rounds. It could be some of the newer ones work better, but I’ve yet to see it.

The Tippmann magazines, on the other hand, are a work of art. They look similar to AR-15 magazines (a bit heavier), including fitting in the magwell, but utilize a shell design to give you the best of all worlds: easy loading, easy carrying, and surprising durability. They also utilize steel feed lips, so they’re probably not going to be double-feeding anytime soon. To top it all off, they present the cartridges at a very, very nice horizontal angle to the chamber that makes it even less likely they’ll misfeed. Did I mention they have a bolt hold open feature and lock open when empty? Really, my only request for improvement would be a 40rd magazine for longer stages. That said, you can reload pretty fast (unlike a 10/22), so it’s not critical.

(If you are wondering whether these will work in a CMMG-style conversion setup, the answer is I’m pretty sure they don’t, they sit too high. I think it would be fascinating to see if someone could come up with a conversion bolt that could use them, though.)

I purchased a new M4-22 RCR model with a dealer-installed Elftmann trigger. The RCR, unlike the Elite, is built for competition. The RCR differs from the rest of the line in that it has a front charging handle (in addition to a rear ambi charging handle), dual firing pin bolt, and a short barrel that utilizes a welded lightweight tubular extension to make it to 16″ length (much like the Wiland and TACCOM barrels). It has a polymer handguard (still reasonably solid), and is very lightweight (just over 4lbs). It comes with the same good pistol grip, OK sights, and mediocre stock that the Elite comes with. I thought it was really rather odd that it didn’t come with an ambi-safety to go with the ambi-charging-handle, though.

I really didn’t need much to make the RCR race-ready – I just threw a spare MRDS on a Scalarworks LEAP/04 lower 1/3 co-witness mount and swapped the stock to a MFT Minimalist. I may add a laser and an offset sight in the future, but I consider that to be somewhat low priority given what sort of matches I usually shoot with rimfire rifles. Keep in mind that part of the front of the handguard is thinned out for the forward charging handle, so you will not be able to mount larger devices like MFALs up there.

I did run into issues with the RCR early on – constant light strikes. The gun had about 30% light strikes with Federal Automatch and CCI Mini-Mags, which is pretty substantial. Tippmann believed this to be a trigger problem, and since it was an authorized part installed by an authorized dealer, they took the gun back on warranty to take a look.

Greg at Tippmann was very accessible, and he was quite interested in quickly solving the problem. While I wasn’t necessarily thrilled that the problem existed, I was hopeful we could deal with this quickly. Tippmann identified a hammer spring configuration issue, resolved it, test-fired the gun, and sent it back to me within a couple weeks.

Unfortunately, this didn’t quite solve things, and the gun had some short-stroking issues. Greg was very responsive, and sent me a new charging handle to try. The RCR has some fairly significant design changes from the previous M4-22 models, and it seems as if there are some bugs still being worked out.

The new charging handle helped, but I found myself unable to load the first round off the top of a magazine into the gun – it was getting hung up going into the chamber, even if there were only two rounds in the mag. There was some sort of customer service personnel changeup SNAFU that resulted in a couple weeks of missed emails; I eventually called them, got acquainted with Corey, and got things moving again. After swapping the original FCG back in, I sent the gun back to Tippmann a second time. (For the record, this same Elftmann trigger ran great in my M4-22 Elite after I rehomed it.)

I got it back. Still light strikes. Maddening. Feeding and cycling seemed to be pretty good, though, which was encouraging. I procured a PDI BLK trigger at Tippmann’s recommendation, boxed it all up, and sent it back… and I noted that if they wanted to make me the guinea pig for a single firing pin bolt solution for the RCR, I was game.

The gun came back, and the third time seemed to be the charm. It came with a single firing pin bolt, pretty nice trigger. I ran magazines of CCI SV and Fed Automatch through it with fantastic results.

Now that I was past the months-long saga of getting this thing fixed, I was loved the gun. Just like the Elite, I was quite impressed by the newly-found reliability, to include both cycling and locking back on empty magazines. As long as I gave it some lube beforehand, it was 100% with any ammo I tried (which was CCI Mini-Mags, CCI Standard Velocity, and Federal Automatch). My younger daughter was a huge fan of the balance of this gun, and found that it worked much better than a comparably heavy 10/22 due to how the weight was closer to her shoulder.

If you’re looking for a whole-hearted recommendation to buy the M4-22 RCR, that’s not coming right this moment. There’s a lot to love about this gun, but the fact is that my gun took months to get fixed and I have a friend who had similar problems out of the box with an RCR months later. This makes me think that it’s still an immature product in some ways. If you’re looking for a gun that will just work, I’d be thinking hard about one of the Pro models with a fluted barrel and a polymer handguard, perhaps swapping it to the RCR’s ultralight barrel later on. I took a gamble on the RCR, and it took a long time to pay off. My gut feeling is that the decision to go to a dual firing pin induced a lot of the light strike issues, and that they’re still trying to figure out the balance between the springs, firing pin extrusion, and the pressure generated by the (de facto) shorter barrel. This is a problem that 10/22s also have when going to shorter barrels, but I think the simpler operating system makes it easier to sort out the problems. (Credit where credit is due: the M4-22 is somewhat more forgiving of ammo variances than my Wiland Quad-Bore barrel setup, so I do think the M4-22 platform is overall the better designed at this point.)

Here’s the message to Tippmann: I love your products, and even though this wasn’t necessarily a full-throated endorsement, I’m still a fan and a customer for life. You went all-out to make it right for me, up to and including giving me what I assume was a custom (or prototype?) bolt and installing an aftermarket trigger to solve my issues. That’s serious customer service, and it’s something to be proud of. A lot of other companies probably would have fallen back on blaming me for these problems, regardless of whether I really caused them. Taking ownership of the situation was very impressive, and modeled behavior that the industry should follow.