The .22 Winchester Rimfire (commonly called the .22 WRF) is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 rimfire

Rimfire ammunition

A rimfire is a type of firearm cartridge. It is called a rimfire because instead of the firing pin of a gun striking the primer cap at the center of the base of the cartridge to ignite it , the pin strikes the base's rim....

 rifle

Rifle

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

 cartridge

Cartridge (firearms)

A cartridge, also called a round, packages the bullet, gunpowder and primer into a single metallic case precisely made to fit the firing chamber of a firearm. The primer is a small charge of impact-sensitive chemical that may be located at the center of the case head or at its rim . Electrically...

.

Introduced in the Winchester

Winchester Repeating Arms Company

The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American maker of repeating firearms, located in New Haven, Connecticut. The Winchester brand is today used under license by two subsidiaries of the Herstal Group, Fabrique Nationale of Belgium and the Browning Arms Company of Morgan, Utah.-...

  M1890

Winchester Model 1890

The Winchester Model 1890 is a slide-action repeating rifle produced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in the late 19th and early 20th century.-History:...

 slide

Pump-action

A pump-action rifle or shotgun is one in which the handgrip can be pumped back and forth in order to eject a spent round of ammunition and to chamber a fresh one. It is much faster than a bolt-action and somewhat faster than a lever-action, as it does not require the trigger hand to be removed from...

 rifle, it had a flat-nose slug, and is identical to the .22 Remington Special (which differed only in having a roundnosed slug). It uses a flat-based, inside-lubricated bullet

Bullet

A bullet is a projectile propelled by a firearm, sling, or air gun. Bullets do not normally contain explosives, but damage the intended target by impact and penetration...

, which differs from the outside-lube slug of the .22 Short

.22 Short

.22 Short is a variety of .22 caliber rimfire ammunition. Developed in 1857 for the first Smith and Wesson revolver, the .22 rimfire was the first American metallic cartridge....

, Long

.22 Long

.22 Long is a variety of .22 caliber rimfire ammunition. The .22 Long is the second oldest of the surviving rimfire cartridges, dating back to 1871, when it was loaded with a 29 grain bullet and 5 grains of black powder, 25% more than the .22 Short it was based on...

, LR

.22 Long Rifle

The .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridge is a long established variety of ammunition, and in terms of units sold is still by far the most common in the world today. The cartridge is often referred to simply as .22 LR and various rifles, pistols, revolvers, and even some smoothbore shotguns have...

, and Extra Long

.22 Extra Long

The .22 Extra Long is a .22 in American rimfire rifle and handgun cartridge.Introduced around 1880, the .22 Extra Long was used in Remington, Ballard, Wesson, Stevens, and later models of Winchester's M1903 and M1904 single shot bolt action rifles, as well as in Smith & Wesson revolvers.Using the...

 rounds.

When introduced, the .22WRF "was the first notable improvement in the killing power" over the .22LR, and was able to kill cleaner at up to 75 yd (70 m). It is somewhat less accurate than the .22 LR and is most suited to hunting small game such as rabbit

Rabbit

Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...

s or prairie dog

Prairie dog

Prairie dogs are burrowing rodents native to the grasslands of North America. There are five different species of prairie dogs: black-tailed, white-tailed, Gunnison's, Utah and Mexican prairie dogs. They are a type of ground squirrel, found in the United States, Canada and Mexico...

s.

A variety of Winchester, Remington

Remington

- People :* Eliphalet Remington , American firearms designer* Philo Remington , American firearms and typewriter manufacturer, son of Eliphalet Remington* Frederic Remington , American painter and sculptor...

, and Stevens

Stevens Arms

Stevens Arms was an American firearms manufacturer founded by Joshua Stevens in 1864. The company introduced the .22 Long Rifle round and made a number of rifle, shotgun, and target pistol designs before being bought by Savage Arms in 1920. After 1920, Stevens made training rifles and machineguns...

 single-shots and repeater

Repeating rifle

A repeating rifle is a single barreled rifle containing multiple rounds of ammunition. These rounds are loaded from a magazine by means of a manual or automatic mechanism, and the action that reloads the rifle also typically recocks the firing action...

 rifles were offered from 1890 onward, but new rifles are not made for this cartridge. .22 WRF ammunition is periodically offered by commercial makers for use in the old guns. It can be fired in any rifle chambered for the more powerful .22 WMR.

See also

• List of cartridges by caliber
• List of rifle cartridges
• List of rimfire cartridges
• 5 mm caliber
  5 mm caliber
  This article lists firearm cartridges which have a bullet in the to caliber range.*Length refers to the cartridge case length.*OAL refers to the overall length of the cartridge.All measurements are in mm .-Rimfire cartridges:...
  
  

Sources

• Barnes, Frank C., ed. by John T. Amber. ".22 Winchester Rimfire", in Cartridges of the World, pp. 275 & 282-3. Northfield, IL: DBI Books, 1972. ISBN 0-695-80326-3.