I finally got my 22 riffle. Went for the Smith&Wesson M&P 15-22. A lot of the components are interchangeable with a real AR15.
That's cool. Should be fun to shoot, not to mention dirt cheap. You can buy .22LR in bulk and plink with it all day at the range without spending much.
True. A lot of active AR15 sport shooters get these as a second gun so they can run their drills a lot cheaper. 500 rounds is about $30 as apposed to $200 for 5.56. The gun pays for itself after a few days.
You couldn't even find .22LR from about 2011 to 2015. It still not clear what happened but there was a huge ammo shortage for those years. The prevailing theory is that demand went through the roof because doomsday preppers were buying thousands of rounds and burring them underground on the assumption that .22LR would be the currency of the future. Then, when it turnout Obama wasn't the Antichrist bent on destroying the world, the demand dropped. So $30 isn't too bad and it should get cheaper as time goes on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008–13_United_States_ammunition_shortage