Ask experienced revolver shooters which gun in the safe gets the most rounds and the answer is rarely the expensive one. It's the .22 — the gun that costs pennies per trigger press, teaches everything a centerfire teaches, and gets packed for every camp trip and new-shooter session. If your safe doesn't have one, here's the complete argument, and the budget-friendly lineup that answers it.
The training argument: reps are the currency
Marksmanship is built from repetitions — sight picture, press, follow-through — and rimfire mints repetitions at a rate centerfire can't approach. A brick of .22 LR delivers hundreds of full live-fire cycles for the cost of a couple of centerfire boxes, with recoil so mild it hides nothing: every flinch, every jerked press, every wandering sight shows up honestly on paper because there's no blast to blame. And a .22 revolver specifically trains the skill that makes wheelgun shooters good — the long double-action pull. That heavy, deliberate trigger stroke is the revolver's whole discipline, and running it hundreds of times per session on rimfire prices is the cheapest shooting improvement money buys. Everything transfers directly up to your .38 or .357.
The rest of the resume
New shooters. No first-timer ever built confidence on blast and recoil. A .22 revolver — mechanically transparent, visibly loaded or unloaded, and gentle — is the best introduction machine in the sport, and doubly so with a swing-out cylinder an instructor can check at a glance.
The trail and camp gun. For small game where legal, pest duty, and general woods-loafing, a rimfire revolver's uncomplaining simplicity has made it standard kit for a century. It tolerates neglect, ignores weather that would rust a prettier gun's reputation, and feeds any .22 ammo in the tin — including through fouling that chokes rimfire semi-autos.
The utility of cheap volume. A gun whose ammo cost rounds to zero simply gets shot more, and the gun that gets shot more makes you better. That's the whole flywheel.
The Pathfinder answer, in three flavors
Charter Arms' Pathfinder line packages the mission at working-class prices, and the three configurations map neatly onto the three ways people actually use a .22 revolver. The two-inch eight-shot Pathfinder is the kit-gun answer — compact enough to disappear into a pack, with eight chambers making the most of every reload; it's the version that lives in tackle boxes and camp kits. The 4.2-inch six-shot is the trainer and small-game gun — the longer sight radius pays directly in precision, making it the pick if marksmanship practice is the primary mission. And the Pathfinder Lite in alloy strips weight from the four-inch formula for the shooter who'll carry it on a belt all day in the field. Same working-grade Charter construction throughout — the expectations from our budget-revolver reviews apply — and any of the three costs less than a mid-tier optic.
Rimfire's one honest asterisk
Rimfire ignition is inherently less consistent than centerfire — bulk .22 produces occasional duds in any gun — and here the revolver holds a quiet trump card: the failure drill is pull the trigger again. The next chamber rotates in; no tap-rack, no clearing, no drama. But rimfire is also the most gun-opinionated ammo category there is, so the universal rule applies with double force: test a few boxes of a specific load in your specific gun before buying the brick. Velocity-grade distinctions matter too — and if you're weighing the magnum rimfire question, our .22 LR vs .22 WMR guide takes that fork in full.
Bottom line
The .22 revolver is the highest-yield purchase in wheelgunning: the trainer that makes every other revolver you own better, the camp gun that always comes along, and the introduction machine that mints new shooters gently. The Pathfinder line makes the entry cost almost unserious. Buy the configuration that matches your mission, find the load your gun loves, and prepare for it to out-shoot everything else in the safe — in rounds fired, and eventually in what those rounds taught you.
Frequently asked questions
Is a .22 revolver good for a first gun?
Arguably the best: minimal recoil and blast, mechanical simplicity a new shooter can see and understand, ammunition cheap enough for real practice volume, and a manual of arms that transfers directly to centerfire revolvers later.
Why choose a .22 revolver over a .22 semi-auto pistol?
The revolver runs any .22 ammo regardless of power level, shrugs off the fouling and dud-round issues that interrupt rimfire semi-autos (a dud just means pulling the trigger again), and trains the double-action pull that improves your centerfire revolver shooting.
What barrel length is best for a .22 revolver?
Match it to the mission: a two-inch snub packs smallest for kit-gun and tackle-box duty, while a four-inch barrel's longer sight radius meaningfully improves precision for training and small game. If marksmanship practice is the main job, take the four-inch.