The Rimfire Report: Musing Rimfire At SHOT 2025

Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report! This ongoing series is all about the rimfire firearm world and all of the different types of guns, gear, ammo, and accessories that come out of it! If you’re a rimfire junkie like myself, SHOT 2025 seemed to be full of plenty of new offerings as well as improvements to old ones. As someone who straddles both the written world of the blog here, as well as TFBTV and TFBTV Showtime, I typically don’t get as much time to wander the floor as I have in years past. I did however get to see a whole bunch of new Rifmire stuff just doing our show interviews, and I thought it might be cool today to give you some of my thoughts on some of the stuff I saw, where I think it’ll take us, and what reviews you might be able to expect from me throughout 2025 and beyond.

More Rimfire Report @ TFB:

• The Rimfire Report: CCI Clean-22 Steel Challenge 40-grain - Part 1
• The Rimfire Report: Winchester Super-X Power Point 40gr RNHP
• The Rimfire Report: Remembering Karl VanKeuren of Crazy Ivan LLC

The Rimfire Report: Musing Rimfire At SHOT 2025

Everyone Loves Carbon Fiber Now

Carbon fiber barrels used to be a pretty rare sight - even on centerfire rifles. However, the up-front cost to roll wrap, or sleeve a rimfire barrel has probably crept down quite a bit with more widespread adoption of the technology, and now we have people like BSF barrels and many more making super lightweight carbon-fiber rimfire barrels much more common. This year not only did Angstadt Arms release a new lightweight carbon-fiber combo in the way of their new Volquartsen X Angstadt Ultralight rifle, but even Ruger has decided to come out with their own in-house carbon fiber sleeved barrel for customers to take advantage of.

Carbon fiber has a number of advantages that might make them worth picking up the least of which is making them look cool - I happen to really like the look of carbon fiber on guns and even though it's not always the best choice of material for all parts - when it comes to reducing weight, it often turns out to be a more cost-effective method over barrel fluting. A secondary benefit of carbon fiber is that it tends to dissipate heat more efficiently, thus keeping the barrel cooler for extended life. This also means that you can often delete a traditional handguard on a 10/22 and instead just hold the carbon fiber-sleeved barrel - even when fired rapidly, they tend only to heat up till they’re warm to the touch.

Americans Are Desperately Trying to Improve the Ammo

If you’re a listener of the TFB Behind the Gun Podcast, you’ll know that I recorded an episode with competitive shooter and industry inside Wade Reed about some new ammo he has helped develop. While it's still mostly under wraps, I’ve had the opportunity to test out some of this new ammo which includes new propellants and bullet coatings which drastically reduces the amount of lead and carbon fouling you’ll see inside of your rimfire guns. If this stuff makes it to market, and at a price comparable to CCI Mini-Mags, I think it’ll be a good step in the right direction in getting more good rimfire ammo to the American market.

I think there is a clear precedent for this as Winchester is already doing the same thing but taking an entirely different approach - instead developing an entirely new cartridge that requires new guns, probably new magazines, and probably a whole new section on your ammo shelf to store it with your other rimfire ammo. I personally don’t believe .21 Sharp is going to go anywhere but it’s worth noting that someone is at least trying. Basically what I’m saying is that it seems that the industry is finally ready to address the “American Rimfire ammo problem” and as a result, we might start seeing cleaner, more accurate, and overall better quality ammo coming soon.

22 Mag Options are Rising

I used to have to rack my brain for 22 Magnum offerings and it's part of the reason I’ve never kept a copious amount of 22 WMR on my shelf to begin with. However, with one or two releases in the last year that I can remember well (that being the NAA Sentinel in 22 Magnum, and the Walther WMP), no one has really bothered to put out any new guns in the magnum rimfire cartridge. However this year Bear Creek Arsenal showed off their BC-202 22 Magnum 10/22 pattern rifle which if it turns out to run well would be an attractive choice for magnum shooters. With a threaded stainless steel bull barrel, that rifle might become a varmint hunter's new favorite.

If anything all of the new stuff at SHOT 2025 even some honorable mentions like the revamped Taurus PT-22 pocket pistol (the TUC-22), or Beretta’s updated 20X Bobat just demonstrate that the guns coming out are to get you in on the ground floor, on a budget, and while having as much fun as possible. We can even see this having a ripple effect in the suppressor world just by the sheer amount of new suppressor options there are out there including some almost 100% carbon fiber offerings like those from Carbon Research.

Thoughts for 2025 and Beyond

While I overall thought SHOT 2025 was a pretty “slow” year for gun releases in general, I found that there was plenty of rimfire stuff I not only saw myself but had to actually go through the posts from that week here on the blog just to see what I had missed altogether. This indicates to me that the rimfire portion of the industry is alive and well, and has new shooters coming in who want and or need anything ranging from traditional lever actions like the ones from Henry and Rossi to competition-oriented guns like some new offerings coming out from Beretta, as well as Bergara and TANDEMKROSS.

If there is anything that you guys saw from the show that you want to explore in more detail, please let me know in the comments or by reaching out to me on Instagram! I’d love to hear your thoughts on everything you saw, how you think it’ll help or hurt the market, and what your favorite releases were from this year. Do you think there are any sleeper products out there right now that we completely missed here at TFB? Let me know and thanks as always for stopping by to read The Rimifre Report! We’ll see you again next week!