Ten-Shot Revolver Fun for Plinking, Good for Training and an Able Self-Defense Gun.
Story by Frank Jardim Photos by F.J.G. JardimYou’ll never regret buying a quality .22LR pistol. With their low recoil and report, they are less likely to scare away new shooters before they have a chance to realize how fun shooting is as a hobby and sport. When ammo prices skyrocket, they’ll always be your most economical handgun to shoot, whether it’s sniping at toy plastic army men from the dollar store or eliminating threats to your garden. However, they’re not all fun and games; .22LR handguns have serious training applications too.Some manufacturers – like Colt, Smith & Wesson and Beretta – make .22LR models of their centerfire pistols, ideal for self-defense training. The new King Cobra Target .22LR from Colt’s Manufacturing is built on the same frame size and has the same action used in their .38 Special and .357 Magnum King Cobra, Cobra and Viper handguns. In the best-case scenario, you want to train with a .22LR handgun that’s identical to the centerfire model you prefer, equipped with the same stocks, sights and barrel length. That way the muscle memory you develop practicing your draw, hold and handling will work for you 100 percent. You can use the same holsters too.
Forty years ago, I learned a lot of the prerequisites of double-action revolver shooting by practicing with a .22LR S&W Model 17, a K-frame essentially identical to their standard medium-frame .38 Special/.357 Magnum service guns. I thought this .22 would be the gun that my son would master double-action revolver shooting with, but it’s now a genuine antique collectible worth a small fortune, and new ones seem to sell for about $1,100. The new Colt King Cobra Target is arguably a better shooting gun than the S&W ever was, has a 10-shot cylinder instead of six, and retails for around $870 based on a survey of online sellers. This Colt is the pistol that my son will learn on.
COLT GOT BACK in the revolver market in 2017 when they reintroduced the popular .38 Special Cobra. However, this was no re-release of a legacy product. It was a completely new gun. The lean proportions of the original compact, six-shot Colt D-frame Cobra remained, but its signature lightweight aluminum frame was gone. The new Cobra was stainless steel and was a better, if heavier, gun. In 2019, Colt reintroduced the .357 Magnum King Cobra, also based on their new Cobra frame. Its solid rib and full underlug barrel made it look like a miniature of the original King Cobra, the latter originally built on the larger and heavier Colt V-frame.The .22LR King Cobra Target model soon followed. With its 4.25- or 6-inch ventilated rib, full underlug barrel, it resembles a miniature Python. It’s a classy gun. Parts fit and overall finish on this stainless steel gun are very well done. With the exception of the blued steel sights and satin matte-finished stainless trigger, hammer, cylinder latch and upper surfaces of the barrel and frame, the gun is highly polished.Though Colt calls this finish “semi bright,” it’s actually shinier than most bright nickel-plated guns and easier to clean than matte-finished stainless.Comfortable one-piece, soft Hogue rubber over mold finger groove grips with Colt medallions molded in are standard. A palm swell and dimpled surface aid in control of the gun in double-action shooting. My son and I have average-sized hands and found the grip very comfortable. People with big hands may find it too small. In that case, the larger wooden grips for new Cobra revolvers will also fit the .22LR King Cobra Target.
IN TESTING, THE gun functioned perfectly. The cylinder rotation is clockwise and lock up was tight at the end of the trigger pull in the traditional Colt fashion. One important way the new Colt revolvers differ from their predecessors is that they all employ a transfer-bar-operated firing pin instead of mounting the firing pin on the hammer. I don’t know if this makes the new guns more drop-safe than the old hammer block design they previously used, but it appears simpler to manufacture.While the sights were well sized to target work, I didn’t like the slight left-to-right wiggle the adjustable rear sight had in its milled slot and I have mixed feelings about the fiber optic insert in the front sight. It was very helpful shooting in the woods at tin cans against a confused background under mottled light, but I found it a distraction while bull’s-eye target shooting. The colored dot seemed off center. Close inspection showed the hole in the sight was properly centered, but the rounded tip of the plastic fiber optic rod wasn’t. I cut off the exposed tip with a razor blade to correct it, not particularly caring if it fell out. I did like that the top of the barrel and frame were matted to reduce reflections that would interfere with sighting.The King Cobra Target’s double action trigger pull measured at 10 pounds, about 2 to 3 pounds lighterthan current S&W and older Colt revolvers. Noticeably absent was the stacking that complicated the double-action trigger pull of the old Colts. When Colt modernized the Cobra lock work for more efficientmanufacturing, they genuinely improved the trigger pull and made a good revolver even better. The pullnow feels smooth and even.The 33.6-ounce weight of this gun, which is somewhat heavier than the .38 Special/.357 models becauseof the added thickness of its .22LR barrel walls, is further front-loaded by the full underlug. All this weight in the barrel really absorbs the rimfire’s minimal recoil. Combine that with the new smoother, lighter trigger pull and you have a pistol that can make you feel like a speed shooter with a little practice. We could rip off 10 shots rapid-fire into a tight group at 7 yards with absurd speed. Soda cans tumbled under a hail of little bullets before my fast-squeezing trigger finger, reminding me of how much fun a .22 double-action revolver can be.
BEFORE HANDING OFF the pistol to my son, I tested its accuracy at 25 yards while rested on the bench using a standard NRA slow-fire target and firing five shot strings in single-action mode. The light was perfect. The single-action trigger pull was a crisp 3.5 pounds. Velocity data was collected on aCompetition Electronics Pro Chrono Digital chronograph set 15 feet from the muzzle.My conclusion after testing a half dozen types of ammo through this gun is that there wasn’t anything itshot badly, and some loads shot really well for a 4-inch-barrel revolver. Four of the six loads, all 40-grain bullets with velocity averaging between 978 and 1,150 feet per second, had average groups under 2 inches. The most notable outlier was the self defense-oriented Federal Punch, with its 29-grain flat nosed bullet, which averaged groups just over 3 inches.That would be decent accuracy for any centerfire 4-inch-barrel revolver. When the ammunition manufacturer listed a velocity in their advertising, I found my test velocities were around 200 fpsslower. That’s perfectly understandable since their testing was done in rifles. The most accurate load tested was the Federal Lightning 40-grain lead round nose bullet load, which averaged 1,044 fps and five-shot groups averaging 1.66 inches. The second most accurate was Winchester’s Wildcat 40-grain copper-jacketed Dyna point (hollow point) load that averaged 991 fps and 1.9-inch groups. Third place went to Winchester’s Super X Match 40-grain T22 lead round nosed bullet, averaging 1,150 fps and 1.93-inch groups.Fourth place went to Remington’s Thunderbolt High Velocity 40-grain lead bullet, which, though round nosed, was notably pointier than the other bullets. In the King Cobra’s 4.25-inch barrel, velocity was a less-than-zippy 898 fps with 2.38-inch groups. This was the slowest round tested. Federal’s .22LR Personal Defense Punch 29-grain flat nosed bullet was the fastest load tested, averaging a rifle like velocity of 1,236 fps and groups measuring 3.17 inches. The declining accuracy of these last two loads might suggest they are outside the velocity this barrel performs best with, but further testing would need to be done to confirm that. As it stands, 40-grain bullets moving from 966 and 1,054 fps clearly performed best.
In addition to training and plinking, this revolver can also serve ably in a self-defense role. We don’t normally think of .22LR for personal defense, but this revolver’s low recoil and smooth action would be an advantage to any shooter, and especially to an elderly person or those with limited physical strength or training. If I live long enough, I expect I’ll eventually get to the point when I’m too frail to handle heavy calibers effectively. For defensive use, I’d want the fast-moving, flat nosed Federal Punch ammo, which is designed specifically for personal defense in a revolver. ★
Editor’s note: Visit colt.com for more information on the King Cobra Target .22LR and other new Colt firearms.
