I’m a pocket pistol enthusiast, and I’m also a tip-up barrel enthusiast. Something about those little tip-ups tickles my funny bone. The Taurus 22TUC is both a pocket pistol and a tip-up, so it’s right up my alley.
As the name implies, it’s a .22LR handgun, and it will draw a lot of comparisons to the Beretta Bobcat series of tip-up guns. They are remarkably similar. Both are tip-up, pocket-sized pistols with a straight blowback system.
While they have a lot in common, the 22TUC most certainly stands on its own. It has an aggressive polymer frame and features a double-action-only trigger mechanism. The angular barrel and sharp slide serrations give it a distinct look.
The 22TUC holds nine rounds of .22LR in the magazine, and topping it off by tipping up the barrel makes it easy to add that +1. Ten rounds of .22LR isn’t a bad load for a pocket rocket.
22TUC: The Details
The 22TUC weighs 10.3 ounces; it’s 5.14 inches long with a 2.48-inch barrel. The gun is 1.04 inches wide and 4.34 inches tall. The gun lacks any form of manual safety and instead relies on a long, double-action-only trigger pull.
The double-action trigger weighs just north of eight pounds. The pull is quite long and fairly heavy, but smooth. The trigger’s reset is slightly longer than the pull. My best advice is to slap the trigger guard with your trigger finger as you fire the gun.
The sights are fixed but large. The rear sight is a part of the slide, and the front sight is part of the barrel. The front sight has a big orange dot that makes it easy to find.
The grip is quite long and fills your entire hand. No risk of a hanging pinky with the 22TUC thanks to the slight magazine extension. The magazine release is octagonal in shape, which looks nice and is fairly large and easy to use.
What’s Up With Tip-Ups?
To tip up the barrel, you have to press forward on a small lever. The barrel pops up with enthusiasm. This tip-up design means the slide never has to be manipulated to load or unload the gun.
This would theoretically allow someone with low hand strength to load and clear the weapon with ease. The big problem I see with this design is that if you have low hand strength, you’ll probably have trouble with the long, heavy trigger.
On the flip side, these little guns have barely any slide to manipulate, so the tip-up just makes it handy for anyone to load the gun. With that in mind, the sharp, deep slide serrations on the TUC make it fairly easy to manipulate the slide.
Another downside to tip-ups is the lack of an extractor. This means when you get a failure, you can’t always rack the slide to fix it. You have to open the barrel and manually fix the issue. This makes failure drills much slower than most other guns.
Shooting the 22TUC
When it comes to rimfire pistols, I like to test a variety of ammo to see what cycles and what doesn’t. I brought Federal Automatch, Blazer, CCI Mini-Mags, Remington Golden Bullet, and Aguila Super Extra.
I fired 300 rounds in a couple of shooting sessions. We ran into four malfunctions. Two were failures to eject with the Remington Golden Bullet. I had two light strikes. One might have been my fault for not letting the trigger fully reset.
Both fired when the trigger was pulled a second time, thanks to the DAO action. The 22TUC doesn’t seem to be all that ammo-picky. Federal Automatch is my typical go-to with semi-autos, with CCI Mini-Mags and Aguila Super Extra being my go-to for finicky guns.
Thankfully, this gun isn’t all that picky. The Federal Automatch is cheap plinking ammo and works well with the 22TUC. For carry purposes, I’d stick to Federal Punch or CCI Mini-Mags.
Little Gun: Good Accuracy
The 22TUC has nice, big sights that are easy to see and quick to use. Those big sights are quite handy when it comes to accurate shooting. At 10 yards, I could keep 10 rounds inside of a 5-inch group.
The double-action trigger can be staged for making accurate shots, and I feel confident with my ability to land those hits consistently and evenly. I stepped back to 25 yards and, on my first try, went 9 out of 10 on an IPSC target.
At 50 yards, I didn’t have the same luck and went 1 for 10 on the first try. I found my holdover, which turned out to be a bit to the right, and landed 5 for 10 on a subsequent try. This isn’t a 50-yard pistol—at least not in my hands—but it’s micro-sized and not meant for those ranges.
The marginal recoil of the .22LR cartridge makes it super easy to land rapid-fire strings. I dare anyone to shoot the 22TUC as fast as possible and not get a big, stupid smile across their face. It’s fun and easy to do.
Unleashing a swarm of mean little bees is always going to be fun. I was able to dump all 10 as fast as possible while keeping the rounds inside an 8-inch circle at 10 yards. For defensive purposes, that’s more than capable enough.
Fast double and triple taps are easy. I can blaze through a Bill Drill from a pocket carry position in less than 3 seconds. From a staged position with my hand in the pocket, I could shoot a 2.20 Bill Drill.
The Downsides
The big downside for me is slide bite. I can’t get my hand all the way as high as I want without getting sliced and diced by the slide. That stainless steel chews right through my hand.
Outside of a few guns, pocket pistols always bite me. It’s something I’ve come to expect. Does it bite my wife? No, not even a little. It’s a “me” problem as far as I can tell.
Tucking the TUC
The Taurus 22TUC provides a consistently excellent experience. The DAO trigger makes it easy to reignite a failure to fire, and if you keep to slightly hotter ammo like Automatch, the 22TUC runs quite well.
It’s an affordable pocket pistol that offers very little recoil and the same charm as every other tip-up firearm.
