Remington Model 12C Rimfire Rifle: Gallery-Style Pump

The Remington Model 12C was chambered to an old rimfire round that fell between the .22 LR and .22 Mag.

April 10, 2025 By Payton Miller

A couple of us senior citizens were having our weekly .22 geezer shoot, which basically entails a bit of preliminary grouping and sight adjustment, followed by a couple hours of good-natured insults interspersed with popping claybirds and assorted metal targets at various yardages.

It’s more than likely just a sad attempt at recapturing our lost youth, but it’s fun nonetheless. Vintage rimfires were, as always, the order of the day as were simple foam earplugs instead of more sophisticated battery-operated devices.

All was proceeding nicely until, suddenly, John Wightman fired an octagon-barreled pump-action relic that sounded considerably more energetic than something from our usual standard velocity .22 Short or Long Rifle menu.

“What the hell is that?,” somebody asked peevishly. “It’s too damn old to be a .22 Mag., but it’s noisy as hell.”

Remington Model 12C

rilfe with paper target and cartridges — This 40- yard group using CCI 45-grain ammo and the original open iron sights shows the Model 12C capable of small game and varmint tasks within reasonable ranges. (Photo courtesy of Payton Miller)

Well, in all honesty, it really wasn’t all that excessively noisy. The rifle in question happened to be a Remington Model 12C. Engineered by design genius John Pedersen, it was cut from the hammerless gallery gun template of a .22 pump—with that wonderful vintage “Tootsie Roll” walnut fore-end and crescent steel buttplate.

It didn’t look all that different from other members of the Model 12 series—or from competing .22 pumps from Winchester, throwbacks to an era when slide-action rimfires were pretty much state of the art. The Model 12 lineup ran from 1909 to 1936 and featured several variants: plain, deluxe or super fancy. All told, production numbers ultimately totaled 832,000.

But this rifle was extra interesting in that it was chambered for the .22 Win. Rimfire or, in proprietary guise, the .22 Rem. Spl. The .22 Win. Rimfire and the .22 Rem. Spl. are identical and interchangeable. The only difference is the Winchester round employed a flatnose bullet while Remington loaded a roundnose. Fortunately, once in a great while Winchester and CCI have seen fit to make a special run of .22 Win. Rimfire, and the CCI stuff was what we had on hand.

“The .22 WRF was the first notable improvement in the killing power of the various rimfires,” Frank Barnes wrote in Cartridges of the World. “It is not as accurate as the Long Rifle, but in field use this is of no consequence. Out to 75 yards it will kill small animals more reliably than the Long Rifle.”

Obsolescence?

3 rimfire cartridges side by side — That cartridge was more powerful than the .22 LR but not the .22 Mag. (Photo courtesy of Payton Miller)

Two factors contributed to the round’s eventual obsolescence. One was the appearance of higher-velocity .22 LR loads, and the other was the appearance of the .22 Mag.—essentially an elongated .22 Win. Rimfire.

The test ammo we had was loaded with 45-grain flatnose hollowpoints. It chronographed 1,425 fps on average from the Remington Model 12C’s 24-inch barrel. That’s not up there with the original 40-grain .22 Mag. loading, but it definitely surpasses your basic 36-grain .22 LR high-velocity hollowpoint, which accounted for the elevated noise signature.

You can’t shoot .22 Win. Rimfire in a .22 LR because of its larger case diameter, but you can shoot a .22 Win. Rimfire in a .22 Mag.—although definitely not vice versa.
The little Remington pump was definitely big fun to shoot. The trigger pull helped some, breaking at a reasonably crisp 3.5 pounds. The few malfunctions I experienced were due more to short-stroking the pump than anything else. You can’t be coy about working the action on this gun.

The Model 12C is a delightful little pump, a gallery gun style of .22 that has largely been submerged under a wave of semiautos, lever guns and bolt actions. Naturally, a large part of its appeal stems from its .22 Win. Rimfire chambering. It’s unlikely we’ll ever see a full commercial resurrection of the round, but if you can wangle a couple of hundred rounds of it—or if the powers that be see fit to produce another commemorative run of ammo—it’d be well worth tracking down a suitable rifle.
Most Model 12Cs in good shape on the used market I’ve seen go for $500 to $800. Exceptions are the limited edition Peerless, Expert and Premier grades in .22 Short, Long and Long Rifle; these command seriously tall dollars.

As far as the cool factor goes, the .22 Win. Rimfire is right up there with the .25 Stevens in the pantheon of great rimfires that are no longer with us. But, honestly, these days high and hyper-velocity .22 LR loads, not to mention the .22 Mag., have pretty much covered the .22 Win. Rimfire’s enhanced small game niche in a practical sense. But since when have shooters with a fetish for obsolete guns and calibers ever been accused of being practical?