Spend a day at Gunsite Academy shooting a rifle that weighs less than a half-gallon of milk and you start to understand what Tandemkross is selling. Out on the range in Paulden, Arizona, I worked four TKX22 Light Rifles across painted steel from 10 yards out to 200 yards without skipping a beat. The rifles were set up differently with a variety of optics and a suppressor, but the day looked the same on every one of them: ringing steel and the kind of grins you get when a rimfire weighs almost nothing and lands every shot you ask of it. (Watch the video above or at YouTube.)
That weight number is the headline. Three pounds, six ounces, unloaded. Tandemkross says that makes the TKX22 the lightest semi-automatic .22 LR rifle in its class, and after 14 years of selling competition upgrades, this is the company’s first complete rifle of its own.
14 Years of Parts, Assembled
If you’ve shot Steel Challenge or any of the action sports, the Tandemkross name is probably already on something in your safe—a charging handle, a magazine release or an extractor. The TKX22 is what happens when a parts company decides to stop selling pieces and ship the whole thing. Tyler Marcos, who runs product development at Tandemkross and was on the range with me, put it plainly: every component on the TKX22, except the stock, is a Tandemkross design that has been beaten on by competitive rimfire shooters for years.
The receiver is the new TKX22, machined from aluminum with a hardcoat anodized finish, an integrally machined extended 0-MOA Picatinny rail running across the top and a rear cleaning port so you can run a rod straight through the bore without pulling the action apart. The barrel is Tandemkross’s Spitfire—a stainless blank with a hardened breech face, sleeved in a vented, M-LOK-cut anodized aluminum shroud that keeps the barrel tensioned and gives you mounting real estate for lights, lasers, optics or even night vision or thermals. It’s a 16½-inch barrel with 1:16-inch twist that is threaded 1/2x28 at the muzzle, which makes the rifle a natural for mounting a suppressor.
Moving down, you get the Manticore LITE trigger assembly with user-adjustable pull weight that ranges from 2½ to 5½ pounds. Pre-travel and over-travel are both adjustable, and the assembly includes a textured magazine release and Tandemkross’s Guardian Bolt Release for slingshotting the bolt closed. The bolt itself is the KrossFire and the charging handle is the extended Spartan, the latter sized so it doesn’t get crowded out when you bolt on a larger optic.
As for the iron sights, the TKX22 goes out the door with Tandemkross’s excellent Eagle Eye fiber-optic set, mounted via M-LOK on the barrel shroud. Additionally, the rear sight is adjustable for both windage and elevation across a 14-inch sight radius.
All of this is fit in the Magpul MOE X-22 stock, which is a big part of how the gun gets so light. There’s M-LOK on the bottom of the stock too, for bipods, ARCA rails or sling hardware, and the gun ships in your choice of Black, FDE, OD Green or Stealth Grey.
Length of pull on the Tandemkross TKX22 is a fixed 13¾ inches and overall length is 34¾ inches.
Steel Shooting and More
Tandemkross is positioning the TKX22 as a do-everything rimfire—backpacking, small game, plinking, suppressor host—and it absolutely fills all of those roles. But the way the gun shoulders, the way it points and the way the sights settle on a target showcase another intent. This is a Steel Challenge rifle. It's a rimfire blaster built for Scholastic Action Shooting Program matches and Metal Madness. It’s the gun you want for any of the .22 action sports where weight, balance and trigger feel decide whether you make the leaderboard. Best of all, it’s competition-ready the moment you load the included DoubleKross magazine.
Out at Gunsite, it was easy to see why the TKX22 is built to compete. The combination of a red dot, a featherweight barrel and a trigger you can dial down to 2½ pounds means transitions between steel plates happen almost on their own. With a 1-6x Trijicon AccuPoint scope mounted, we were hitting a reduced-size steel silhouette at 200 yards more or less on demand, and that was with CCI Standard Velocity .22 ammo. Even with the iron sights, the bright front and rear fiber optics made blasting steel a breeze. Over the course of the day none of the four rifles gave us a single hiccup.
Since every component on the TKX22 follows the Ruger 10/22 footprint, the rifle drops into the existing aftermarket ecosystem the way any 10/22 would. Bolts, charging handles, trigger groups, magazines, barrels and any 10/22 stock cut for a bull barrel will all work. The rifle ships with one assembled DoubleKross magazine, which is essentially two independent 10-rounders in one double-ended body—flip it over after the first 10 rounds and you’ve got a second mag without ever digging in a pocket.
Yes, $1,449.99 is real money for a rimfire. But you’re getting a fully built competition rifle with a slew of upgrades already installed and tuned with no parts to chase down and no weekend spent at the bench mounting them.
Tandemkross has signed an exclusive distribution deal with Davidson’s. The rifle will be available through the Davidson’s dealer network and the Gallery of Guns website, with the official launch timed to this year’s NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits in Houston from April 16-19. Tandemkross will have its first-ever NRAAM booth (No. 2054) with TKX22 rifles on display, and Davidson’s Gallery of Guns will be on site taking orders (No. 2151).
The company has hinted that more TKX22 variants are coming, leaning further into both competition and tactical-style rimfire builds, and said to expect new takes on the platform by SHOT Show 2027. For a parts company stepping into the rifle business for the first time, this is a confident debut. After a day at Gunsite, it’s also an easy one to recommend.
A full review of the TKX22 with more range time is coming soon—stay tuned.
