The Rimfire Report: Plain Ole CCI Standard Velocity 40 Grain

Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report! This ongoing series is about the rimfire firearm world and its different types of guns, shooting sports, history, and ammo! Last week we took a look at the new North American Arms Sentinel swing-out pocket revolver. So far I have to say I am pretty impressed with the tiny little revolver. While the recoil is pretty stout, the shooting experience overall is enjoyable and I’m looking forward to sharing my full review with you guys shortly right here on The Rimfire Report. This week I wanted to get back into our ongoing series of ammunition tests by going back to a classic - CCI Standard Velocity 40-grain. I put the tried and true CCI Standard through the same set of tests I’ve been putting all of the other ammunition through, in the hopes it might provide an anchor point for us to compare CCI’s other offerings to. What does boring, plain ole CCI Standard 40 grain bring to the table? Let’s find out!

More Rimfire Report @ TFB:

• The Rimfire Report: A First Look at the NAA Sentinel 22WMR Revolver
• The Rimfire Report: CCI Suppressor 45 Grain - Heavy & Quiet
• The Rimfire Report: Poor Man's Match Ammo - CCI Green Tag

The Rimfire Report: Plain Ole CCI Standard Velocity 40 Grain

CCI Standard has long been the “go-to” ammo for many rimfire shooters for just about everything. Whether it be plinking for fun, squirrel hunting, steel challenge, or even Rimfire PRS competitions, CCI Standard 40-grain makes its way into virtually every discipline and niche of the rimfire firearm’s world. This is understandable considering the very first successful 40-grain 22LR cartridge was first developed in 1887 by Stevens Arms Co. Since then, many companies including CCI have developed reliable and affordable 22LR 40-grain loadings like Standard Velocity.

CCI Standard does not have a particular niche it’s supposed to fill - it kind of does everything although as we’ll see today, it does fill a few things better than others. Let’s take a look at its specifications first.

Standard Velocity 22 LR 40 Grain

Product Link: https://www.cci-ammunition.com/rimfire/cci/standard-velocity/6-35.html

Product Overview

Standard Velocity offers the same speed as Green Tag® at a price that’s perfect for high-volume practice shooting. It provides accuracy and reliability thanks to a consistent lead round-nose bullet and reliable CCI® priming and brass.

• Affordable practice round
• Same velocity as Green Tag
• Consistent performance

SPECS

• Caliber: 22 LR
• Grain Weight: 40
• Muzzle Velocity: 1070
• Bullet Style: Lead Round Nose
• Ballistic Coefficient: .120
• Package Quantity: 50
• Usage: Target Shooting
• Price: $4.99 per box of 50

Velocity Data

CCI Standard velocity is supposed to have identical performance to CCI Green Tag which means we should be seeing about the same velocities that we saw from green tag with perhaps a slightly bigger standard deviation as well as extreme spread. The Garmin Xero C1 Pro and Bergara B14R have been putting in a lot of work over the last few months running all of these ammunition tests. It’s worth noting that I have been running a single 15-round magazine of each ammo type before the accuracy or velocity testing data begins. Ideally, this should help remove any influence from previous tests with different ammo. With that said, what did CCI Standard 40-grain show us in terms of velocity?

Contrary to what I had assumed, CCI Standard performed more closely to its advertised velocity than Green Tag did but went over by about 17 fps for its average velocity. This was apparent at the range with the occasional round going supersonic due to the higher-than-average velocity combined with our altitude and other environmental conditions. Even with the occasional supersonic round, CCI Standard still gave us a 50-round standard deviation of only 14 fps which is only 1.1 fps more than the results we got from CCI Green Tag. My main takeaway is that the CCI Green Tag is three times as expensive as the CCI Standard Velocity, but it errs harder on the side of caution concerning approaching the transonic barrier. Put simply, the CCI Standard should be slightly less accurate than Green Tag.

Accuracy Data

I am having a really difficult time determining which target is better for our group shot with the CCI Green Tag versus the CCI Standard Velocity. Looking at them side by side, they are virtually identical in terms of the number of tighter and wider groups we got, as well as the amount of spread and how tight our best group was from each ammo. While the numbers should give us better accuracy, I think that at my level of shooting and with the setup I have, I simply cannot take advantage of the extra tiny bit of accuracy that CCI Green Tag should be giving me.

The best groups were just a hair over an inch in size or a little bigger than a quarter. Not match-grade accuracy from me and the round by any means. However, I won’t scoff at this type of consistency, especially from a cartridge that only costs 10 cents. CCI Standard Velocity 40-grain is essentially cheap, dirty, and very reliable plinking ammo - it even says it right on the side of the box “affordable practice round”. It just so happens that it’s also about as accurate as some entry-level match ammunition that’s out there. This is why CCI Standard Velocity has always been my ammunition of choice for Rimfire pistol and rifle matches that are focused on accuracy rather than speed (for that we have CCI Mini-Mags). CCI Standard is simply “good enough” for the things I need it to do and comes in at a price that isn’t hard to stomach.

Thoughts Going Forward

I haven’t forgotten about the ballistic gel tests! We’ll be getting into those soon even with CCI Standard. While some of the other ammo types we’ve tested in this series already are probably going to have some pretty interesting results, in my experience CCI Standard 40 grain, with its simple lead round nose, often over-penetrates ballistic gel and is often hard to capture without multiple blocks - but we’ll do our best. Even with its limited terminal performance compared to dedicated varmint ammunition, I still think plain ole CCI Standard 40 grain is more than serviceable as a pest control round, simply because it combines cost, reliability, and accuracy. All that and more still to come in future editions of The Rimfire Report! Let me know what you think of CCI Standard in the comments and thanks as always for stopping by to read! See you next week!