10/22 nearly fell apart.

[RawImpact]

I'm a little shocked that you would fire any firearm that appears to be broken/damaged/falling apart.

Maintaining equipment properly and inspecting prior to use is a critical part of firearms safety.

But it's an adrenaline rush!

[straykiller]

I was going to post about how Marlins never have this problem, but then I changed my mind.

marlins are great guns but so are rugers, i have both, everything just needs routine maintenance once in awhile

[bjl333]

Did you buy the gun used? If you did then your problem could be from the previous owner.

[macey109]

I was shooting up at Sunnyvale Rod and Gun with my buddy (if you spotted a loud idiot with an orange and white sweatshirt, that was me). When we went over to shoot in the rimfire section I got the Ruger out of its case and the first thing I noticed was that the front sight post didn't appear to be on perfectly straight. It looked canted to the right just a little. Some closer looks indicated that as far as I could tell it was on properly. We proceeded to throw a couple hundred rounds of really poor quality Remington plinking ammo downrange. After a few switch-offs I noticed three things. One of the unused rail screws on the top of the receiver came almost all the way out. More importantly the gun started feeling really loose, like it wasn't attached to the stock. More importantly still we developed a visible gap between the barrel and the receiver.
With the help of some other shooters who had the right hex wrenches we discovered the problem. Either the gun was already loose for whatever reason or it managed to shake itself loose. The stock retainer screw was halfway out, the barrel nuts were loose and the barrel was able to rotate about 10 degrees in either direction. It's not too big of a deal since the gun continued shooting reliably and we were able to fix it by just re-tightening everything but now I'm concerned because I have a gun that can shoot itself loose or just somehow magically gets loose from sitting around. Is this normal?

Also the gun was producing strange little puffs of smoke every time you closed the bolt. But I imagine that's just the lousy ammo.

so you knew something was wrong and kept shooting?

[Scratch705]

the rail screws are known to back out on their own unless you loctite them. this is for the ones that attach the supplied rail, not the ones that just plug the holes.

as for the barrel v-block screws and the stock screw.... those shouldn't be backing out on their own at all unless you didn't tighten them up the first time around.

[sequoia_nomad]

These things happen, screws can work loose over time. Just make it a habit of giving it a good once over before and after every range trip.