+1. My youngest daughter still has hers (about twenty years after I gave it to her as a birthday present).
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I own and have owned many lever action .22 rifles. I have a BL-22, it's a good rifle. I have a Winchester 9422, owned a model 250 for several years, I owned a Mossberg 402 Palomino for a dozen years, had a Ruger 96 for about as long. Hell, I even owned a Remington model 76 nylon lever gun.... To me, the Marlin 39 is the king of rimfire lever guns. They were made in so many different configurations, rifles, carbines, round barrel, octagon. All takedowns.....Just excellent rifles.
It's a pretty gun, no doubt, just not a particularly good one. It looks good in a saddle scabbard, but if I have a serious varmint problem, I'll use a serious varmint gun that can take a usable scope and saddle up the 10-22 with Kidd action and barrel.
I bought my son one the day he was born. The wife sent me out to get a slurpy so I walked in the gun store next door.
I think it is in fact just you. I have one in the collection. It's fun to shoot, incredibly easy to teach even the most novice of shooters to use, and cheap to run if you're footing the bill for ammo for the group. It makes even "non-gun people" smile a bit. Heck, I think that the lever action may be second to last on the grabbers list, just in front of the break open shotgun.
Kind of fell in love with the look, but not the "new" price. I stumbled on one used in a LGS.....struck a fair deal and it came home with me. I made the mistake of letting my wife shoot it.....I may have lost this one....
I was pleasantly surprised at how accurate it was no matter what ammo I fed it. And the action was nice also, maybe not the best but definitely better than what I expected.