Savage Arms Rascal F-SR 22 LR 16" Left Hand Rifle

Savage built the Rascal as a first rifle, and the F-SR is the left hand version with a threaded muzzle. It is a single shot 22 LR, one round at a time, which is exactly what you want when you are teaching somebody to shoot. There is no magazine to fumble and no follow up shot waiting, so the bolt has to be worked deliberately between every trigger pull. That forces the fundamentals in the right order: load, aim, fire, open the bolt, check it, do it again.

The 16 inch barrel wears 1/2x28 threads, the standard rimfire pattern, so a can or a muzzle device screws straight on. A quiet 22 running subsonic ammunition is about as gentle an introduction to rifles as exists, and it takes the flinch out of the equation before it ever forms. The stock is synthetic, which means a rifle that lives behind a truck seat or gets handed around at a range day is not going to suffer for it. Left hand shooters get the bolt on the correct side instead of reaching across the receiver, and on a bolt gun that matters more than most right handed shooters realize.