Marlin Model 88

About the Marlin Model 88

The Marlin Model 88 is a .22 Long Rifle semi-automatic, blowback-operated rifle produced from 1948 to 1956. It was Marlin's first tubular-magazine .22 autoloader, feeding from a 15-round tube housed inside the buttstock and loaded through a port in the butt plate. Fitted with a 24-inch barrel (early guns used Ballard-style rifling, later ones Micro-Groove), a one-piece walnut stock, a hooded front bead and an adjustable notch rear sight, it was an inexpensive plinking and small-game rifle. Its awkward butt-plate loading arrangement limited its popularity, and it was superseded by clip- and later side-tube-fed Marlin autoloaders.

The Model 88's butt-plate loading tube, where cartridges are dropped one by one through a hole in the butt of the stock, was widely regarded as fiddly and is a large part of why the design never sold well despite being Marlin's first tube-fed .22 self-loader.

Marlin Model 88 specifications

Sometimes cataloged as the Model 88-22. Early production used Ballard-type rifling; Micro-Groove rifling was adopted later in the run. A clip-fed sibling, the Model 89, was offered alongside it.