For a tube fed rifle, it's not difficult to feed a shorter cartridge feed if it's a straight shot into the chamber and not at an angle, but for a tiny pistol I can understand some difficulties with certain ammo, but not the most common high velocity stuff. It use to be if you wanted a super small .22 pistol it was in .22 Short and I don't think those had as many issues with cycling as the .22 LR's do, but nobody wants to use a .22 Short for even plinking, let alone self defense.Its a actually sad how many 22s made today have function issues with Plain old 22lr.
Especially when years ago they made semi auto 22s that could cycle on 22 short , long and , long rifle with out issue . You could load them randomly in the tube or mag and just start shooting.
Pure marketing genius that some how we need all this special 22 ammo for shit to work.
The AR 22lr really got me laughing
So here we are with little .22's that don't work really and the reason they were made is lower recoil and going from centerfire to rimfire is never an effective means to that end, not when you've got two calibers between .22 and .380 that could be used and are more reliable than rimfire. I'm no fan of .25 in a gun where .32 can be used, but it seems that whenever we talk about a caliber below .380, if it's not .22, it may as well not exist for some reason.