The Norinco EM332: Bargain Basement Bang-for-Buck Guns Part 1:

Christmas and the recession mean that we’re all feeling the financial crunch a little, so I thought it may be useful to post a couple of reviews of recent purchases that fall (IMHO anyway) into the bargain bin category.  

The first of these is the Norinco EM332  

Norinco EM332 -click for larger

Norinco EM332 -click for larger

I’ve owned a few Norinco rim-fires in the past, most recently a JW23. Chambered in .22 magnum, the rifle is identical to the Norinco JW15A, itself a copy of the CZ and Brno .22LR guns. I never really had much opportunity to shoot the magnum beyond sighting it in, and while the fit and finish weren’t spectacular it always went bang when the trigger was pulled (albeit a long gritty two stage pull). It was cheap and cheerful, but I found it difficult to know what to use it for -too much gun for bunnies and a range not much greater than a standard .22LR.  

It was while scouting around in a local hunting shop that I spotted the Norinco EM332 and was immediately impressed by it. A fairly compact gun, it features a  forged and milled steel receiver, adjustable rear sights, solid steel components, and adult-sized Monte Carlo stock with rubber recoil pad. The bluing is clean and shiny, and the machining is clean and lacks the machining marks that seem to be ubiquitous to most of the Norinco range -the EM is in a class above the JW series guns.  

EM332 Right side -click for larger

 Apparantly an original design it is based on the rifles developed by Norinco for the Chinese Olympic Shooting Team: -from the Canadian Marstar website: 

“The Norinco EM-332 is one of the best .22 rifle bargains to be offered in years. It employs the same competition proven butterfly bolt action used in the award winning Norinco match rifles used by the Chinese  Olympic team. The very solid, well-finished EM-332 is however better suited to the field and target range”

I asked to take a closer look at the EM. It has a nice heft to it, there’s no plastic anywhere and putting the gun to shoulder I was immediately impressed at how well it fit (me). I should point out that at 5’6″ I’m not overly tall, and this is a smallish rifle -I have no issue with the stock size of the Ruger 10/22’s but acknowledge that taller shooters can find them wanting. The bolt (a stainless steel spoon-bill shape) was tight but operated smoothly within the action. Trigger pull is 2 stage -a short clean 1st stage and breaks crisply at around 3.5 pounds. My only complaint is with the actual physical width of the trigger, it’s a real skinny blade across and would benefit HUGELY from a trigger shoe -I’m still in the process of trying to find a commercial shoe that will fit.  

The magazines (the guns come with 2x 5 shot) are steel, nicely constructed with a grey painted mag heel to match the steel trigger guard. They are a nice touch as the last expensive rimfire I bought  (a CZ 457 2E stainless/synthetic) cost 4x the price of the little EM, and had a single cheap plastic mag that I was afraid of dropping least it broke. TheEM’s have a nicely constructed set of  sling swivels, unfortunately the front swivel happened to be exactly where I tend to grip the forearm when shooting, so it’s been unscrewed as I got sick of trying to accomodate it.  

Scope objective vs front sight -click for larger

The iron sights are nicely constructed with good adjustment on the rear. It’s worth noting that if you plan to shoot with a scope fitted to the 11mm rails grooved into the receiver top you’ll probably end up removing the rear sight as it sits high at exactly the point that the front objective lens of 90% of scopes will be  -anything 4×32 will fit with about 1mm clearance between the scope objective and the rear sight, but anything bigger than a 32mm front scope objective will be hitting the sight.  To be frank a decent set of iron sights on a gun this cheap is a bonus -I’d rather have them as an option and remove them if I choose. You could hunt out (no pun intended) a short ultra-compact scope but I like full size optics and tend to share my scopes around my guns and didn’t like the thought of having to outlay cash for a new one. Removing the rear sight is no big deal, there’s a screw anchoring the sight-base into the barrel dove-tail, once this is removed the sight needs to be knocked rearward and then comes out cleanly.  

I went home to do little googling before purchase and found a surprising lack of information out in the world-wide community, possibly due to the US embargo on Chinese made rifles. I found a local online e-tailer offering the EMs at NZ $379 ($263 US/$276 CAD) and bought one, feeling pleased that I’d found a relative bargain. So when another of our online gun dealers had these on offer just before Christmas at NZ $249 ($173US/ $181CAD) I didn’t hesitate to grab another one -good value at $379  they are virtually a gift at $249.  

So how do they shoot? In a word exceptionally well. Having spent time and dollars on accurizing my Rugers it still irks me to be able pick up the little EM in it’s stock form and have it consistently shoot better than the modified Rugs. In fact I would consider the EM to be a better shooter than the aforementioned CZ 452 was and at $249 you could buy 4 (!) for the price of one CZ. The EM consistently produces tighter groups than the Rugers can manage. They have a tight bore, I use a highly scientific method to measure bore diameter, namely  the amount of effort needed to pull a Hoppes Bore-Snake through the barrel. The Em332’s are noticeably tighter than the Rugers.  

EM332 Bolt detail -click for larger

EM332 Trigger guard/mag insertion -click for larger

EM332 Mags -click for larger