Dad had (still has) an older than dirt .22 mag that I learned on. My first rifle purchase was a Rock River AR. Wife said it was nothing but a killing machine so I sold it. She's OK with the handguns though... strange I know but you won't hear me complain!
Oh, as a side note, we still enjoy that .22 mag regularly. I even got dad a new scope and a set of rings for it for Father's Day last year! I wish I could say we enjoyed his uncle's Rem Matchmaster as much, but it seems to suffer from a bad case of the jams.