There is a high to me anyway a high failure rate to fire with 22LR ammo and the older it is the higher the rate...
The other thing is some of the guns people are using at the range can be really dirty or just problematic and that can cause failures to fire.
It hasn't been my experience that older ammo is less reliable. I still have some from the 1960s that I just never got around to shooting. Its the dreaded Remington Golden Bullet, hollow point. And its been very reliable for me. Its why I kept it, as a standard of performance and accuracy in one specific rifle. I understand your mileage may vary. I also even used to cherry pick yard sales (barn sales, more correctly). My favorite to look for was the Winchester with the tiny writing impressed in the case, the nickel plated ones. For decades when I saw a box of it, I'd just buy it. Even partial boxes, it didn't matter.
And over the years its been good (and cheap) ammo for me. Guess those days are long gone now. Ammo is gold.
My guess of why I've had more spotty luck with recent ammo is that the production speed of the machinery has been increased to the point where the priming compound hasn't been adequately spun into the rim. Thats really what we're talking about here. I have no access to production speed on 22 ammo. But I'd bet that 50 or 60 years ago it was much slower than today. I could be wrong.
What I base my conclusions on are years and years (yeah, I'm that old) of looking at misfired 22 ammo. I never miss the opportunity to pick up what looks like a loaded round and inspect it. I've been doing that since my father first took me along to a range. Its a habit that I've never been broken of. I guess. In my early years I was just interested in looking at the headstamp. Then I started becoming interested in the firing pin dent.
Didn't take my dad long to show me how to "disassemble" them. I'm thinking he used it as a teaching moment, and it had the added benefit of making sure the round would never be fired. So the procedure is pretty simple. You take along 2 pairs of pliers (I'm also stupid and don't know why one is called a pair). You just grip the case in front of the rim and the bullet with the other and bend it. The bullet smears its way out and the powder can get dumped on anything green. Its supposed to be good fertilizer. The purpose, other than making the round safe, is to see what's in the rim.
From long years of experience, if you find a round with 2 dents in the rim, almost always there is no priming. At least I've never found one with any. I've more recently found a few cases with some compound, but its not all the way around the rim. A drop that wasn't spun into the rim, so to speak.
Maybe we have an expert here that can step up and answer some questions. Target grade ammo almost never has a misfire. Do they get more compound, or is it spun better? Why the difference? To justify the higher price?
Back up to the quote above. The very first thing you do with any gun that starts to misbehave is to clean it. No, not just wipe it down with an oily cloth and call it good. Or spray it down with some WD and consider it clean. Clean it with Hoppes or whatever your favorite powder solvent seems to be. We're talking 22s here, and S&W 22s have the awful frame mounted firing pin. That channel needs to be flushed out to the point where nothing off color flows out. And then the chambers need a genuine chamber brush put to work. Yes, I'll accept a .25 caliber rifle brush or even a .32 lubricated with Hoppes #9. MilSurp bore solvent will also do the trick. But always followed up with a clean patch showing no discoloration.
Its the very first thing you do with a gun that is misfiring or is reported to be misbehaving. It works maybe 99% of the time. Good enough for my kind of work. Those who preach there is no reason to clean a 22 are the ones most often found with misfires. Another reason misfired rounds often go off at the second hitting is the first snap seats the cartridge in the chamber. Grit build up cushions the first blow.
