I practice with my 22 conversion. Not much, yet, but I've only had it a week and my BDM mags arent here yet and I can only shoot ten rounds at a time. Due to the lack of recoil, I cant really practice follow up shots with it, but its still triggertime behind my go to carbine. Shooting starts with sight alignment and trigger squeeze, and I can do that with a .22 without breaking the bank.
I have a 9mm carbine that I use for shooting clays, bottles, and cans in my back yard. Bottles are my favorite. They tend to fly a little (or a lot) when they get hit so its about like shooting pop-up targets that someone else set up, you never know where its going be. If you do this, domt try to shoot a flying bottle unless your backstop is bigger than mine. I use clays when coming up from low-ready, then I come up from low-ready and try to shoot the pieces (I do this with my .22 as well, just havent done it much yet). A lot harder than you think. Recoil is comparable to the .223, so I can practice double/triple taps as well. The most unreliable magazine I own is a Colt mag, and I havent tried to fix it. Reason being is that I can practice clearing actual malfunctions. Most of the time its a failure to feed or eject, the FTE is fun because a 9mm case can get turned any which way in an upper where the .223 is too long to.
My back yard is actually my driveway, and just past the parking spots is a hill. I cant shoot at a distance (which is one reason I shoot small targets coming up from low ready so much), but I can still use vehicles for cover, and practice firing from cover, both strong and weak hand. None of my neighbors are close, but I'd bet that someone up here jokes about me playing Rambo in the back yard...
I dont shoot my .223 up here very much. I dont think my neighbors would mind, but I dont want to push it.