*The Advantage Arms conversion kit for Glocks*
One of the needs for a survival oriented person and their survival armory is a handgun or rifle that fires a small caliber round for small game hunting and training. More often, the caliber that fits this need is the versatile .22LR round. Nearly no recoil, accurate in many loads and a perfect training round, this small caliber bullet gets the job done. There are many handguns that fire the .22 round. You can get them in just about any look and flavor. But rarely will you find a handgun that easily converts from a larger caliber round to a smaller caliber round like the .22.
Advantage Arms of Valencia, California, saw a need for conversion of existing Glocks. They developed a kit that has been thoroughly tested and found to be an excellent working, accurate and easily convertible conversion kit. The kit can be found in two flavors: the LE kit (which looks exactly like a standard Glock slide assembly) and the Target kit (which has a slimmed down slide and target type sights). Both function exactly the same. The LE model has removable Glock OEM adjustable sights. The Target Model has a LPA two dot adjustable rear sight and the front sight is CNC machined into the slide. Both kits lock back on the last round and include the Glock style internal firing pin safety. A drawback of this kit is the 10 round capacity magazines. A recent inquiry to Advantage Arms resulted in AA replying that they will not be making any higher capacity magazines at this time due to their location in California and the laws on the books there regarding the manufacture of magazines of more than ten rounds (one can hope they will move to a more gun friendly state like Arizona that does not have so many of the nanny state laws). The kit comes for the G17/22, G20/21 and other sub-compact frames. The kit comes in a form fitted plastic box. The box contains the slide assembly, a magazine, magazine loader, a short stainless steel cleaning rod, small box of jags and patches and a small bottle of Break-Free. The MSRP is $249.00 but the average dealer prices hovers around $230.00. While AA as a company does not sell outside the US, other than US citizens can likely order either from vendors in their country or US dealers who are not bothered by shipping outside of the US.
The AA kit is a simple replacement kit using an existing Glock frame and trigger control parts. All you need to do is remove your existing slide and magazine and replace it with the AA complete slide and modified magazine. All functions are exactly the same as with any Glock. The slide recoils and acts the same. Advantage Arms does warn users of the kit not to fire certain .22LR loads and makes due to functioning issues. These include
Advantage Arms has indicated that using the above loads would likely result in FTFs, stovepipes, mis-fires and light strikes.
The recommended ammunition is 40 grains as this is what the kit was designed for. Advantage Arms recommends Remington 40 grain Golden Bullets and Thunderbolt for plinking and CCI MiniMags for accuracy.
So, is there really a need for this kit, especially in light of other excellent .22 caliber pistols out there? I believe that there is. The kit fits two primary needs for me:
The kit I obtained for test and evaluation was a previously used unit so it was lightly broken in. The kit functioned as expected with no FTEs and no FTFs in 200 rounds of the recommended rounds. At 25 yards, the accuracy was as expected.
This kit is a tool. It serves several purposes and in the end, makes Glocks (a fun pistol already) an extremely fun pistol for training and short range hunting.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have some Norway rats to stalk and put down, with my Glock 21 and AA kit.
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