Why dont we see more .22lr conversion kits for duty guns?

[Lonestar.45]

.22 conversions are absolutely a great way to practice.

For those thinking the conversions don't do much for you, what do you think about dry fire practice? Many "experts" advocate dry firing as a great way to practice grip, sight picture, draw, and trigger pull.

I'd submit that the conversion is 10x better than dry fire practice because you're not in your living room in front of the TV, but shooting real ammo.

My conversion for my G19 allows me to use the same holsters. The sights are identical. Trigger, grip, everything is the same except weight and recoil. And come on, recoil from a 9mm is not so great that it is a huge adjustment going from a .22 conversion. The conversion is lighter, so the recoil is a lot closer to the 9mm than one would think.

I can go to the range and shoot literally THOUSANDS upon thousands of rounds out of the conversion practicing sight picture, grip, trigger pull, draw, etc. There is no substitute for trigger time. When I shoot my 9mm slide now, I am much much much better than before I started practicing with the conversion. The results don't lie.

I have a buddy with lots of Glocks and 1911's, and he snickers when I talk about the conversion, and pretty much thinks I'm crazy and should've just bought a "REAL" .22 of some kind (as if I'm shooting airsoft or something?)

He doesn't snicker though when I outshoot him each and every range trip these days with the full power loads.

I'd much rather shoot full power loads all the time, but until ammo prices come down to pre-2003 levels (unlikely), I'll be shooting .22 a lot more.

 

[SweetKnuckles]

Well said, Lonestar and Deckard.

.22 LR Conversion kits are not a twin of full caliber trigger time, but a damn good lookin' sister!

Additionally, dryfiring, although the 'industry standard' for non-full caliber practice, also does not give you any feedback regarding where your 'practice shots' actually went.


Quick update on my Sig Conversion for those who wonder about reliability.
Yesterday, ran an additional 380 rounds through the kit. All I did was put another 2 or 3 drops of oil on her slide rails prior to shooting, ambient temp ~75.

I haven't cleaned the weapon at all including after the first 150 rounds were put through and my goal was to try to make it fail.

It ate:

Federal 36gr Copper Plate HP Bulk Pack
Rem HP Golden Bullet 36gr Bulk Pack
Rem RN Golden Bullet 40gr
Rem Thunderbolt
Winchester Wildcat
CCI Stinger
Lots of double taps, triple taps and fast-as-I-could-pull-the-trigger mag empties, and it had 2 failures to feed. ** The bulk pack ammo was the vast majority, fairly equally split between the Remy HP and Federal HP. The rest were in the neighborhood of 1 or 2 magazines after I had shot ~200 rounds for the day.


So now I've put north of 500 rounds through this thing with 3 hiccups total. This weapon is black dirty, and although I was going to keep torture testing it, it's driving me crazy seeing my Sig this dirty.

< 00.6% (yes that's point-six percent) failure rate is fine by me, given what I've put her through. From past experience, and given these were mostly bulk pack rounds, I don't know that my MkII or Buckmark would have done better.

I'm sold...this info is for those that are considering the kits and wanted additional experiences of kit OWNERS...I'm not here to convince anybody that this is something that will turn you into the envy of rangemasters and have women throwing their panties at your feet.

 

[NGIB]

Just an ammo note. Walmart started carrying a Winchester 333 bulk pack so I gave it a shot. My Kimber kit loves this stuff and it's only very slightly more expensive than the Federal bulk...