Hi. I'm Billy Mays for Tactical Solutions! Are you tired of overpaying for ammo? Tired of spending 60 bucks just to shoot 200 rounds? Then you need the new Tactical Solutions TSG-22 Conversion for Glock Pistols! The TSG-22 replaces your standard Glock slide/barrel assembly and allows you to shoot cheap .22 LR ammo! Now you can shoot all day long, all day strong for the price of a song!
While that fantasy sales pitch is a bit over the top, it is true that ammo isn't cheap, and it's also true that to get better at shooting, you need to practice. Sometimes, it's not even that serious—you just want to go to the range and pull some triggers and do a little recoil therapy, but you don't really feel like shelling out the cash for several boxes of 9 mm. Enter the .22 conversion kit, in this case a great model from Tactical Solutions.
The industry leader in rimfire technology, Tac-Sol has been making .22 kits for 1911s, rifles and all manner of firearms for quite some time. It's only logical that it would add a Glock kit to its lineup. The Glock kit allows for apples-to-apples training with your carry/service pistol at a much reduced cost, meaning more trigger time.
The Tac-Sol kit I used in testing was fitted on a G35 Gen 4 frame. A quick note about the Gen 4 Glocks—the TSG-22 kit will fit on Gen 4 guns, but there will be a gap at the front of slide/frame because of the slightly wider dust cover on the newest Glocks. It's cosmetic only, and doesn't affect the gun's function at all.
It is available with either 10- or 15-round magazines, and the 15-round versions I used stick out of the butt of the gun just a little bit, giving it a bit of a racy-USPSA appearance. The mags feature a button to help depress the spring for loading. Push the button down, and the spring compresses, so you can drop .22 rounds in pretty easily. Like most .22 magazines, it can be a little finicky, but for the most part feeding was reliable.
Speaking of reliability, it's always one of those issues that crop up with any semi-automatic .22, and even more frequently with conversion kits. This particular kit is no exception—sort of. It required a pretty significant break-in period of about 500 rounds before it would run reliably. After the break-in period, however, the gun ran like a top, with zero problems whatsoever. It was a little crazy, actually. One magazine had three malfunctions, then the next mag after that had zero. It has continued to run like an ambulance chaser to a freeway accident since then, digesting another 2,000-plus rounds of CCI ammunition. One of the things I recommend with conversion kits is to stick to quality .22 ammo. The cheaper your rimfire ammo, the less likely the gun is going to run properly.
So, we've established that the TSG-22 runs well, but a better question is "what's it for?" The best answer, of course, is fun, because if you don't enjoy shooting a ton with a .22, you might want to check your pulse—you're probably dead. Other than fun, there are two huge benefits to .22 LR kits. The first obvious benefit is for new shooters. Pop the slide off the G17 you have for home defense or concealed carry, pop this slide on, and you can instantly familiarize a new shooter with the same sights, trigger and controls they'd have on a full-size carry gun for a fraction of the cost and recoil.
For more advanced shooters, rimfire kits offer the same training benefit as repeated dry-fire practice, except without the massive boredom that usually accompanies that tedious-but-necessary regime. Sure, we all acknowledge dry practice is great for building skill and refining fundamentals, but at the end of the day standing around not shooting your gun for an hour is perilously close to being 8 years old again and running around yelling bang at stuff. A .22 kit for your main gun, like the TSG-22, allows you get a significantly higher number of training reps in at a fraction of the cost if you were shooting a centerfire gun.
It also creates an additional advantage, because you won't fatigue as quickly as you would with a centerfire handgun. Say your main gun is a .40 S&W G35 and you practice with it regularly. A 300-round practice session with.40 S&W ammo can get pretty tiresome, especially at an indoor range in the winter months. With a .22 LR, you can work on refining your fundamentals, shoot more and go home not cursing your gun.
When you really get down to it, though, the best reason to buy a TSG-22 is because it's fun. Shooting is a lot of fun, and shooting .22 is a blast no matter your level of experience. Look at the crop of "tactical" .22s popping up all over the place, from the M&P15-22 to the new STG-44 in .22. People want to get out and shoot, and they want to do it for a reasonable amount of money. If you already have a Glock, getting the TSG-22 to throw on it just makes good sense.
Whether it's for serious training, introducing new shooters or just going to the range to turn ammo into smoke and noise for giggles, putting a .22 kit on your Glock is a great idea. You're not going to find a better made kit than this, either—Tactical Solutions is the expert in .22 conversion kits for a reason.
