Pretty much in every piece of survivalist fiction there is always at least one big shootout scene. It can be the brave townies against the invading cannibal army, the plucky conservative group against the dastardly UN troops, etc. It makes for entertaining reading but is it likely that at some point youre going to go to war with New Bern? I doubt it. Oh, I have no doubt that during Katrina and a few other major events there might have been a few people who were forced to play Blackhawk Down as best they could (Roof Koreans!). But I believe those were the extreme outliers. Unless you’re Harry Beckwith (record holder for most amount of shots fired in defense of self), I’d bet most people never even needed a mag change.
But…we never know what the future holds, do we? So, we practice. Today is a range day to practice fast target acquisition and some shoot-n-move stuff with the HKlone. Given the always high price of ammo, it makes sense to try and save money when possible. To that end, the Germans, always looking for an excuse to engineer some new form of Teutonic brilliance, made a very nice .22 conversion kit for the G3. I bought one of these years ago and although it was rather expensive at the time (and still is), it pays for itself rather quickly.
.22 conversion kits for guns are an extremely handy thing if you’re going to take your practice seriously. They arent really about accuracy as much as they are about gun handling. Practicing bring your AR up from a low ready, getting a fast sight picture, and snapping of a shot that hits a steel plate….you can do that at $9 per mag of 30, or you can do it for $1.20 per mag of 30. I prefer the more bang-for-your-buck approach. For practicing things like shooting while moving, weak hand shooting, transitions, etc, there’s no reason the .22 conversions shouldn’t be used.
For the AR, I very much like the CMMG conversion and recommend them.Although there are plenty of .22 conversion kits for your AR out on the market the one that seems to get universal approval is the CMMG. Ciener conversions, in my experience, are…’lacking’. If it were me, I would recommend a CMMG conversion, and four mags. Why four? Start your drills with one in the gun and three in your plate carrier or GI mag pouch.
When I practice with the .22 conversions I’m usually doing stuff like:
- Bring rifle up from low ready, get fast sight picture, fire one round at steel plate for a hit.
- Same drill, from weak side
- Shoot while moving..forwards, backwards, sideways, etc.
- Shoot from non-facing positions. That is to say, shoot at target when your facing away or oblique to target.
- And just the run-n-gun of shooting three or five rounds, run to new position, shoot another 3-5 from prone, run to new position, 3-5 from kneeling, etc, etc.
Make up your own drills. Get a #50 bag of something and drag it to safety with one hand while covering with your rifle in the other, pie some corners, do some fire/movement drills with your mates, etc, etc.
Odds are pretty good that you’ll never need to do an Australian peel or anything like that, but any drill that improves your gun handling, gun safety, and tactical options is worth doing. And with a decent .22 conversion kit you can spend a long afternoon drilling with your buddies for the cost of two bricks of .22
.22 conversion kits for pistols have been, in my experience, a bit hit-n-miss. Tactical Solutions made one for the Glock but it never seemed to be reliable enough for a day of practice at the range. If anyone can recommend a good G17 .22 kit, I’d like to hear about it.
I have been using Advantage Arms conversions. One for G17-22 & one for G19-23. I’ve been happy with both.
I have an Advantage Arms kit for my Glock 19.
Have used it for several, years and no problems at all, works flawlessly
Use the recommended ammo.
For the Glock, Advantage Arms is the correct answer. I’ve had several and they all worked excellent.
But for the love of all that is Holy, NEVER buy anything Ciener. Not only will it not work for long (if at all), Jon himself is the antithesis of customer service. I watched him ‘service’ a customer at Knob Creek who had a brand new (and new to the market) Ciener AR mag that didn’t work out of the box. He had brought it to the show to watch Ciener nake it right with a replacement instead of doing the mail dance. Ciener insulted him and told him “metal wears out”. The customer said it was brand new (and it looked to me like it was too). Then Jon turned his back on the guy and refused to talk to him further. All this with an arrogant and condescending attitude. I then watched the guy engage in conversations with prospective customers at the Ciener table for the next 20 minutes telling them why those products were shit. (I waited that long thinking I was going to see Ciener get his ass whupped). Anyway, the guy was still hanging around that table an hour later when I swung back that way.
Who knows how much business a disgruntled customer cost the business- and all for a $25 (retail) mag.
When Ciener was the only game in town, his crap was worth the trouble. You simply practiced your failure drills more than planned. When ANYONE else entered the market, Ciener products were toast.
Oh, and while I have never owned one, CMMGs work well for several friends fwiw.
Yeah, Ciener has a rather spectacular reputation for anti-customer service. Theres a post somewhere on the internet about him finally getting called to the carpet by the postal cops for mail fraud or somesuch for his actions.
I don’t own a Glock, so I can’t discuss it. I do have a Kimber .45 and love Kimber’s .22 kit. Not only is it great for training, but it’s also a lot of fun just plinking.
Oh, I got all agitated about Ciener and forgot to say that I use the military Army (M261) and Navy 22 kits for my AR and they work well. They do like the faster ammo tho. Rarely use the Navy kit anymore as they have gotten so pricey. Probably ought to sell it and turn it into something useful.
I must be one of the few lucky ones. I bought a Ciener in the mid 90s, because it was the only one that could be had with the M16 auto sear trip. I wanted to try .22LR through the 16, to see how it would go.
Worked very well. Ciener specified super-x for best results. That was true for me..
Thing is, the 30rd mag emptied in less than 2 seconds. Too fast. Cool, though. You could see the fountain of brass arcing away in peripheral vision.
Still use it in my AR.
I also have an old Colt brand AR .22 conversion. I’ve had no troubles with it. Less ammo fussy than the Ciener.
I had an early manuf Ciener and it was excellent – anything after the fame arrived turned to crap…I love the .22 conversions for newbie training. Lets them (cheaply) learn the basics and proper form while not dealing with ye olde recoil fear. But I like your training plan, too.
My favorite training rifle of the AR config is myS&W MP-15-22.. all the controls and dimensions of an AR but shoots .22. I train just like Zero does on my home range in the Northwoods. Shooting from the bench is technically interesting but dynamic, moving training is far better for a possible encounter with things that go bump in the night. And now that .22 is prolific and cheap once again let loose.
I traded a Gecco .22 KKW for a Colt Conversion Unit in the original box with docs. Shot it for quite a while and it functioned great!
It was one of the early ones that had a serial number on the slide. Just for fun one day I sent Colt a check and a letter asking them to letter the CCU. It came back as a pre-war shipment to the USMC at Pearl Harbor. So much for shooting it!
Took it out of service and sold it for an unholy amount of money.
I had a Colt conversion unit for my AR-15 and it worked fine. “I loaned it to a friend” who used it in his AR that was fitted with a Lightning Link and it functioned flawlessly.
I have an Advantage Arms conversion kit for my g17. With Armscor brand .22 lr it is stone cold reliable. As in several hundred rds between cleaning reliable. Some of the best money i ever spent. With other ammo the kit would have to be cleaned about every 200 rds or so. With armscor never had a failure to feed/extract ever.
Since we are talking .22s there is a sale at LAXammo. $132 for 5000 rounds of Remington thunderbolt. Free shipping with “code freeship1”
Link: https://www.laxammo.com/remington-22-lr-40-gr-lrn-5000-round-case-tb22b-on-sale-no-limit-detail?
Hope this helps gents!
I bought an Advantage kit for my Glock 19 about a dozen years ago.
It was used when I got it, but I bought a few extra (at the time only 10 round was available) magazines and quite frankly, shot the barrel out.
Literally.
It was the extractor groove.
I chalked it up to over use and ordered two more, along with mag springs, and other spare parts, because my buddy had a couple kits at that time.
I can’t tell you (I should’ve kept track…) how many rounds I’ve fired off from that thing over the years, but it’s easily in the thousands of rounds.
And it was many thousands of rounds before the first barrel went.
The two new(-er) ones have many more thousand rounds.
Caveats.
One, it doesn’t like LWD connectors (brrrrrt…)
Two, the original magazine that it came with has metal feed lips and body, and its molded into a plastic shell, so there’s no way (that I know of) to replace the spring, but it still works at least.
Three, now there are magazines over 10 shots available, but I’ve not tried any since I have a total of 8. I will have to change that at some point.
Four…with the AA conversion on a 19 (or the 26L) it feels like a toy in hand.
Five, it recommended in the instructions that if one wants to use “bulk” to go with Remington Golden .22LR, just “plain lead” doesn’t always agree with it.
I’ve shot that, Federal Copper, CCI, and other than being “rimfire” it goes bang very reliably.
Even buying spare parts it has more than paid for itself in “fun” and “extra practice”.
I actually replaced the plastic sights with a “dim” set of Trijicons just because.
I do wish I’d bought the one my best friend sold off when he did so I’d have a spare, since it was brand new, but at the time I was suffering from the Hawaiian Ailment, “Lakkamoney”.
I bought a Ciener kit in the dismal past when I lived in the Peoples Republic of NY. Had a 10 round mag that was crap. When I moved to PA I discovered Black Dog magazines, what a difference! I learned to use plated ammo, cheap Wally World federal 36 gr, and it works flawlessly. Black Dog mags are the magpull of 22lr. I now have a DPMS 22 upper that uses the same mags and I am satisfied with my 22lr conversions for AR’s.
As for handgun conversions, Marvel makes 22LR conversions for 1911s They work OK but are a pain to install and remove. And they are not cheap! I also have a conversion for my Sig P220 that has been less than satisfactory. Had to work on the mags to get them to work somewhat reliably. Needs premium hot ammo to work the action.
I shoot almost everyday in the backyard with my Smith 41 or Sig Trailside/X Esse using iron sights. My eyesight is getting worse and shooting daily helps to overcome physical problems. I could use special prescription glasses but if I need to defend myself won’t have time to change out the specs, so I train with distance glasses and work to get a good sight picture.
Another vote here for the Advantage Arms G17 kit. Best price I’ve seen lately was on Ebay, same for magazines. There’s a threaded barrel available for using a suppressor. Not as cheap as it could be, but a quiet .22 pistol can be useful in many situations. Not the least of them being able to practice without annoying the neighbors. I don’t think I’ll be taking out sentries or guard dogs any time soon, but being able to shoot — especially late at night — without walking up the neighbors or giving any local busybodies an excuse to call 911 is a valuable thing.
Rather than the CMMG conversion unit, I will suggest assembling a dedicated upper using a CMMG barrel, barrel collar and bolt group. The CMMG drop-in conversion bolt group can be used with a dedicated .22 LR barrel by switching out the chamber-insert portion for a barrel collar. Optics Planet has had a barrel (4.5″ barrel) and collar set for as little as $105 in the not too recent past. There’s a 16″ M4-type barrel available as well, with GI front sight fitted, though it’s more expensive. The barrels drop right into any standard AR15 upper receiver, and installation is simple as there’s no gas tube to worry about, nor is barrel-nut torque all that critical. AIM has stripped Anderson uppers for $40, and Brownell’s has Aero Precision uppers for $43 currently.
A 4.5″ barrel will keep most cheap .22 LR subsonic if maximum quiet is important with a suppressor.
Black Dog magazines are excellent. Palmetto State has the 26-round ones, with steel feed lips, for $12. May not always be in-stock though.
CZ, you’ve got the G3 version of the conversion kit rather than the HK91 version. If you’ve had the bolt group get hung-up while manually charging it, there’s a quick and cheap fix that involves slipping a piece of plastic tubing over the rifle’s recoil spring. About 3 inches long or so and slender enough to fit into the receiver. It will prevent the .22 LR bolt group from being drawn far enough to the rear to catch on the hammer in the HK91 trigger pack (the hammer in the G3 trigger pack sits slightly lower when cocked due to the automatic-fire sear which the HK91 lacks).
H&K added an extension to the rear of the conversion for the HK91. Then added hundreds of dollars to the price…
No doubt you know the factory magazines are unobtainable, though there was a company in Germany — 10 years or more ago, now — that was advertising them. Somewhere in the $150 ballpark as best I recall. Black Dog makes an adapter to use the magazine from the .22 LR conversion for the Uzi. About $15 I think, but I’m uncertain about the current availability of the Uzi conversion magazines.