How to Increase the Accuracy of Your Glock 19

We took a Glock 19 and added three components engineered to improve accuracy and shootability. While we expected an improvement, we were not prepared for the synergy. The combination of Meprolight’s FT Bullseye Sight, Battle Comp Enterprises’ Glock 19 Slide and Lone Wolf Distributors (LWD) M/19 Stock Length Barrel was enough to squeeze out more speed and accuracy from a Glock 19.

You’ve heard me say it before, the Glock 19 will always be on my Top 5 Guns list as one of the most versatile combat sidearms ever manufactured. Although I am trained in repairing many different types of guns, the G19 is the cheapest and easiest to maintain. It’s no coincidence that combat units worldwide have adopted it. (Interesting fact: many units informally adopted the G19 while being issued another handgun.) For police work, many find the advantage of duty/off duty transition to be seamless. As the agency armorer, I went from a complete rebuild (off a different brand) costing $200 to a routine replacement of parts for the G19 and G17 costing only a few dollars per year.

The individual components

■ The Battle Comp Glock 19 Slide is a stainless steel match slide with a Melonite finish in black. This is a bare slide that comes with the channel liner already installed. The slide is milled from 416 R stainless.

Battle Comp Enterprises was founded by firearms instructor/police lieutenant E. Alan Normandy from the San Francisco Bay area. Normandy’s original design was a hybrid “flash hider/muzzle brake” designed to reduce flash and concussion, while simultaneously reducing muzzle rise. If anyone knows about battle rifle design, these two concepts generally conflict each other. The original product was patented, and field-tested by police agencies all over the place. Battle Comp’s expertise in the industry has extended past manufacturing flash hiders and compensators. This is evidenced by their innovation in making pistol slides If you are familiar with the products, they have recently introduced a 30 caliber muzzle that interfaces with AAC 51T suppressors. For law enforcement users that upgraded to .300 Blackout (or Grendel, .308, etc.), this is a quick detachable muzzle designed for your suppressor. A SilencerCo ASR compatible model is in the works.

Why did I select the Battle Comp slide? First, I was looking for a drop in custom product that could fit any holster designed for the OEM without modification. Second, I like front “press check” serrations. Third, I get match quality products with custom work at an off-the-shelf price. No fitting is required and all OEM products fit.

Battle Comp designed some unique slide serrations for the Glock 19. They consist of a milled pattern of rectangles with rounded ends on the front and rear of the slide. The serrations are offset so the user gets an aggressive grip without tearing up the gloves or fingers. They also look awesome.

Battle Comp makes a version of this slide with American Tool & Engraving Inc. top serrations. It features the same BCE press check and rear serrations.

■ Meprolight has been around since 1990 as an electro-optics company whose tritium handgun sights were used widely by law enforcement the first year they existed. Widely used in infantry, law enforcement, and civilian markets, they supply electro-optics products to the Israel Defense Forces who use them in harsh environments.

The FT Bullseye uses fiber optics and tritium, allowing a seamless transition for day and night use. The color of the actual sight image is either red or green. (I tested the red one.) It is a low-profile single unit that mounts into the rear dovetail of the handgun. Meprolight makes one for the Glock, but the design loans itself to any handgun. I anticipate there will be many models to follow.

Anyone who’s worked out of a black-and-white during dayshift can tell you that it’s imperative to have an extremely bright light all the time. Since the eyes are conditioned to daylight, searching for a suspect after entering a building requires a little more light while the eyes adjust. Transition type lenses further complicates things. Along with a bright flashlight, patrolling with self illuminating sites is a very good idea. The FT Bullseye uses both ambient light and tritium for power, making the level of illumination self adjusting, depending on available light.

From the rear of the slide, the FT Bullseye sight has a profile similar in appearance to standard pistol sights: the shooter gets an image of the front sight when aligned in the rear sight with a little daylight on either side. In the center of this image is a circle where one aligns the dot. I’m glad that they designed it this way. Giving the visual cortex the impression that looks like aligned front and rear sights is especially important if the officer is illuminating the target in low light. Even without the illuminated circle and dot, a shooter can get a gross alignment of the muzzle to the target.

The shooter aligns the illuminated dot inside circle, which appears to be superimposed over aligned sights. It is considerably less complicated than it sounds. When shooters are trained to respond quickly, they are taught to view the target, and then place aligned sights on the target—creating a sight picture. With the FT Bullseye Sight, the illuminated dot and circle appear to be at their full brightness when the shooter acquires his best sight picture. This entire process takes place in fractions of a second. Is it actually faster than standard pistol sights? Yes and no.

I first saw this product as a prototype. I passed it around and let several friends view it. It’s plenty bright, owing to the tritium and the generous fiber-optic section. It also provides a very simple sight picture. This is no surprise, Meprolight products have more combat experience then most firearms products in the industry. I’ve never known this company to market gimmicks. Their products work because people entrust their lives to them.
The only drawback with this product is the fact that it favors uncorrected vision. Since it superimposes a much shorter sighting plane on the target, users with vision corrections like bifocals sometimes have trouble rendering a complete sight picture. Concentrating on the front sight can be problematic because the front and rear sights are both in the same focusing plane.

The upside is the reason why I strongly recommend it for law enforcement. Because the sight image is on the same plane, shooters with cross dominance can resolve the image easier than traditional sights. The FT Bullseye actually encourages “both eyes open” shooting, which is exactly what we want combat shooters to do.

Meprolight’s FT Bullseye sight has changed my personal paradigm of pistol sights in a lot of respects. It installs and adjusts much easier than traditional gun sights. Obviously, installation of anything in the front is unnecessary. It should be noted that the stock Glock plastic front sight really doesn’t get in the way, if you want to leave it there. Rather than using a single screw to bind the device into the dovetail, there are two screws attached to a dovetail plate. Loosening both allows the plate be adjusted into the rear dovetail. This is different, and because of the way it is permanently secured, a user can almost push the sight into place without tools. Once it is in position, the screws pulled upward on the dovetail plate, keeping the sight completely flat against the slide and incredibly secure. This set up is lower profile, stronger, and lighter than most other traditional products. The average user can put this thing to work with little mechanical experience and provided with the product. Once installed, a little Loctite on the screws will keep it there until the 12 year warranty expires.

■ I installed a Lone Wolf Distributors (LWD) M/19 Stock Length Barrel to complete the package. LWD markets these barrels as drop in replacements for Glock products. They are made from 416 stainless, and have a little more chamber support and lockup than the OEM product. They are conventionally (as opposed to polygonally) rifled. I use these barrels for the same reason many competition shooters do. I like to shoot lead on steel. I have one LWD barrel in .357 SIG with thousands of rounds through it and not a single failure. It is much more accurate than my stock barrel. LWD replacement parts can potentially raise the level of accuracy in a firearm.

Our observations

Side-by-side, between a stock firearm and this combination, shot string times were generally better. We found that getting the Meprolight FT Bullseye Sight on target was quicker and the set up encouraged bringing a level slide up to the shooting plane. The difference wasn’t obvious, but it gave the shooter a slight edge.

The absence of a front sight somehow makes the gun “feel faster.” It didn’t cause it to clear the holster any better. After all, if any sight impacted the draw, something is seriously wrong.

Although the Battle Comp slide fits every Glock 19 product and accessory in exactly the same fashion, it has a slight bevel in the muzzle and in inherent smoothness when compared side-by-side. The lockup of this product was slightly better. The beveled muzzle was great when reholstering.

The overall profile of the FT Bullseye sight is lower than similar products. I have carried a Glock 19 in a pocket holster before. Although the G19 is a bit thick for the job, this combination made it a little more possible.
Although the FT Bullseye is generally lower than most sights, racking the slide with one hand (using the sights) was not a problem.

The LWD Barrel is one of the simplest and least expensive upgrades available.

The front serrations on the BCE G19 Slide were completely worth the investment.

The BattleComp, LWD, and Meprolight assembly was one of the best combinations for aftermarket products on a firearm I’ve ever put together. After all of the fun shooting I did with these products, I only have one question...

I really, really, like my Glocks—can I get this setup for my Shield?