I’ve been shooting a Glock 34 every since I began shooting uspsa competitions. The glock’s simple design and light weight make it easy to upgrade. With drop in parts available online and great aftermarket support, they are one of the most popular choices for shooters. It has became my gun to compare all others to. But where do you progress from the Glock?

stock II with Lok grips

Let me introduce you to the Stock II.

Tanfoglio Witness Elite pistols have won almost every major competition pistol match in the world at one time or another. There is a reason for this. They work and shoot where you point and they are so comfortable to use so you look forward to practice. Try a Witness Gold Team, Limited, Match or Stock and see how much fun it can be to Shoot a Competition match and win. From shot to shot repeatability, fast target acquisition, comfort and reliability the Tanfoglio Witness Elite is just hard to beat.- Ben Stoeger pro shop

Does the Stock 2 Live up to the Hype

As you can see, there’s a lot of hype associated with this gun, it’s even commonly referred to as the “unicorn” as it’s quite hard to find in a 9mm clambering. There have been multiple national and world titles won in competition using this pistol.

Searching online for it will prove to be dissapointing if you aren’t a patient person. It took at least six months for me to find one in stock. Patriot defense and the Ben Stoeger Pro Shop will have them on their website quite often so if you wait you can usually find them there. After purchasing this gun and getting it home I was very pleased with it.

The wood grips and hard chrome finish make this one of the most aesthetically pleasing guns I have ever purchased. The fit and finish are superb and you will be hard pressed to find anything that looks better. It has a cone shaped barrel that provides excellent lock up and superb accuracy. This is by far the easiest pistol I have ever tried to shoot accurately.

Required Upgrades

After the “honeymoon” phase of my recent purchase however, I found some things I wanted to change about it. The wood grips are quite wide and when doing mag changes at match speed you will have to turn the pistol to reach the mag release. This will require you to buy aftermarket grips unless you have giant bear paws for hands. I chose a set of Lok grips for my tanfo and after a 10 minute install the feeling of the gun in my hand was perfect. I highly recommend these if you own a Tanfo.

If you grab a new out of the box stock II and pull the trigger you will notice a HEAVY double action trigger. After scouring the internet looking for suitable remedies to the situation I finally decided on a kit from benstoegerproshop.com. Their tanfo upgrade kit found Here, is a fantastic deal and a very easy install. For a little over 100$ the kit comes with a f/o front sight, a light recoil spring and hammer spring, a + power extractor spring, an extended firing pin, and a firing pin spring. These two upgrades really propel this gun to a whole new level of performance.

Accuracy Potential of the Stock 2

These were my results of slow firing at 20 yards before I was rained out from my local range. This gun is capable of extreme accuracy right out of the box, but with the upgraded sights and lighter trigger, it became one of the most accurate pistols I’ve ever shot.

So what’s bad about this pistol? First, let me start by saying not all stock II’s are created equally. Being manufactured at a lower level of consistency than other options. Mine would not eject every round fired. This was eventually remedied by polishing the chamber with blue magic polishing compound just enough to take the friction away. I then had to buy a new extractor, and run bullets just a tad hotter to have proper function. This work wasn’t an easy task but anyone with minor mechanical inclination can accomplish the task.

After several hours polishing internal parts to perfect function I was ready for some actual practice, after all this was to become my new uspsa gun!

Practice makes perfect

My first dry fire session left a lot to be desired. Every par time I had established with my Glock was 5-10% slower with the stock II. My first 3 matches were also worse. Coming about 5% behind in overall results from what I normally shot compared to my local GM. After 3 months of working to get the gun to function, and trying to make it shine in some way compared to my ugly Glock, I decided to call it quits.

This gun is obviously capable of taking you to the absolute top tier of performance. It is used by current and former national champions in the sport and if you can find one that functions out of the box you will be just fine. If you have issues with yours there are many youtube videos by Memphis mechanic that will go into details of stripping it down and where to polish the gun for the best results. Follow his step by step instructions and you will have a great gun.

Dry Fire With it, Please

In short, you will be happy with the accuracy on a square range. Standing still and firing slowly you will fall in love with it. As soon as you begin actually running this gun and reloading on the move, you’ll see the mag well angle is very awkward, and there’s no real advantages to a stock II. So to get good with the gun you will have to do some dryfire training. Especially if you are already using any other gun. If you don’t currently have a dryfire training program I highly recommend buying Ben Stoeger’s dryfire book and starting a regimen. To check the price of Ben’s book on amazon click HERE. For around 30$ it is by far the best money you can spend when taking your shooting seriously.

Searching online you will find mixed information on Stock II’s. I am a believer in trying things for myself to see how they work out. In this case, I found that my Glock wasn’t so bad, and the tanfo just wasn’t the right fit for me. If you want to try for YOURSELF, then you can wait a few months checking online every few days and get one. But believe me, your scores won’t soar, and the girls won’t think your sexier just because you bought “the unicorn”. But if you put the time and effort in, this is a great platform for shooting competitions with and if it will work for that, it will be great for any other task a pistol can be used for.