Victory!
S&W’s new .22 LR semi-auto is a winner
The new all stainless-steel pistol by S&W has nearly neutral balance,
but is just muzzle-heavy enough to hold rock-steady on target.
One hundred-and-fifty-nine years later, after marketing the first, successful .22-rimfire handgun, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson would be proud of Smith & Wesson’s latest launch of a highly accurate and affordable rimfire autoloader. They might be miffed by its stainless steel construction, but they would appreciate its name—Victory—and the level of performance it brings to its new owners.
Victory is a welcomed successor to S&W’s Model 22A rimfire autoloader. Victory retains some of the M22A’s better features, including a 5.5-inch bull barrel and fiber optic adjustable sights, but it’s an overall refreshing new design.
Picking the Victory up-and-out of S&W’s traditional blue box, which also contains two stainless steel magazines, a quick-change optical sight base, a barrel removal-and-installation wrench and cable lock, I was suddenly aware of the weight and balance of the new model. Gone is the aluminum frame of the M22A. With a few exceptions like the grip, some fire control components and sights, the Victory is an all stainless steel pistol with its bull barrel measuring a full 0.865-inch in diameter. It tips the scales at 36 ounces unloaded.
Equally important, the weight distribution built into the Victory places the balance point just aft of the trigger. The effect is to give the pistol an almost neutral balance when held on target. Aiding the feeling is the ideal angle of the grip, which aligns the Victory smack on target when your arm is extended. The polymer grip itself is well done and “grippy” with generous areas of stippling on the front and backstraps as well as the side panels.
The Victory is optics friendly, and good optics reveal the inherent accuracy
of the Victory. This Bushnell Red/Green Dot optic with lapped-and-fitted rings
is from Majestic Arms and ready to go on the Victory’s factory-supplied Picatinny rail.
The rear of the Victory slide features four, large, raised, grasping grooves with ample finger clearance to facilitate working the slide. S&W, in their instructions, specifically warns the consumer not to dry fire the Victory, essentially the Victory is always cocked. The effort to work the Victory slide is comparable to other popular brands like the Ruger. Drawing back the slide is very easy for first 2/3’s of rearward movement then stiffens up a bit when the mainspring is being fully compressed. For young and older hands, it may be a difficult moment. In that case, with the safety on, I recommend firmly holding the rear of the slide and pushing the pistol forward with the strong hand to charge the pistol.
The operating controls on the left side of the frame, the safety, slide release and magazine release are positioned where they should be and within reach of your thumb. The Victory does have a magazine interlock so it can’t be fired without a magazine in place. Speaking of magazines, the two, stainless steel magazines supplied by S&W fed and functioned perfectly.
The 2-stage trigger of the Victory was a welcome surprise. First, it features an adjustable trigger stop, which is always a good idea on a target quality pistol. Second, measured with a Lyman electronic gauge, the factory trigger weight-of-pull averaged 3.5 pounds. The take-up in the first stage is long, and it’s sort of a “grit-your-teeth” moment, but the second stage release was crisp like it should be. My hat’s off to S&W if all Victory triggers come through set-up such as the one I tested.
One of the very unique and endearing features of the Victory is its design enables the owner to remove the barrel and receiver from the frame by turning out a single bolt in front of the triggerguard. Once the barrel and receiver are removed, the operating bolt of the Victory can simply be withdrawn out the rear of the frame. It even gets better.
The barrel can easily be removed from the frame by unscrewing a single bolt and a custom drop-in Volquartsen barrel can be substituted for the factory barrel. Volquartsen currently offers two replacement barrels—a 6.75-inch lightweight, carbon-tensioned barrel ($215) or a 6-inch fluted, stainless steel barrel ($295). Both barrels are threaded 1/2×28 for suppressors. The stainless steel barrel is supplied with Volquartsen’s unique “forward blow compensator,” and a compensator is an option on the carbon-tensioned barrel which comes factory mounted with a thread protector on the muzzle.
Volquartsen rimfire barrels are world famous for their accuracy. I might add the Volquartsen “Stinger” I own is the most accurate handgun I’ve ever handled. It out-shoots most .22 rifles. On the other hand, the S&W factory barrel certainly proved to be no slouch.
The controls of the Victory are a thumb’s reach away, and will be familiar
to most shooters already. The trigger’s overtravel adjustment enhances
control and bull’s-eye performance.
The new Victory is a target-quality handgun, both affordable and
inherently accurate. It proved quite capable with many brands of ammo at 20 yards.
To wring out the very best accuracy the Victory had to offer, I replaced the fiber optic rear sight with the factory supplied Picatinny-style optics base. The optic I mounted was a Majestic Arms unit consisting of a Bushnell Trophy 1x28mm, with red and green dot sight secured in quick detachable rings lapped in by Majestic. With 11 brightness settings and four reticle options, the Bushnell Trophy is a little, optical powerhouse.
At the range this time of year, it’s always windy, and my cheek was registering a variable right-to-left breeze. Even at the test distance of 20 yards, the wind at those velocities can affect .22 rimfire groups, so I decided to fire 5-shot groups and measure the closest four. Even with the wind issue, the S&W Victory blew me away with the tiny groups it delivered with a variety of ammunition.
The Victory, with a retail of $409 to $459, depending on the model, generated smaller groups than the last S&W Model 41 I fired!
As introduced, the Victory is available in three models: the basic model as tested ($409); a model with threaded muzzle ($429); a model decked out in an eye-catching, Kryptek Highlander finish ($459).
If all the production guns perform like the one tested, Smith & Wesson has added another world-class winner to its stable.
