Range Review: Recover Tactical Stabilizing Brace

My current daily carry gun is a Glock G19 with a Trijicon RMR. I’ve carried a G19 for four years now, and for me, they come closest to the sweet spot of combination of accuracy, concealment and firepower that makes the ideal carry gun.

But occasionally, I’d like to have something with a little more oomph. For example, I usually wear shorts around the home, and when I do, I carry a Ruger LCP in my pocket. The purpose of that pistol is to buy me enough time to get to my home defense shotgun, a Mossberg 500 with all the trimmings. The firepower that a good shotgun could bring to the party can be comforting at times, however, I’m not always home. My wife and I enjoy traveling, and that means I need a home defense gun for when I’m away from home.

Secure Your Guns, Secure Yourself

I am a firm believer in the Zeroeth Rule Of Gun Safety: Always keep your guns out the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. This is why I don’t like leaving an unsecured gun in a vehicle, and I am not a fan of “truck guns.” I have a Hornady lock box in my car for those occasions when I need to disarm myself before going into a government building or the like, but I’ve yet to find an unobtrusive yet secure way to store a long gun in my car, much less when I get to my destination. What would be ideal would be some way of turning my concealed carry pistol into something that ramps up the firepower I have on-hand, but doesn’t mean I have to leave a gun unattended in my vehicle or my hotel room.

Enter the Recover Tactical 20/20 Stabilizer Kit for Glock double stack pistols. This accessory takes just a few seconds to add to any compact or full-size double stack Glock pistol, and once it’s on, it easily doubles the effective range of your pistol. Toss in a few higher capacity magazines like Magpul’s 21 rounder or the 33-round magazines made by Glock, and now my concealed carry pistol is starting to play around in large format pistol/pistol caliber carbine territory.

I believe that any dedicated home-defense gun, even a “home away from home” defense gun like this unit, should have a light on it so you can verify your target. As such, I added a short section of Picatinny rail to my stabilizer so I could attach a small Nightstick light to this setup. Now it was time to see how effective a Glock G19 in the Recover Tactical Stabilizer is versus a large format pistol with a brace.

Testing the Recover Tactical Stabilizer at the Range

In order to find out, I took both of them to the range and shot the same drills with each of them. The first drill is John Holschen’s Rifle Qualification Drill. I like this drill because it is all about quick, accurate shots from low ready at close range, which is the most likely type of encounter an armed civilian is going to have with a rifle or large-format pistol. I ran through it once with a large format pistol in .223 Rem built on a Aero Precision lower with a short barrel Primary Weapon Systems upper, topped with a Primary Arms 1x prism sight and a SB Tactical brace. I’ll then try those drills again using my G19 in the Recover Tactical Stabilizer

Drill #1: John Holschen Rifle Drill 

• 15 rounds total
• Start Position: Low Ready
• Target: IDPA Standard target
• Minimum to qualify is 90-percent accuracy at Marksman time (68/75).
• Any hit off the paper or unaccounted for = Failed to Qualify
• Sharpshooter & Expert require 95-percent accuracy (71/75).
• Slowest stage is the qualification level. 

.223 Rem. Large Format Pistol 

• Possible Points: 75
• Total Points Down: 3
• Score: 72/75
• Accuracy Percentage: 96
• Qualification Level: Sharpshooter

Yeah, so I had some trouble getting the gun on-target from low ready at 7 yards, and as a result, I scored Sharpshooter rather than Expert. Let’s see how I did with the Glock in the Stabilizer. 

Glock G19 in a Recover Tactical Stabilizer

• Possible Points: 75
• Total Points Down: 7
• Score: 68/75
• Accuracy Percentage: 90.67
• Qualification Level: Marksman

Well, the good news is, I still qualified, but only just. However, those scores are much faster and more accurate than what I can do with my pistol by itself, so the stabilizer is definitely doing its job. Would a dedicated rifle or large format pistol do it better? Probably, but carrying one of those around with me is just not in the cards right now.

Drill #2: Sicario Ambush Drill

This drill is of my own design and is based on the iconic roadside ambush scene in the movie “Sicario,” where a special operations soldier engages four assassins with two rounds each at close range. After timing the scene in the movie with a stopwatch, it appears that our hero gets all eight rounds on target in around four and a half seconds. The assassins are all in one car, so the first two targets are relatively easy, however, the two in the back seat will require more accuracy. Let’s do this drill once with the .223 Rem. large format pistol, and once with the G19 in the stabilizing brace.

Sicario Drill

• Distance: 7 yards
• Eight rounds total
• Par Time: 4.5 seconds
• Target: Two IDPA Standard targets, one yard part
• Pass/Fail: Any time greater than the par time or less than eight scoring rounds on target is a fail.
• Scoring: Any Down Zero or Down One hit on the target is a scoring hit. Anything else is a miss.
• Start Position: Firearm pointing at target, safety off (if needed), finger on trigger
• Drill Procedure: On start signal, engage the left target with two rounds to center mass, then the right target with two rounds to center mass. Transition back to the left target and engage the head box with two rounds, then fire two rounds into the headbox of the right target.

Results:

.223 Rem Large Format Pistol: All targets engaged in 3.58 seconds
G19 In Recover Tactical Stabilizer: All targets engaged in 4.56 seconds

Okay, so I barely missed passing that drill with the stabilizer. However, once again, those results are much faster and more accurate than what I can do with just my pistol by itself, which is the point of this accessory.

Conclusion

The Recover Tactical Stabilizer is, by far, the easiest to use stabilizing add-on I’ve found for Glock pistols. It doesn’t require you to re-zero your optic every time you attach it to your pistol, and you can snap it on your gun in a matter of seconds. On top of this, with the addition of the angled magazine storage and side Picatinny rail, you can have a spare magazine or a light and a laser at your fingertips. As I said before though, what I really like about the Stabilizer is that I can have something with me that dramatically improves the performance of my carry pistol, taking it close to the performance of a large format pistol, but without the headaches of having secure a large firearm in my car or in my hotel room, giving me a home defense gun for when I’m away from home.