I had My Compact since Sept. My rear sight blade flew off at the ranch, call up Smith ask for the rear sight blade, they request me to send the Compact to repair, It took 32 day door to door to return back. After I got it back head up to the ranch to shoot readjust my rear sight, End up striping the adjustment key, Take a close up look, they put Loctite on the windage screw.

Call up Smith again, and tell what happen to it, They send me another FedEx label to send back, 33 days later, I got the Compact back, They replace the whole rear sight.Head up to the ranch and shoot, again the rear sight blade flew off, Lucky me this time it took 15 min to find the sight blade, and assembly back to the sight housing, So I rack the slide few time and see the windage screw walking out.


Call up Smith again, they ask me to send it back again, I ask them , Can send me the sight, I will do my own. They said the Compact is too new, don't have extra part.

I must be bad luck with .22 Compact.

Do you guys have same Issue with the rear sight on the Compact?

I have two Compact pistols with no difficulties of any kind one has about 600 rounds through it the other a few thousand.

Did you ever adjust the windage screw?

I had to lock mine in with fingernail polish

So I'm not the only one have problem with the rear sights windage screw walking out.

Yes I adjusted the windage on both pistols.

I've adjusted mine without issue.

I haven't adjusted mine as I thought they were pretty darned good straight up, out of the box.

I love my M&P 22 Compact... I had really wanted a Walther PPK/S .22LR and/or a Colt Rail Gun 1911 FDE .22LR ... but I lucked into a M&P 22 Compact , and couldn't say no... and man oh man I am happy with my purchase! In fact I just got back from my property (where we will be building a house, just cleared 3 of the 30 acres for making the homestead and yard for the Aussie Cattle Dog...) and I like to carry my M&P22C w/ my Shield 9mm. ... Shield for intruders of the 2-legged variety and M&P22C for close encounters of the reptilian / mammalian/small game kind.

Thanks cmichael and others. I may just throw some blue on there as PM.

I do see some people having problem with the rear sight, Hope some company comes out after market sight set.

The SAME thing happened to me. I got my 22 compact on 2/20, and on 2/21 fired 400 rounds through it. After about 100 rounds the rear blade was gone and the adjustment screw was 95% backed out. There was hardly any resistance holding it in.

I wish that were the least of the issues. While it functioned flawlessly, there was heavy, and I mean heavy leading, caked on, pouring out the muzzle, so bad that at 7yds I shot my target stand furring strip, which was 8'' from point of aim.

I looked up the issue, and it is all too common with the M&P 22 pistols, it seems they have not fixed this poor QC issue with the Compact either. If you shine a light up the breech end you can see the last 1/3'' of the muzzle end has terrible tooling marks in the rifling. This is what causes lead to pile up and ruins accuracy, and requires a dreadful cleaning process after each range session. Please don't tell me ''its the ammo you're shooting, copper plated stuff won't do that''. If the barrel was finished properly this should not happen regardless of ammo. I've shot 22lr for nearly 30 years and shot thousands of rounds and this has NEVER happened, regardless of bulk ammo. Smith is really letting their QC go downhill in an attempt to get things out there and compete with other companies in a timely manner. Some of these firearms never should have left the factory. If a novice gunsmith like myself can see clear as day tooling marks in the last 1/3'' of the barrel, then Smith should have scrapped the barrel and replaced it with another.

Now I'm going to have to send my brand new gun back for a rear sight, that should be mailed to me free of charge, and a barrel swap. It will probably take 30+ days, and I will be out of my new purchase and money. One M&P 22 owner sent his back, and it took 2 months, and when getting it back the ''new'' barrel had the exact same problem.

As much as I like the M&P model of pistols, I will stick to Glock, Ruger, and others for the larger calibers. I am very disappointed with Smith on this one. If I was the only one with these issues it would be understandable, but this has been happening for the past few years, and they are NOT fixing it in current production

Same here........bought the 22 C Sat morning, buy Sat PM the rear 2-dot blade was gone. Back to S&W Monday AM. Will see what happens in a month or so I guess.

No parts flying off mine...I guess I'm fortunate.

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M&P's and K Frames Pleeze!

I though I'm the only one bad luck with the sight, I had send 3 time to Smith for same Issue. The last time they replace the new sight. I put Loctite on the sight, but try to adjust for windage. No luck on that. The rear sight is plastic and the adjustment screw is steel. How stupid is that from Smith. ( I GIVE UP ) I love the feel the grip and size. I have to wait for some company come out after market parts, sight, barrel..

I have been seriously considering the purchase of the 22c, but I am going to wait and see if there is a fix for this problem with the rear sight.

Does anyone know where I can purchase aftermarket sights for my m&p 22 compact? My flew off after 300 rounds.

There is another thread on the aftermarket sight issue or lack thereof.

I didn't have a problem with the sights but unfortunately the pistol is at smith as I type for the barrel repair. Mine started clogging heavily with lead at less than 200 rounds.

My SIL bought the exact same pistol because my wife bought one go figure. They took it to the range less than a week ago and within 100 rounds it was keyholing the target paper. Same problem, flaky lead at the end of the barrel and all it saw was CCI mini-mags. It was sent from the range to Smith.

In spite of the obvious barrel issues (and evidently sights) I simply love the pistol and would buy another.

Life long machinist by trade, if I bought a new one I would probably deburr the bore with a mild bristle round wire brush in a drill motor, alternating rotation directions before I attempted to shoot it. Maybe lightly crown the exit too.

If the screws back off in the sights, completely safe to use blue locktite. If you ever need to remove the screw heat it up with a 30W soldering iron first it will come right out no problem. Unless the sights are plastic LOL I didn't look at them very closely.

After reading this thread I will locktite my wifes and my SIL's compact before either of them go to the range again. If they ever get it back, mine has been gone for 3 weeks now.

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M&P 9C, 22C, 15-22 Next!

I haven't had any issues with mine but I'm hoping to find a replacement set similar to the warren tactical sights I have on my glock (black rear/fiber front).

I contacted Dawson precision and he said they would be willing to make me sights if I would send them my slide. I assume once they made a set for someone they would be able to make more. I am not ready to get sights yet but if someone else is they said it would be about 4 weeks to make the sights.

I lost my rear sight blade too. S&W was nice enough to send me the blade, spring, and screw.

My question in what order is it assembled? Should I put the spring in, then the blade, followed by the screw? Or blade, spring, screw?

same thing happened to me called smith and Wesson was told spring blade then screw I put a drop of blue thread locker on it and adjusted sight so far so good hope this helps

My elevation screw flew out at less than the 50 round mark and I lost the spring. 10 rounds later and the blade flew off though I found it. The windage screw had almost completely backed out. Smith is mailing me the elevation spring. However is there also a spring for the windage blade as I don't see one?

Hello Sent mine back a couple of months ago for same issue leading up the barrel too quickly. The barrels are poorly machined a rough bore if you will. Smith and do nothing Wesson said to use quality ammo and gave me a how to clean a gun barrel. This is getting to be a known issue with this pistol. Rough Bore on Compact .22? - RimfireCentral.com Forums

No issues with my 2 year old 22c.
I think S&W is cranking out guns in such volume that QC can't keep up. Unfortunately that is a frequent problem when a company experiences a surge in sales. S&W CS seems to be on the ball, although turn around time is longer than we'd like. Good companies eventually get a handle on these problems. Let's hope S&W falls into that category.

Had my .22C a little over a year. I eats everything I feed it (that includes some old Remington I bought in 1960!) and the sights only moved once. That is when I adjusted the windage slightly.
After reading all these bad barrel reports, I got it out and checked. IT GLISTENS IN THE BRIGHT LIGHT!.

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BUD

I've had my .22 Compact for awhile and the only problem is I cannot adjust the rear sight, it seems to be locked in place. The gun shoots to POA so I decided to live with it and not send it back. Looks like I made the right decision.

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Old Cop
LEO (Ret.)

Got my 22 compact, round #33 rear sight flew off, after about 20 mins of searching found it. Don't want to send it back, aanyone know of after market sights for it??

My .22 Compact is in Springfield for sight repair as we speak. It is a brand new gun, but I believe it to be an earlier model since the barrel is flush with the slide. Somewhere between the fifth and sixth magazine at last week's initial firing, the rear blade went missing. We could not find it mostly due to the rocky terrain.

When I called S&W and began to tell my tale, she stopped me and said they are aware of the design flaw with the rear sight. She said if she sent me a new blade it would just fall out again, and that I would need to send the entire pistol in for a "sight replacement". I'm a little nervous now after reading some of these posts. Holding my breath.

On the up side, this thing shoots like a house afire. I cleaned the packing oil out and CLP'd it after taking possession from my FFL, and it performed perfectly (other than that pesky sight) in its debut. The sights were on target at 12 yards until I lost the blade after the fifth magazine. We decided to keep shooting because it was foremost a gun/ammo reliability outing. Without a hiccup, we fired two full magazines of each of the following:

1) Federal Auto Match------1200 fps
2) Federal Game Shok------1240 fps
3) Blazer LRN----------------1235 fps
4) Aguila Super Extra HV---1255 fps
5) CCI Velocitor-------------1435 fps
6) Federal Gold Mdl Target-1080 fps
7) CCI Mini-Mag-------------1235 fps
8) CCI Standard Velocity----1070 fps
9) Aguila Super Extra SV----1130 fps

All these rounds were assorted 40gr bullets. Obviously we were not experiencing the manufacturers' velocities listed above, but the Compact (at least mine) was 100% reliable with a wide variety of powder charges, from subsonic to hypervelocity. Nor was there a problem with rapid fire.

I did not experience any leading problems, and ran a brush through a couple of times before packing it up to send to S&W. I hope Smith does not pass on a jerry-rigged fix for the rear sight, as I do not have the patience to be playing back and forth mail tag to make the Compact right. All in all, I really like the gun. In my experience, it enjoys a smorgasbord of different ammos and is both fun and comfortable to shoot. I'd be bragging to say that I even have medium hands, so a handgun that really fits me is an unexpected bonus.

Let's hope the mothership can get the sight and barrel bugs ironed out, because I'm really wanting S&W to have a successful .22 pistol to complement the very fine SW22 Victory.

Sounds like Victory problems are following the 22C issues. Maybe I ought to dump my 22C? Already postponed any thoughts of buying a Victory until quality problems subside. Ya think? Regards, Ed

Just checked the rear sight and the bore of my 22C which is about 2 months old with about 150 rounds fired. Both sight and bore are like new.....then I checked the dates of the postings on this thread. Appears most of the issues were identified in 2015. Very few problems in 2016 and one appears to have occurred in an older gun. Worth noting the dates of these posts. Regards, Ed

I am noticing the earlier dates on many of these posts. Since my Compact doesn't even have the protruding barrel/thread protector I'm pretty confident it was manufactured a good while back. The lack of current complaints leads me to think Smith has remedied the sight situation anyway and will just drift in a new and improved rear sight assembly on my slide and the issue will go away. Good catch, Ed.

Lost my 22c rear sight blade after just a few shots it was dead on so I didn't try to adjust anything seemed tight . I called and they wanted it returned instead of just sending me a rear sight blade I'll just wait until a good aftermarket sight is available I still shoot it just fine.

Lost my rear sight blade & screw after 1st couple hundred rounds...also encountered heavy leading at the muzzle...

Same here guys. Lost the Blade and Screw after just 20 rounds and also noticed the buildup.
I did some investigating after I found this excellent thread and decided to share my thoughts on the matter.
Let me start by saying that I am a Machinist by trade.
In my opinion the problem with both the Top Adjuster and set screw on the side is that the threads are way loose. Clearance hole for the Elevation Screw is about 0.093" the Screw comes in at 0.109" now take .109 - .093 that equals just .016 now divide that by 2 and you will get ONLY .008" per side for the engagement of the Screw. That is not enough!
I am not close to my tools at the time of this writing so I am only assuming that it is a #4-40 thread or its Metric cousin. Anyway, the hole size is to large and because of that the sight will never stay on target. This is only my Opinion, take it like you want. In Closing, Smith & Wesson should be ashamed to put out such "JUNK" I don't care if it is cheap, the workmanship on this firearm is poor at best.

New forum member and new (and first) pistol owner, so my lingo is likely not up to snuff.
I recently bought a 22C. I've shot it about 3 times now, with no real issues until today. I tried to adjust the rear sights to the left, as my pattern was consistently to the right. I noticed the rear slide dots were far enough to the left that the left one was starting to get hidden by the frame. When in that position, it would pop out and fall on the floor. A helpful, knowledgeable range guy put it back together for me.
Once I started to adjust windage again, it popped out again. Being at an indoor range, it was fairly easily found. Once I got home I looked at the slide and sight base to see what would cause that. The slide appears to have a bump near the bottom to fit into a slot in the base, allowing it to slide right/left. It looks to be installed via a key-way that is accessible to the bump when the slide is fully left - where I kept adjusting to, in order to get the gun sighted.
I would not say the set screw is overly loose, so I'm hoping it will stay put, unlike others commenting here.
After watching a YouTube review of the gun, I heard the front site is "driftable" as well. When looking at the front, indeed it appears that front site is not centered on the barrel centerline. I assume, once I get the front better aligned, I should be able to align the rear so it is not way left, allowing it to fall out of its guide.
Now to look around to see how that front site can be tweaked. I see no screws or other obvious way to adjust that. Any suggestions?
I hope this helps others having this issue with what appears to be a pretty nice gun.

You are on the way to success! The Rear sight is a joke so just do yourself a favor and do what I did. Get a new set of Sights.
I picked me up a Williams Fireset 70915 S&W M&P on eBay today for $34, it seems that there are some good reviews out on that set. I just have to wait and see. Personally I like the Fiber Sights but it's because I can see them better then the Stock white dot.
Use some Loctite 242 on the threads that will help keep everything together. Happy Shooting!

I've read many folks do that. I don't mind doing improvements, but I was hoping I wouldn't have to start putting more money into something just to make it work like it should to start. I'll update when I get a chance to adjust that front sight and see how the rear works out then.

I was thinking the exact same thing as you but I was so mad about this whole situation and the fact that it would take up to 7 weeks to get it replaced by S&W that I just went ahead and made that small investment. I wear glasses and it so happens that I can see better with the Fiber Sights anyway so at least I can look at it as a win/win lol

I think what I reported is correct. I went to the range today and had their gunsmith tweak the front sight (free of course - warranty or good will?). Went to shoot a few and proceeded to tweak the rear sight to center things. Probably shot over 100 rounds, playing with the sight adjustment back and forth. It did not fall once. The rear sight is still a hair to the left based on the mount it sits in, but at least now I am pretty close to centered and it stays together. Hooray!

If you are referring to Williams Gunsight in Davison, Michigan for that new rear sight, that is where I bought the gun and had the front sight adjusted. The were very good about it. I actually had them tweak it a second time to get that rear sight even further over. Shot it again today with no issues (other than that screw needing some Loctite I think). Surprised they did not try to sell me a new sight! I also dabbed a little day-glow paint from Walmart on the dull white dots - much better now. Happy camper...

Sorry to bump an old thread, but can someone check to see if the blade is metal? Mine fell off after 60 rounds. I know the general area it fell, in grass, but was hoping to use a magnet if someone can confirm it will work.
1st time pistol owner, now can't shoot!! But hey those 60 rounds were awesome!

Lost mine today. After 50 rounds or so. There was no way I was going to find it.

I am pretty sure it is plastic - not magnetic obviously.

Anybody have any idea where I can get a replacement rear sight screw and spring for my 22 compact. I hate to send it off to S&W and wait.

Thanks,
Gerald

It says 22 Compact but I would call them first. I don't have an experience with these sights but would be interested if they work with my M&P 22C.

S&W M&P .22 Compact Fiber Optic Sights

Call them they will send you another. I lost the one that raises and lower the sight and they sent one to me. I couldn't find any other source for the spring.

Jim,

Thanks I'll give them a call.

Gerald

Just over 400 rounds on mine, and no problems yet with the sight.

With my adjusted front sight and now properly adjusted rear sight, I put about 200 rounds through it yesterday with no issues. Got it zeroed in pretty well. I've been running Browning ammo exclusively as I get 400 rounds for $27. I don't recall having any misfires or jams after 2 or 3 boxes so far. I am liking the gun and would recommend it.

On my first trip to the range, the rear sight blade flew off somewhere around 70 rounds. Couldn't find it, so I emailed S&W. Rep who replied said they were sending a replacement. Awaiting that part now. In my case, the spring and set screw were still there. The set screw was very easy to move. I'll probably try blue loctite when I install it. The barrel thread protector nut also loosens after firing 20-30 rounds. No wrench was included, and I don't have anything that fits. I can get it finger tight again, but that requires field stripping, and then it happens again anyway.