OK, time to answer my own question posed in the post above...
The short answer is NO!
The longer answer is something I'll try to encapsulate here.
My Girsan Regard MC R9 came to me brand new. It's a fine looking pistol, well made, cleanly machined, well finished. In all, I'm impressed by this pistol. I wasn't at all impressed with its ability to print groups a foot low and eight inches to the left of point of aim at 20 yards! With this little challenge thrown down before me I linked up with a fellow CGN'er in the local area who was selling a Beretta adjustable rear sight - this is the Beretta factory-packaged sight, made by LPA. My hope was this sight would fit in the dovetail in the Girsan since the Girsan is supposed to be a copy of the Beretta 92. Yup, nice dream. Reality proved to be entirely different.
Firstly, I had to drift out the existing factory non-adjustable Girsan rear sight. I attempted this in my bench vise at home without success. Then I took it out to the machine shop and clamped it in the vise attached to the milling machine where it would be held in a much more rigid fashion. Again no joy with a punch and ballpeen hammer. Out came my mean mutha' hammer, a 2lb mini-sledge. Nope, no success with that either. By this time the side of the factory sight was getting badly peened. Clearly this factory sight was not going to drift out like one would expect on a real Beretta 92. With this being the case I chucked up a 1/4" end mill and simply milled the sight off, reducing it to metal chips. When I was down to almost none of the original sight remaining I drifted out the remnants and even that skeleton stubbornly resisted removal from the slide.
Hoping the Beretta sight would fit the Girsan slide was a bit of a pipe dream. It turns out the dovetail in the Girsan slide is about 0.020" narrower than the Beretta/LPA sight base. With the factory sight removed I could easily see a scribe line in the top of the slide which indicated where the front edge of the dovetail "should" have been. Out came the triangular diamond file and with a couple of hours of careful work I was able to produce a dovetail which fitted the Beretta/LPA sight quite nicely. After drifting the new sight into place I torqued down its single set screw and feel the pistol is now ready for a range session.
It's important to note that locating the Beretta/LPA rear sight correctly in the slide's dovetail is of critical importance. Should it be located too far to the left it will impinge upon the left safety actuator. Be aware of this and ensure proper operation of the safety if installing a new rear sight.
Next up in this series... a range report!
