Gun Digest - Gun Digest eBook of the Glock

GunDigest eBook of the

GLOCK

Articles,
Assembly
Disassembly
Instructions of
Glock Pistols

The gun that started the Glock Revolution: the first generation of the G17.

The Glock pistol has profoundly changed the handgun industry, creating a new generation of polymer-frame pistols, not to mention semiautomatics with uniform trigger pulls from the first shot, but usually without manual safety devices. Exquisitely light and ergonomic, easy to handle and easy to shoot well, the Glock pistols have boldly carved their own very large niche in the history of handgunning.

The Glock has been well received by the experts. All in all, this Glock 17 has to be rated the number-one military handgun today, says Timothy Mullin. It is rapidly stripped, efficient to manufacture, low in cost, holds 17 rounds, has light recoil, and has an ideal safety system. The more you shoot it, the more you like it.

Ayoob demonstrates the G18 machine pistol on full auto. There are six spent casings in the air.

In the second edition of the Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery , Chuck Karwan wrote, Though the Glock is technically a double-action-only pistolthe trigger pull does not feel like that of a double-action. For some agencies and people including yours truly that is the charm of the Glock. It offers the simplicity advantage of a DAO system with a crisp, easy-to-control sear release that feels like a good single-action trigger pull.

When Chuck Taylor wrote the fourth edition of that title, he commented, The Glock is perhaps the only truly revolutionary pistol design to surface since the first two decades of this century and reflects great engineering skill. Its simple, easy to disassemble and maintain, accurate and rugged almost beyond belief. In fact, Ive been trying to wear one out for over five years without success. So far, my Model 17 9mm has ingested more than 125,000 rounds of full-power ammunition and is still going strong. During the course of the test, the gun has been presented from a holster over 500,000 times, speed and tactical reloaded in excess of 100,000 times, and carried all over the world in virtually every natural environment possible. Yet it has continued to function without so much as a hiccup. In my experience, no other handgun even the legendary Colt M1911 .45 ACP can approach, much less duplicate or exceed, this performance.

Standard frame Glocks have been produced in these five sizes. From top, 6-inch longslide (G17L), 5.3-inch Tactical/Practical (G34), 4.5-inch full size (G17), 4.0-inch Compact (G19), 3.5-inch subcompact (G26). All shown are 9mm; .40s are identical in size.

More than the experts, however, threw in their lot with the Pre-eminent Polymer Pistol. The rank and file went to the gun in a big way. It is issued by more police departments than any other, overwhelmingly leading in sales to law enforcement agencies with a market share claimed to be over 70%. In 1990, the FBI said that it would not approve the Glock because its short, easy trigger pull for the first shot was incompatible with their training. A decade later, the Bureau was issuing a new Glock .40 to every recruit and authorizing a broad array of Glocks for purchase by in-service agents.

The Glock may be the most publicly controversial pistol of our time. It tends to inspire either love or hate, with little ground in between, and most assuredly, not everyone loves the Glock. Traditionalists who cleave to blue steel and checkered walnut consider the Glock anathema. Aesthetes find it ugly. Yet the Glock has inspired truly awesome levels of brand loyalty.

The FBI for more than a decade has issued choice of Glock 22 (shown) or Glock 23 to new agents.

Gaston Glock had a factory in Austria where he successfully fabricated an assortment of objects from high-strength, high-impact polymer. When he was approached by firearms manufacturers about producing experimental frames for handguns, it occurred to him that a whole pistol couldnt be that hard to make. He led his engineers on a crash program that began with the proverbial new sheet of paper, and he unleashed the result on the firearms world in 1984.

With about the grip angle of a Luger, the low bore axis of an HK P7, and its own unique takedown system, the polymer-framed pistol was his seventeenth design and he therefore dubbed it the Glock 17. Mullin sums up best what happened next: The Glock 17 was first adopted by the Austrian army, then by the Swedish and Norwegian armies, and now has spread throughout the world.

The City of Miami Police Department was not the first American police department to adopt the Glock, but it was the highest profile one to do so to that point. A few years before, the city had ordered all its service revolvers altered to double action only after Janet Renos States Attorneys Office had prosecuted a Miami cop for manslaughter on the bogus theory that he had cocked the revolver and accidentally discharged it, killing a suspect. In fact, famed defense attorneys Roy Black and Mark Seiden proved to the jury that Officer Luis Alvarez had fired the single shot double action and intentionally when the suspect, Nevell Snake Johnson, went for his own gun while being arrested, and the jury acquitted the cop. However, the perception was taken as reality.

Meanwhile, cops across the country were pleading with their chiefs to issue them high capacity 9mm auto pistols to replace their six-shot revolvers and give them parity with street criminals who could carry whatever illegally-obtained guns they wished. Miamis finest were no different. The chief told them, sure, they could have 9mm autos if the guns were double action only. This was a little like telling your employees they can have a raise when horses grow wings and fly. Members of the union approached Beretta, SIG, and S&W, who told them that double action only autos were illogical and wouldnt be profitable to make.

And then, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms officially declared the Glock pistol to be double action only. The undoubtedly exasperated chief was stuck with his promise, and after a torture test of monumental proportions, which the Glock 17 passed with flying colors, it became the standard issue firearm for Miami PD. Other departments followed, and Glock sales skyrocketed. Police firearms instructors reported with delight that the cops were scoring better than ever in department qualifications, because the Glocks were so easy to learn to shoot well.

Glock soon established a US headquarters in Smyrna, Georgia. In charge was Carl Walter, who brilliantly established a roving program that trained Glock instructors and armorers whenever a department adopted the guns. The polymer construction and modern manufacturing concepts adopted by Gaston Glock allowed the brand to undersell the traditional double actions by Beretta, SIG, and S&W, who only now got with the program and offered double action only autos. However, their guns were still heavier, and still had longer, heavier trigger pulls that made them harder to shoot straight with limited practice. To send an officer to Smith & Wesson armorers school, the department had to pay his salary for the duration of the five-day course; by contrast, Glock armorers school lasted all of one day.