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    The Gun Digest Book of the Glock
    The Gun Digest Book of the Glock
    The Gun Digest Book of the Glock
    Ebook853 pages9 hours

    The Gun Digest Book of the Glock

    By Patrick Sweeney

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    About this ebook

    Glock is a popular pick - an estimated 2.5 million people from 100 countries own one.

    The Gun Digest Book of the Glock, 2nd Edition, expands on the success of the first book with many new photos and hard-to-find data.

    The Glock's dynamic presence in the military and law enforcement circles around the world, including 65 percent of the U.S. law enforcement agencies, speaks to its innovative design and durability.

    This new edition also delivers the reliable and detailed model and production data you look for in a good gun guide, along with the extensive equipment guide with the newest models, plus step-by-step illustrations demonstrating ways to maintain and accessorize your Glock.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGun Digest Books
    Release dateMay 30, 2008
    ISBN9781440224270
    The Gun Digest Book of the Glock
    Author

    Patrick Sweeney

    Patrick Sweeney is a certified master gunsmith and armorer instructor for police departments nationwide. He is the author of the Gun Digest Book of the 1911, Gun Digest Book of the AR-15, and the Gunsmithing the AR-15 series, among many others, and is a regular contributor to Gun Digest the Magazine.

    Read more from Patrick Sweeney

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      Book preview

      The Gun Digest Book of the Glock - Patrick Sweeney

      CHAPTER 1

      History of the Glock

      Along time ago, in a galaxy far away, there was a time when blue steel and hardwood ruled the earth. That time, remembered so fondly by the denizens who strode the planet (referred to as old farts by some), is also known as PG, or Pre-Glock. And how some of us do like to prattle on about it.

      The pre-Glock world would seem strange to many who have grown up knowing the Glock. There was a time when plastic was viewed as a cheap substitute for real substances (i.e. wood, metal, leather, and for those really stuck in the nineteenth century, stag grips) and not something to depend on. Oh, you might have plastic plates and forks for eating with and on at a picnic, and you certainly didn’t object to plastic being used in crappy Japanese trinkets, but you wouldn’t depend on it for anything important. Japanese camera makers had by the 1960s finally carved a niche for themselves, one viewed with respect if not actual warmth. No longer did you have to depend on hideously expensive German optics to get a good photograph. But except for cameras, manufactured goods from Japan were viewed as junk. (Little did anyone know about the cars to come, but I digress.) Modern digital devices are all plastic. Indeed, if someone were to come out with a cell phone made if metal, we would all look at it with a bit of wonder, a lot of astonishment, and perhaps even a bit of fear.

      American handguns for many decades of the twentieth century consisted of a few staples: the Colt 1911, the Colt Single Action Army and copies of it, double action revolvers from Colt and Smith & Wesson, and an ever-shifting cast of niche manufacturers usually trying to carve off a portion of the existing market, like Dan Wesson in the double action revolver market segment. In the early 1950s Smith & Wesson had designed and begun production of a double-action pistol, the Model 39. They did it primarily because the Army had expressed interest in replacing the 1911 as a sidearm. The thought went something like this: The .45 kicks too much, sidearms aren’t really useful in winning fights, and we are having too many accidents with the single-action 1911. What we need is something simpler, lighter, with less recoil and a safer action. S&W gave them the M-39. Colt offered the lightweight commander, or the option of converting existing 1911s and 1911A1s to 9mm (pre-dating the IDPA division by half a century.) But due to the large inventory of 1911’s still on hand the Army decided to keep the .45, and S&W was left trying to convince the buying public of the 39’s value. By the late ’60s they hadn’t had many takers with the public at large, but had convinced a few police departments. The big news of the 1970’s came from three events: the design bureau of S&W, when they came up with the Model 59, a high-capacity DA pistol; Bill Ruger’s jumping into the DA revolver market; and high velocity lightweight hollowpoint handgun bullets.

      One big problem the S&W M-39 had had with gaining acceptance was its limited capacity. Who wanted eight or nine shots of 9mm when for the same size you could have eight shots of .45 in the Colt 1911 or Lightweight Commander? But when the M-59 came out, with its 15-round magazine, the game shifted. Suddenly, a police officer could have 16 rounds in the gun, and 30 extra shots on his belt. Compared to a revolver, with six rounds loaded and 12 or maybe 18 extra shots in dump pouches, the 59 started to look a whole lot more attractive. And the development in the early ’70s of reliably expanding softpoint and hollowpoint bullets added more fuel to the fire. What fire, you ask? Why, that fire was the police market, and the police market could do a lot for a manufacturer who was intent on garnering the rest of the market for handguns.

      Up until 1976, it seemed that Bill Ruger had it in for Colt. He made single action revolvers, revolvers that were as modern as the Colts were not, rugged as the Colts were not, and chambered for cartridges that the Colts were not. And none of those shortcomings could be overcome by Colt simply by improving the alloys they used or improving the heat treatment of their SAA. Ruger also made the most-excellent Mk I rimfire pistol, such a durable, accurate, reliable and economical to produce pistol that it killed the Colt Woodsman. The Woodman was a Browning design, rugged and durable, but expensive to produce. No, Colt needed new designs, new tooling and a new plant. It wasn’t going to get any of those as a wholly owned subsidiary of a giant conglomerate that viewed it as a cash cow.

      In addition to pistols and magazines, Glock makes holsters and mag holders.

      In 1976 Bill Ruger unveiled his double action revolver design, and the executives at S&W had to know they were in for a struggle. S&W fought back in the DA revolver market, but also prepared to lure police departments into converting to their pistol. And why not? Their pistol (and any hi-cap pistol) offered more shots, faster reloading and what one old-time shooter of the period I knew referred to as an on-off switch. Revolvers don’t have safeties. Then and now, a too-high percentage of police officers are killed with their own sidearms. The safety on the S&W offered an additional incentive to convert.

      What about Europe? After all, wasn’t it the German firm of Walther that devised the first reliable double action pistol design? Didn’t German firms make reliable pistols? Yes, and yes. But the P-38 pistol wasn’t something American shooters wanted except as a souvenir from The War. It was a single-stack 9mm with an annoying tendency: the top cover over the loaded chamber indicator would occasionally fly off under recoil. It held not enough rounds, and those rounds weren’t big enough for American shooters. Other DA designs were too small: fine as backup guns, but not as a primary sidearm. And the big stumbling block was cost. I was working retail in a gun shop in the early 1980s when I bought my first 1911 for $175. At the time, a Heckler and Koch P-7 went for nearly $600. German pistols were too expensive and too fiddly. (Translated from crusty-oldtimer-gunspeak to read: too many control levers.) Other European designs were either curiosities like the French Mab or war souvenirs like the French, German, Italian, Czech and Hungarian pistols I often picked up for a song as they drifted through the shop.

      But all the designs involved steel or aluminum, no plastic. Well, plastic was used in some small things, like magazine basepads, the backstrap or grips on some models, things like that. Despite the advice of the father in The Graduate, by the early 1980s plastic had not yet taken over the world. It was a curious situation for modern shooters to contemplate. After all, standing on a streetcorner today so many of us are simply dripping plastic, even if we aren’t carrying a pistol. The cell phone, pager, Palm Pilot or personal organizer, even shoes, belt and some clothing, are synthetic or plastic. For those of us who avail ourselves of the right to carry a concealed weapon, add a holster, spare magazine pouch and perhaps even (this is after all a book about the Glock) a pistol.

      What changed all this? The Austrian Army and Gaston Glock. In the late 1970’s the Austrian Army decided it needed a new sidearm. Actually, most of the various armies of Europe needed new sidearms. They had been too busy since the war replacing obsolete rifles and machineguns, mortars, tanks and artillery, with modern designs to pay too much attention to pistols. And truth be told, as far as most armies are concerned, pistols are dangerous oddities that soldiers insist on having. Left up to the choice of many commanding officers, pistols wouldn’t be allowed. Except for officers, of course. Handguns are dangerous, prone to malfunction, easily concealed, rarely used and ineffective in combat. Just ask the commanding officers who have to explain accidental discharges, injuries or even deaths to Senate Sub-Committees. And yet the soldiers who actually got shot at all seemed to insist on having one. (My father served in Europe in WWII, and he said once the men in his unit had gotten their first experience of being shot at, everyone laid hands on and carried a pistol just as quickly as they could. You’d find more pistols than decks of cards in the pockets of the soldiers in your average WWII combat infantry company.)

      The old style frame (right) and the third generation.

      In the old days, parkerizing was the toughest finish going. Glock’s Tenifer finish laughs off treatment that would make this old S&W cry. And no one uses revolvers in the military anymore, anyway.

      Having spent the time since WWII improving rifles, machineguns, mortars and other proper military weapons, the Austrians, like so many others, had simply been too busy to do more than use what handguns were available from the old days. Well, by 1980 the war had been over for 35 years. Those pistols were wearing out. So, the word went out that the Austrian Army would be conducting pistol trials, and all who were interested could show up and have their designs tested.

      Enter Gaston Glock. His company had been making plastic objects for a few years and had recently won contracts to make utility knives (another thing the frontline troops insisted on, to the concern of higher command), entrenching tools and a grenade casing. The knife was not just a success with the government (150,000 units delivered in the first contract) but also on the civilian market, too. I have been told that contrary to perceived wisdom, the guys downrange do not carry expensive, custom knives. As one decorated vet has commented to me, If you drop a $400 custom knife off the boat, you feel compelled to go in after it. If you drop a Glock, you just buy another. The grenade is a plastic casing with the fragments incorporated into the plastic, which only required a bursting charge and fuse assembly. And no, Glock did not provide any grenades for testing for the book. Nor would I have been all that eager to test some.

      Gaston Glock figured that a pistol is a manufactured product, right? So why not enter a design? However, not being a firearms manufacturer presented him with a slight problem: he didn’t have a pistol to enter. Hmm. Well, with bright engineers, drafting supplies and a grasp of the manufacturing process, designing one shouldn’t be a problem, right? Tell that to the Japanese. Not to pick on them, but they had spent decades before WWII trying to come up with a suitable sidearm, and failed. Have you ever tried to shoot a Nambu Type 14? I have. Or keep it or a Type 94 running? Or perhaps ask the Italians, who came up with a durable pistol in the M-1934, but not one destined for much of a future. The French had been at the repeating sidearm design business for a century at that point, and still didn’t have much to show for their efforts. And as for competition, there was the German juggernaut of Heckler & Koch. H-K had lots of designs, and if local manufacture was a requirement, then building a plant wasn’t much of a problem, right? So how was it that Gaston Glock was able to get it right? One would argue he got it right because he hadn’t done it before. One of the largest problems in getting a new design accepted by an established manufacturer is not just the not invented here syndrome, but also the we don’t have the tooling syndrome. Why invent something new when you can simply modify what you have? So once a design is implemented, it evolves (or not) into future products. The history of manufacturing is replete with evolved designs. When the US Army in WWI wanted a high-volume weapon for individual soldiers, did they draw up something from a clean sheet of paper? No, they tried to fit the Pederson Device to the existing Springfield rifle. When they wanted to produce a better rifle after WWII, did they start over? No, they modified the Garand. When many armies were first handed machineguns, they mounted them on wheeled carriages and gave them to the cavalry. Or artillery. Why? The cavalry was the premier arm of many armies, so give the new guns to them. Or, it’s mounted on wheels, so give it to the artillery.

      But before he could go on to make history, first Gaston Glock had to meet the requirements of the Austrian Army.

      The Request for Proposal

      Anytime a governmental agency wants to buy something, they have to specify just what the item is. Have you ever seen the printed requirements for providing chocolate chip cookies to the United States Armed Forces? I have. Pages of description detailing size, weight, ingredients, packaging, and so on. The number of chocolate chips, and the ingredients that go into them, is specified. The packaging is specified. The acceptable shelf-life is specified. All of this for cookies.

      A slight digression: some wonder why the Army doesn’t improve the M-16. After all, we all know what the better parts are, right? The inertia of the mil-spec system is what keeps it from happening. Nothing can be done until 17 different committees sign off on it. And they all demand proof, proof that the change is warranted. Otherwise, they won’t do a thing, as they do not want to be on the hook for squandering government money.

      The Austrian Army was no different, but since what they wanted was a bit less known a property (and they were looking for new designs, too) they had to be a bit less dogmatic. For their pistol trials, the new pistol (known as the P-80, as testing began in 1980) was not a known quantity. It wasn’t as if they had a particular one in mind and simply wanted to write up a set of rules that it, and it alone, could satisfy. I encountered the requirements when the Glock was new, and hung onto my copy as what the Austrians wanted seemed quite rational and focused (if you overlooked the bureaucracy-specific items). Rather than subject you to a literal translation of the technical German, I’ve taken the liberty of listing them in their plain English equivalents, followed by my personal observations of each.

      An early (and bulged) Glock barrel from a G-19. Made in November of 1989, according to the date code.

      The Seventeen Requirements

      1 The firearm must be a self-loading pistol.

      And who in the latter half of the Twentieth Century would entertain the idea of a revolver? While the American law enforcement community was still greatly enamored of revolvers in 1980, the military organizations of the world had long since given them up. Revolvers simply aren’t as durable as well-made pistols, at least not in the military environment.

      2 The pistol must fire the 9mm Parabellum round.

      Before and during WWII, the Armies of Europe had used many .32 and .380 pistols. Many European police departments still did as late as 1980. Austria wanted to make sure they had something up to the task of military use, and also wanted to make sure they could use NATO ammo stocks. Why not .45? Besides being viewed as an American affectation, the .45 was not a NATO-spec round. 9mm Parabellum was and is. Disparage it all you want as a europellet launcher, but a 9mm handgun is a lot better than the .32 or .380 options.

      You may be a a good machinist, but that doesn’t mean you’re good at design. The Nambu Type 94 on the left is simply awful as a pistol although the machining on this example is pretty good.

      The contract said the pistol must not require a magazine loader, but a loader sure makes life easier. And it’s easily moulded, too.

      3 Filling the magazine must be possible without the use of tools or assistance.

      Many 9mm submachinegun magazines require the use of a magazine loader to get them past the half-full mark. If you lose the loader, you can’t physically load the magazines past a dozen or so rounds. Austria didn’t want their pistol to be saddled with an extra (and essential) piece of gear.

      4 The magazine must have a minimum capacity of eight rounds.

      The Austrian army didn’t want to have to depend on magazine loading gizmos like this subgun loader for an Uzi.

      And why not? Their current pistol, the P-38, held eight. Why should their new one hold any less? Notice that they did not specify a higher number or require a large capacity. Austria did not view the handgun as a fighting tool. It was simply an emergency tool. If you needed more than the eight, 10 or 12 rounds a pistol holds, you needed more than a pistol, and too bad about not having more ammo in the pistol. Only we crazy Americans view the handgun as more than simply a badge of office or emergency tool, and require more.

      5 All manipulations for preparing to fire, firing, and manipulation after firing must be singlehanded capable, right-handed and left-handed.

      Smart. No extra safeties that required two hands to work. No safety mechanism that made it impossible to work left-handed or couldn’t be manipulated by an injured soldier. In an emergency, you never know what you’re going to have to do, and making the pistol simple and easy to operate improves the soldier’s odds of surviving his exciting job. The then-issued P-38 is a good example. The safety works only for right-handed shooters. If you pick it up with your left hand, pushing the safety off is nearly impossible. To remove the magazine you have to use both hands, as the magazine catch is a latch on the bottom-rear of the frame. A pistol such as the Beretta M-92 also fills this requirement, with its ambidextrous decocking lever. (The magazine button can be used one-handed right or left handed even without being switched from one side to the other.) The 1911, as standard issue, didn’t. To meet the requirement it would have to have an ambidextrous safety, and in 1980 ambi safeties were a custom gunsmithing option. If you want an example of the worst possible pistol in this category, look at a Nambu Type 14. Yes, the magazine button looks like it is a one push affair, but not so. The leaf spring on the front of the frame traps the mag, and you have to pull it out with your left hand. (I guess there were no left-handed Japanese officers.) But far worse is the safety. Unless you have thumbs like an orangutan, you cannot push the safety to Fire with your shooting hand.

      6 The pistol must continue to function after being subjected to shocks and strikes, and dropping onto a steel plate from two meters.

      Again, a smart requirement. What use is a pistol if it stops working after being dropped? After all, the one thing you can count on is that if it is issued to a soldier, it will be dropped. If falling on it, dropping it, or having it struck by some other piece of equipment renders it inoperative, what good is it? The two meters onto a steel plate part is another smart idea. It is the greatest height you’d expect a soldier to be dropping a pistol and retrieving it. Steel is easy to duplicate, so you don’t have to add pages of description about just what the impact surface is.

      7 Dismantling of the main parts for cleaning, and reassembly, must be possible without any tools.

      Just like the loading tool for submachinegun magazines, the Austrian Army didn’t want to have to issue a specialized cleaning kit with their pistol. At most, they wanted to simply have to issue 9mm bore brushes and patches. And those brushes and patch holders could be designed to work with the already-issued rifle cleaning kits. Soldiers are notorious for losing unessential gear. A pistol is essential, but if it requires a kit (however compact and light) holding the specialized screwdriver, tool and other gear simply to maintain said pistol, well, that kit will end up in a ditch somewhere. Better to adopt a pistol that doesn’t require a kit. You don’t think so? Again, ask my father. Apparently the GIs of WWII who were actually shooting at people stripped the bipod and carry handle off the BAR. At most, it saved a pound. But they wanted that pound gone. A specialized cleaning kit? You’d find that in the ditch.

      8 Maintaining and cleaning of the pistol must be possible without any tools.

      I think they went a little overboard on this one, but perhaps they were influenced by the legendary ability of the AK-47. You can literally disassemble an AK with your bare hands, and slosh it around in a reasonably clean puddle to clean it, and it will still work. Expecting a pistol to be able to do the same is asking for the stars. However, if this requirement was intended to weed out pistols such as the HK P7 (as one example) that might need a specialized hollow brush to clean the gas piston rod, then I can understand it.

      9 The total number of parts must not exceed 58.

      Why 58? The P-38 has 58 parts, and the Austrians didn’t want to have more than that. Again, why 58? Hey, they had to pick a number. The pistol they had at the time held 58, so it seemed like as good a number as any. Would 57 have been a better figure? Fewer parts does not necessarily mean a more robust firearm, nor more parts a less robust one. You can get too hung up on things like this. They had to pick a number, so the Austrian Army went with what they already had. That Gaston Glock was able to cut that number almost in half, to 33 parts in the G-17, was amazing.

      10 Gages, measuring and testing devices must not be necessary for long-term maintenance.

      In any military organization, the holy grail of small arms is parts interchangeability. If a soldier or armorer has to use a dial caliper to measure a part and see if it has worn beyond a certain measurement before changing it, forget it. That design will not be accepted unless the weapon system is so important, or so effective, that the Army can justify the hassle. Handguns don’t fall into either category. The test of will it work? should be manipulation of the part or weapon in question. While the unit soldiers must be able to repair broken small arms by scavenging parts from other inoperative weapons, at higher levels the armorers would have gages and tools to measure parts.

      11 The manufacturer has to provide the Armed Forces at the time of supplying the pistol with a complete set of drawings and exploded views. The drawings must show measurements, tolerances, specify materials, surface treatment and all necessary details for the production of the pistol.

      The Austrian Army didn’t want to be buying a pig in a poke. If the maker wasn’t willing to tell them just what things were made of, or what the tolerances were, the Austrians weren’t interested. After all, unless you know what the dimensions are supposed to be for a part, how can you check to see that you’re getting what you wanted in each delivery? How can you tell if the manufacturer is actually fulfilling the contract? For many years after the US Armed Forces were buying M-16s, the US government didn’t really know what dimensions Colt was making those rifles to. It wasn’t until the A2 upgrade that Colt had to specify and reveal to the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force just what the manufacturing dimensions were. (I suspect that so much of the manufacturing and assembly of the M-16 was handwork that even Colt didn’t know for a long time.)

      A lot of custom 1911s require a bent paperclip as a disassembly device. Can you imagine needing this tool in a foxhole in Afghanistan?

      12 All component parts must be interchangeable without any adjustment.

      The Austrian Army did not want to be saddled with the need for files, hammers, fixtures, etc. As an example, with proper design, and rigid dimensional controls at the manufacturing level, every extractor can fit in, and work properly in, any Glock. Assuming you’re using the correct caliber, of course. After all, expecting a .40 or .45 extractor to work in a G-17 is expecting too much of the design. Using the proper caliber, no filing or tension adjustments are required to install a new extractor in a Glock. As the best example of the situation the Austrians wished to avoid, the 1911 pistol is notorious for requiring hand-fitting of new parts.

      13 In firing the first 10,000 rounds, no more than 20 malfunctions are permitted, even if the malfunction does not require tools to correct. [The requirement also specified the type and source of the ammo, hardly germane to our discussion.]

      The Austrians weren’t going to be sold an unreliable pistol simply because most of the malfunctions could be corrected with a push of the thumb there or a slight tap here. They wanted something reliable. Twenty malfunctions in 10,000 rounds was a stiff standard in 1980. The then-new sport/tactical training of IPSC refused competitors a re-shoot because of malfunctions. In 1980, a standard of one malfunction in a thousand was a high (or low, depending on how you looked at it) but achievable goal. Austria wanted nearly that standard for issue guns and ammo, and not just clean and tuned competition guns using tested competition ammunition. In the early 1980s,self-loading pistols were still trying to escape their unreliable reputation. Yes, in 1910 the Colt pistol had fired 6,000 rounds without a malfunction. But in the minds of many shooters, something had gone wrong since then. It would take a lot of convincing to get them to accept a pistol over their revolvers.

      Twenty malfunctions in 10,000 rounds was a stiff standard in 1980.

      14 After firing fifteen thousand rounds of standard ammunition, all parts must be secure and intact. Then a Proof load will be fired, and all parts must still be secure and intact.

      What use is a Service Pistol with a short service life? Fifteen thousand rounds may seem like a lot to some shooters (it seemed like a real lot back in 1980) but for a military organization, it isn’t. And back then, things were a lot different. A unit might have a dozen pistols on the range for qualification and practice. The rest would be locked up in the armory. Every one of those dozen pistols would be used to fire all the ammunition used for practice and qualification for the unit. The range guns might see thousands of rounds a year while the armory guns were never fired. Despite the average soldier not firing more than 100 rounds a year through a handgun, those range guns would be beaten to death. Today, you can probably go to your local gun club (you do have a gun club you belong to, don’t you?) and find a whole host of shooters who shoot 15,000 rounds a year. Some of them might actually shoot that much, but the average at your club is likely to be a couple of thousand rounds.

      We expect more today, and we’ve been getting it since 1986.

      15 The firer must not be endangered by case ejection.

      Simple enough. I’ve had occasion to fire pistols that threw their empty brass right in the shooters face. Some Soviet submachineguns eject brass straight up, and will fall back on the shooter if he stands still. The brass must go in a safe (to the shooter) direction.

      16 The muzzle energy must meet a certain minimum when firing a specified round.

      Nothing underhanded about this requirement; they wanted the energy the round had to go downrange. No ultra-short barrels, no tricky gas systems that bled off energy, just standard performance from a standard round.

      17 Pistols achieving less than seventy percent of the maximum points will not be released for military use.

      The highest-scoring pistol on the trials wasn’t going to be adopted unless it achieved at least 70 percent. Nothing new in this either, as the US Army told Colt and John Browning (along with the rest of the entrants in the pre-1910 trials) to go back and work on their pistols several times. The whole process for the 1911 took ten years. That Austria did it in a lesser timeframe, nearly a century later, is cause for congratulations.

      In order to design and produce a manufactured product, you need to know what exists in the marketplace. Otherwise, you may be in the embarrassing position of bringing to fruition a brand-new AMC Pacer or Yugo. Gaston Glock set about studying what existed, and what had been built. He also looked to the component parts from the viewpoint of how to make them with known technology, rather than simply copy existing designs. One example is the slide. Why are slides machined from bar stock or forgings? Because in many cases that is the way many of them were initially made when they were first designed. John Moses Browning designed his firearms to be made from machined forgings because that was the state of the art in manufacturing when he was working. I can well imagine his delight and design efforts if someone had dropped the manufacturing specs of a heavy-gauge steel pressing plant onto his workbench.

      You can do a lot with castings and with sheet-steel stampings. But the learning curve is steep and expensive.

      Also, those approaches and their products, castings and heavy-gauge steel pressings, can and do have their own drawbacks, and in the end Glock decided to go with a slide machined from bar stock. The square cross-section of the design makes machining easy, especially with modern CNC machining centers.

      Since the firm of Glock made many things from moulded polymer, the idea of making a frame for a pistol was a natural. Including a pressed steel skeleton for the slide rails was an obvious enough idea, and the striker-fired mechanism required only a suitable method of making it safe to be utilized. The firing pin safety, drop safety and trigger safety covered those bases.

      A Glock G-19 with factory holster.

      At the conclusion of the Austrian trials (basically, measure and weigh everything, count the parts, then shoot the pistols until they are all broken or the ammo is gone) Glock won. The Austrian Defense Ministry placed an order for 25,000 pistols. Not bad for a company that hadn’t made any pistols (or any firearm at all) before the trials.

      The American Market

      Meanwhile, back at the ranch, things were getting interesting. Police departments across the country were starting to want more than what revolvers could deliver. Crime was up. The accepted .38 Special had been given a boost with lighter bullets, jacketed hollowpoints and higher velocities, but it still only held six shots. Shooting fast double action shots was not a skill easily acquired. It didn’t help that the customary police training and competition course, the PPC course, required a relatively slow firing rate and rewarded inconsequentially-measured levels of accuracy. And getting six more rounds into action with a revolver was not quick or easy. Even with the relatively new speedloaders, reloading a revolver was such a difficult job under stress that many officers simply carried another loaded gun. Called the New York Reload after the department where the practice was most common, adding six more shots meant packing the weight of another revolver.

      Bigger calibers for greater-than-.38 Special power meant even larger revolvers. There had to be a way to get more. There was, and Smith & Wesson had been working for decades cultivating it. The high-capacity 9mm pistol was their answer. Instead of six shots, then six more later, the S&W M-59 carried 14 shots. And 14 more in a couple of seconds.

      The 9mm cartridge wasn’t any better than the .38 Special in stopping power (by whatever measure you cared to use) but at least an officer could have as many as he needed at the time he needed them. And the .357 Magnum, while offering more stopping power, wasn’t something every officer could qualify with. Too much noise, too much recoil, too much practice required to stay good with it.

      In the early 1980s, you had the choice of S&W, or their competitors H-K and Sig. Since the imported pistols cost at least twice what the S&Ws cost, that wasn’t much of a choice. And in the midst of all this, the FBI got the kind of headlines neither they nor any other law enforcement agency wanted: Agents Killed in Shootout. Eight FBI agents stopped two men wanted for robbing armored cars. The ensuing shootout was messy and costly, and it was a high-shooting-volume affair. Both suspects were killed, two Agents were killed and five of the six others were wounded. In the few minutes of the shootout, there were 119 rounds fired for sure, and perhaps more than 130.

      The third generation frame, with light rail and finger grooves.

      If their regular shift experience and knowledge of their own precinct wasn’t enough to convince officers they needed more ammunition on call, the FBI Miami shootout certainly woke them up. All of a sudden gunshops couldn’t keep high-capacity 9mm pistols in stock. Departments that had hung onto their revolvers through years of study and paralysis through analysis suddenly had to switch, and switch right now. The WonderNine Wars were on. Making the market even more exciting was the recent introduction of the Ruger P-85. It was large, it was a little clunky, but it was $50 to a $100 less than an S&W, and almost two thirds less than the cost of the aforementioned German pistols. Since 1982 Glock had been courted by many US importers who wanted to be able to sell a durable, reliable and inexpensive pistol in a hot market. Instead, Glock formed its own importing corporation and brought the pistols in themselves. The first Glocks were imported in January 1986, and in less than 10 years there were a million in the US.

      Getting permission to import was not as easy as you’d think. Did you know that there is a scoring chart for imported pistols? Yes, and if your pistol doesn’t score well enough (74 points) you can’t get permission to import it. A sample pistol gets points for things like safety mechanisms, length, weight as well as points for target fripperies like a thumb rest and adjustable sights. The G-17 fell short of 74 points, mostly due to its light weight. At one point per ounce, the 25 ounce M-17 couldn’t rack up enough points. (All contestants are weighed with an empty magazine.) To remedy that problem, Gaston Glock came up with an adjustable sight. It was the cheapest, flimsiest and most useless part you might ever have seen on a production pistol. (Although I’ve seen some US-made pistols that would give the Glock adjustable sight a run for that title.) Could Glock have modified the G-17 in some other way? Probably, but every potential solution would create other problems. First, of cost. To change the frame design meant altering a mould or moulds. Changing the slide to add weight meant changing the tooling and re-springing it for a heavier slide, and then the new pistol wouldn’t fit the old holsters. And would the current users accept the changes? Could Glock have simply added some otherwise extraneous part that was heavier? Perhaps, but when you’re dealing with bureaucrats who can nix your whole corporate investment in a fit of pique, do you want to test them by adding something superfluous like a steel grip frame filler?

      Did you know that there is a scoring chart for importing pistols?

      No, Glock took the smart way out and made a disposable adjustable sight. Once the pistols came into the US with the adjustable sights, it was perfectly kosher to remove them when customers declined that option and asked for the fixed sight instead. (Glock later changed the frame moulds, but that story is related in the Importation chapter.)

      Then there was the matter of the serial number. Federal Law was quite clear: a serial number had to be permanently stamped into the frame. Good idea, but how to stamp polymer? In an amazing display of common sense, Glock was allowed to incorporate a steel plate with the serial number on it into each cast frame. The way I said that makes it sound like Glocks didn’t have steel serial number plates before. No, the Customs and State Departments simply accepted the existing design. That’s the amazing part. With the import hurdles out of the way, Glock was free to ship pistols and parts from Austria to Georgia, where they had set up their American headquarters.

      At first, the Glock product line was simple. One pistol, the G-17. When it came out there was all kinds of outrage and controversy. On the gun owners’ side it was simple stuff like the designation G-17. No, not because it held 17 rounds, or the Austrian Army had some secret code with their seventeen requirements, but because it was the seventeenth product Glock had made. On the part of Glocks competitors, the question of the durability of the polymer frame came into question. (The frame proved quite durable enough, thank you, although the front sight has always been a question mark.)

      On the legislative front, things were not so easily settled. More than one journalist tried to raise a stink about the polymer frame and its near-magical ability to evade metal detectors. In an x-ray machine a Glock looks just like what it is: a pistol. If a metal detector is properly adjusted to detect more than the fillings in your teeth, it will beep plaintively when you attempt to pass a Glock through it. But when you’re up against those who don’t like you (and buy ink by the barrel) even the truth is not much of a defense.

      But the truth did prevail (mostly, although you’ll still find people who think a Glock is something that is invisible to modern technology) and the Glock has stayed with us. Mostly what happened was the Glock was bought in large numbers by police departments. Its one thing for journalists and politicians to kick around gun manufacturers, but when the Chief is going out and buying the vilified object it becomes difficult to persist. The first big departments to buy Glocks were St. Paul, Minnesota, and Miami, Florida. Soon everyone was looking at Glocks, and the resulting media frenzy quickly had everyone aware of the new kid from Austria.

      The Glock and DoD

      In the early 1980s, the United States was also going through pistol trials. The idea was to finally follow through on the early 1950s program of finding a more reliable, less recoiling, safer pistol to arm the troops with. The program was a model of efficient scientific endeavor. The subject pistols were treated to hot and cold, wet and dry, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and even the infamous mud test. The mud was not just a bucket of dirt from the range, but a specified mixture of graded components. So much sand of a specified average diameter, dirt of a particular composition, etc. Pages of specs just for mud. (That’s our procurement bureaucracy!)

      And I can’t help but think the tests were rigged. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the fix was in for any particular pistol, I just think they were making sure the 1911 wasn’t going to make it. After all, if you’re testing state-of-the-art 9mm pistols fresh off the assembly line, and comparing them to high-mileage 1911s left over from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, who do you think will win? Which pistol or pistols will be more accurate, reliable and durable? But then we all have our own personal conspiracy theories, don’t we? I just have to wonder what kind of a 1911 has an average service life of fewer than 5,000 rounds? As an example of rigging the results, the testers found that the test 9mm pistols were either less accurate than, or only marginally more accurate than, the comparison 1911s. The result was a crash program to improve the accuracy of the 9mm cartridge. They developed a new service load for the 9mm, which was a bullet as accurate as they could make it. And then they compared it to the old .45 round. (The technical term for this is comparing apples to cinderblocks.) Applying the same improvements to the .45 bullets would have restored the relative accuracy levels.

      In all this testing, the Glock was conspicuous by its absence. Why? I don’t know. It’s a mystery that Glock has yet to reveal to me.

      Today’s Glock

      At the moment, Glock offers pistols in all the major calibers considered as serious competition, defense and hunting calibers. When I wrote the first edition of this book I predicted that there would not be any new calibers forthcoming in the Glock lineup. Boy, was I wrong. Not only did Glock add a caliber to the lineup, they invented their own in the process. Can they do it again? Well, at the risk of eating yet more crow in this Third Edition, I’ll say no. If they did, where would they put it? Smaller than 9mm? The .380s already cover that.

      A Glock in .25 Auto? To steal a quote from a movie mogul of decades ago, they’d stay away in droves. Bigger than .45? I can’t see making a frame we could hold.

      But, I’m willing to be wrong if it means more Glock stuff to play with, test and write about

      A decade ago, there were some thoughts of a Glock carbine, but the market for a carbine proved too small to warrant the development and tooling costs. After all, why go to the trouble of making a Glock carbine, only to try and shove the HK MP-5 off its pedestal. Since the first book, the MP5 has been shoved off its pedestal, but not by a Glock carbine. The AR-15 has emerged as the new police patrol carbine. Given the now-established base of AR users, and the ongoing efforts to replace it with a piston variant, the field would be crowded indeed for a Glock carbine. The market has moved on, and I do not expect to ever see a Glock carbine.

      A prediction from the First Edition was that at the moment, the future

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