I don’t own one. Can someone objectively confirm a few things about Glocks? Is the following true?:
They don’t really have a “safety”. They have several mechanisms that prevent accidental fire when a finger isn’t on the trigger, but if you have a round in the chamber and pull the trigger, it’s going to fire (which sounds obvious, but I mean it doesn’t have a safety switch like a bb gun usually does)
You have to pull back the slide to chamber a round and fire. And once it’s chambered, the trigger just needs a light squeeze to fire (as opposed to a full motion squeeze - in other words, the trigger is partially pulled back once racked and easier to fire)
If the above is true, these two things in combination seem like an irrisponsible design to me. You are asking for accidental fires like the one that happens recently where a guy pointed a gun at some kids in his driveway and claims “the gun went off”. You should either have a real safety, or it should be harder to squeeze the trigger accidentally.
No its not true. Glocks have a safety its just not your traditional safety. Its not going to go off on its own, cam be dropped on the ground and its not going magically go off. Modern glocks arent double action, so it wont take 15 pounds of pressure to fire the bullet, but more like 4-6 pounds. Thats still quite a bit and way more than what you need to fire a bb gun, paint ball round, laser tag gun.
The four basic rules of gun safety are:
Treat every gun as if it’s loaded: Always assume a gun is loaded, even if you think it’s not.
Point the gun in a safe direction: A safe direction is one where the bullet will not cause injury or damage if it accidentally discharges.
Keep your finger off the trigger: Keep your finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot.
Know your target: Be certain of your target and what’s in front of and behind it.
The irresponsibleness in your situation is the fact a gun was pointed at kids at all. You simply dont take your gun out to have a cowboy monologue of getting off my property and you certainly dont have you finger over the trigger unless you intend to fire. There is no irresponsible design here, only irresponsible owners.
They do have a safety. It’s a trigger safety, not a thumb safety. This means that you have to have your finger in the trigger and pull it for the gun to go off. If the trigger snags on clothes or the gun is dropped or whatever, the gun will not go off.
The glock is a striker-fired gun. That means the trigger pull to fire will always be the same. There is no double VS single action, which is probably what you’re thinking about when you say “light squeeze to fire” as a double action gun like a Beretta 92FS will have a noticeably shorter and much easier pull if it’s cocked VS uncocked. There is no “partially pulled back” with a glock. You always pull the trigger the same amount with the same force to fire. You cannot “decock” a glock.
Now how much force does it require? That is up to the trigger spring. Some jurisdictions like NY force glocks to have a really heavy trigger pull but as far as I am aware there is no data supporting that it makes them any safer.
I will say if I had to criticize the glock, it is that you need to pull the trigger to disassemble the weapon. Of course you should only be trying to disassemble it after you’ve cleared any rounds from the chamber but it is one minor flaw with the design and one reason why the glock wasn’t eligible to become the US Army’s sidearm.
The NY Glock trigger is, IIRC, for NYPD, so that cops aren’t “accidentally” shooting unarmed people. Because clearly it was an accident that they shoot unarmed people multiple times…
It’s been a while since I read the book on Glock history, but my memory is that before Glocks many police departments used double action revolvers (S&W 29s for a common example). This lead to police habitually resting their fingers on the triggers. Bad habit, but they got away with it because of the ultra heavy triggers.
When departments switched to Glocks there were a rash of negligent discharges as police kept putting their fingers on the much lighter trigger. One incident in particular where a cop shot a suspect because of this. Despite it being a training issue, many departments became wary of Glocks, so adjustments like the NYPD trigger were born as a way to placate the issue.
Well, you’re definitely correct about many PDs using revolvers before switching to Glocks. That goes back to the Miami shootout with the FBI; FBI agents were still using revolvers at the time, and they were significantly outgunned b/c one of the suspects was armed with a Ruger Mini-14 rifle. As a result, the FBI started looking for a better sidearm, and the initially settled on 10mm before adopting the .40S&W. Glock managed to bring a .40S&W pistol to market before Smith & Wesson did (!!!), and then charged below cost for PDs in order to convince them to adopt the then-new firearm.
Yes for most glocks, although there are some glock models that do feature a manual safety.
Glocks have a half cocked striker once you rack the slide, and this gives a factory glock a trigger pull weight that is directly in between a cocked single-action trigger and an uncocked double-action trigger.
Glock’s trigger safety is more secure than no safety although it is not as secure as a thumb safety, and the half cocked striker is easier to pull than a double-action trigger but is harder to pull than a single-action trigger.
Presumably this compromise was intentional and is one of the reasons why Glocks have become popular through their balance of reliability and ease of use - nowadays most striker fired pistols follow the same design principle.
From what others are saying, the trigger pull is always the same. I’m not familiar with the intricacies of Glocks specifically, but this seems to match with my experience as well.
The other commenter is saying the same thing, just in perhaps a less clear way. I think they are saying the Glock’s trigger weight is between what you would expect of a heavy double action and a light single action. The Glock is a consistent weight every time. The design is often referred to as “safe action striker” or often informally just as “striker” fired. The design lacks a large and heavy hammer that needs to be actuated. Many designs after Glocks were introduced have copied this idea, making it a common alternative design to hammer fired.
Glocks have a half cocked striker once you rack the slide, and this gives a factory glock a trigger pull weight that is directly in between a cocked single-action trigger and an uncocked double-action trigger.
I can see your interpretation of this passage, now that I re-read it. My interpretation of the passage was that, upon racking the slide, you’d have a trigger pull weight between the two. Glad we could clarify hahah.
My interpretation of the passage was that, upon racking the slide, you’d have a trigger pull weight between the two.
Your interpretation is simultaneously correct. If you insert a magazine on a closed Glock and pull the trigger nothing will happen. You need to rack it once to get the first round into the chamber. When you fire that racked round, you get the intermediate trigger pull- but also any other round you fire has the exact same pull.
I think the way it was explained above is bringing in other types of triggers as a comparison (DA/SA triggers), and if you don’t know anything about them, you just end up more lost trying to read it out.
To me their trigger safety is a joke. It’s a bit of metal that sticks out of the trigger a couple mm than gets pulled when you pull the trigger. It does prevent accidental discharges from being dropped but if you’ve got a Glock racked and ready it doesn’t take much force on the trigger at all to fire.
That’s why I got my wife a Ruger. It has a proper safety.
But… That is the safety. A safety is intended to prevent ADs/NDs. And that’s what it’s doing here. If you have your finger on the trigger, then yes, it’s going to do off, and maybe you shouldn’t have your finger on the trigger unless you’re pointing the gun at something you intend to shoot?
Also a drop safety to prevent the gun from going off if you drop it.
That said it doesn’t have a safety that most people would think is meant by the word, which is a switch that prevents the trigger from being pulled (that is not built into the trigger itself)
I don’t own one. Can someone objectively confirm a few things about Glocks? Is the following true?:
They don’t really have a “safety”. They have several mechanisms that prevent accidental fire when a finger isn’t on the trigger, but if you have a round in the chamber and pull the trigger, it’s going to fire (which sounds obvious, but I mean it doesn’t have a safety switch like a bb gun usually does)
You have to pull back the slide to chamber a round and fire. And once it’s chambered, the trigger just needs a light squeeze to fire (as opposed to a full motion squeeze - in other words, the trigger is partially pulled back once racked and easier to fire)
If the above is true, these two things in combination seem like an irrisponsible design to me. You are asking for accidental fires like the one that happens recently where a guy pointed a gun at some kids in his driveway and claims “the gun went off”. You should either have a real safety, or it should be harder to squeeze the trigger accidentally.
No its not true. Glocks have a safety its just not your traditional safety. Its not going to go off on its own, cam be dropped on the ground and its not going magically go off. Modern glocks arent double action, so it wont take 15 pounds of pressure to fire the bullet, but more like 4-6 pounds. Thats still quite a bit and way more than what you need to fire a bb gun, paint ball round, laser tag gun.
The four basic rules of gun safety are:
Treat every gun as if it’s loaded: Always assume a gun is loaded, even if you think it’s not.
Point the gun in a safe direction: A safe direction is one where the bullet will not cause injury or damage if it accidentally discharges.
Keep your finger off the trigger: Keep your finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot.
Know your target: Be certain of your target and what’s in front of and behind it.
The irresponsibleness in your situation is the fact a gun was pointed at kids at all. You simply dont take your gun out to have a cowboy monologue of getting off my property and you certainly dont have you finger over the trigger unless you intend to fire. There is no irresponsible design here, only irresponsible owners.
Now how much force does it require? That is up to the trigger spring. Some jurisdictions like NY force glocks to have a really heavy trigger pull but as far as I am aware there is no data supporting that it makes them any safer. I will say if I had to criticize the glock, it is that you need to pull the trigger to disassemble the weapon. Of course you should only be trying to disassemble it after you’ve cleared any rounds from the chamber but it is one minor flaw with the design and one reason why the glock wasn’t eligible to become the US Army’s sidearm.
The NY Glock trigger is, IIRC, for NYPD, so that cops aren’t “accidentally” shooting unarmed people. Because clearly it was an accident that they shoot unarmed people multiple times…
It’s been a while since I read the book on Glock history, but my memory is that before Glocks many police departments used double action revolvers (S&W 29s for a common example). This lead to police habitually resting their fingers on the triggers. Bad habit, but they got away with it because of the ultra heavy triggers.
When departments switched to Glocks there were a rash of negligent discharges as police kept putting their fingers on the much lighter trigger. One incident in particular where a cop shot a suspect because of this. Despite it being a training issue, many departments became wary of Glocks, so adjustments like the NYPD trigger were born as a way to placate the issue.
Well, you’re definitely correct about many PDs using revolvers before switching to Glocks. That goes back to the Miami shootout with the FBI; FBI agents were still using revolvers at the time, and they were significantly outgunned b/c one of the suspects was armed with a Ruger Mini-14 rifle. As a result, the FBI started looking for a better sidearm, and the initially settled on 10mm before adopting the .40S&W. Glock managed to bring a .40S&W pistol to market before Smith & Wesson did (!!!), and then charged below cost for PDs in order to convince them to adopt the then-new firearm.
And after finding an article about it, it looks like the NYPD did want to match the pull of their old double-action service revolvers. Which is nuts.
got a source for that?
Glock’s trigger safety is more secure than no safety although it is not as secure as a thumb safety, and the half cocked striker is easier to pull than a double-action trigger but is harder to pull than a single-action trigger.
Presumably this compromise was intentional and is one of the reasons why Glocks have become popular through their balance of reliability and ease of use - nowadays most striker fired pistols follow the same design principle.
From what others are saying, the trigger pull is always the same. I’m not familiar with the intricacies of Glocks specifically, but this seems to match with my experience as well.
The other commenter is saying the same thing, just in perhaps a less clear way. I think they are saying the Glock’s trigger weight is between what you would expect of a heavy double action and a light single action. The Glock is a consistent weight every time. The design is often referred to as “safe action striker” or often informally just as “striker” fired. The design lacks a large and heavy hammer that needs to be actuated. Many designs after Glocks were introduced have copied this idea, making it a common alternative design to hammer fired.
I can see your interpretation of this passage, now that I re-read it. My interpretation of the passage was that, upon racking the slide, you’d have a trigger pull weight between the two. Glad we could clarify hahah.
Your interpretation is simultaneously correct. If you insert a magazine on a closed Glock and pull the trigger nothing will happen. You need to rack it once to get the first round into the chamber. When you fire that racked round, you get the intermediate trigger pull- but also any other round you fire has the exact same pull.
I think the way it was explained above is bringing in other types of triggers as a comparison (DA/SA triggers), and if you don’t know anything about them, you just end up more lost trying to read it out.
Yes, since there’s no way to fully cock the striker, you always get the ~6lb half cocked trigger pull weight every time.
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To me their trigger safety is a joke. It’s a bit of metal that sticks out of the trigger a couple mm than gets pulled when you pull the trigger. It does prevent accidental discharges from being dropped but if you’ve got a Glock racked and ready it doesn’t take much force on the trigger at all to fire.
That’s why I got my wife a Ruger. It has a proper safety.
Laughs in Shadow with no factory safety.
But… That is the safety. A safety is intended to prevent ADs/NDs. And that’s what it’s doing here. If you have your finger on the trigger, then yes, it’s going to do off, and maybe you shouldn’t have your finger on the trigger unless you’re pointing the gun at something you intend to shoot?
Glocks have a trigger safety, which is a small switch that has to be depressed on the face of the trigger to fire. The second paragraph is bologna.
Also a drop safety to prevent the gun from going off if you drop it.
That said it doesn’t have a safety that most people would think is meant by the word, which is a switch that prevents the trigger from being pulled (that is not built into the trigger itself)
And yes, that second paragraph is BS.