Are Glocks unsafe ?

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I don't get it, the arguments agains glocks here are somethign like the arguments to raise the driving age because 16 year olds have the most accidents... NO new drivers have the most accidents.

Glock is at what 80% LE market share?

The popularity of Glocks is why there are so many ND's, heck, here in AZ in may shops a "new" shooter who goes to buy a gun is almost guaranteed to come home with a glock.


I can remember back in the day before automatic pitols were more common or popular (when a smith revolver was in about 85% of LE holsters) many spoke of how "dangerous" they were because many ND's occured by morons who removed a mag and failed the clear the chamber... the revolver was considered VASTLY safer because you opend the cylinder and had to be pretty dumb to not fully clear the weapon.

Again it's not the weapon... it's training and knowing how to use the weapon... I understand the human engineering thing.... but it's not what is at play here... clear the gun and keep your finger off the trigger... to argue otherwise is to say what? We should all have DAO guns with 12 pound triggers?... Anyone ever shoot one of these? No thanks...
 
Wow is it that time of the month again where we have to have this meaningless debate.

I cannot believe that people still engage this debate.

Rellascout
 
Ahh, now we get into the kBs, with an interesting twist; I've never had someone actually be stupid enough to presume kBs were unique to Glock.

I've seen or read about kBs happening in pretty much every popular defensive handgun out there including HKs (hang out on HKPro and you'll see them), 1911s, some revolvers, even a Desert Eagle. KBs are most certainly not unique to Glock's, or IMO, even disproportionately more common.

The first kBs in Glock .40 S&W were attributed as much to ammunition as to the chamber design of the pistols. Federal acknowledged this and strengthened their cases. To this day, the majority of kBs you see with a handgun of any design can be traced to poor handloading.

Glock doesn't have an unsupported chamber. It is a little loose, but really not any more unsupported than a factory 1911 chamber. Glock left the chambers as loose as SAAMI would allow them to make them more reliable and less sensitive to grit build up or differences in cartridge external dimensions between different brands of ammunition. They weren't thinking of the reloader, and few, if any, manufactures these days do. I have access to an HK USP and a Glock with a factory and aftermarket barrel. Later this evening when I have access to a digital camera, I'll post some comparison pics if someone doesn't beat me to it.

The 10mm Auto has a max average pressure limit of 37,500 PSI. The .40 S&W has a maximum average pressure of 35,000 PSI. If it was simply a matter of case support, why would the .40 S&W Glocks establish the reputation of blowing up, and not the 10mm Autos? Heck the .357 SIG Glocks are simply Glock .40s with drop in barrels, and the .357 SIG has a maximum average operating pressure of 40,000 PSI. You hardly ever hear of .357 SIG Glocks kBing.

Mike McNett of Double Tap Ammunition used a completely stock Glock 20 to develop his 10mm loads, and fired thousands of rounds in the process with no issues.

I put an aftermarket KKM barrel in my Glock 20 when I started reloading out of concern for case life more than safety. The cases do bulge significantly in the stock Glock barrel, but this is not a problem if you don't plan on using those cases again. The Glock will handle a steady diet of the hottest loads on the market for a specific cartridge, provided they adhere to SAAMI specs instead of being glorified Bubba Gun Show reloads some companies are offering under the guise of +P, which doesn't exist for any of the three cartridges I've mentioned; the .357 SIG, .40 S&W, and 10mm Auto.

If you try to turn your pistol into something it is not, if you refuse to acknowledge its limitations and the limitations of the cartridge, then turning a good handgun into a fragmentation grenade is a fault of the operator. A .40 S&W has never been, is not now, and will never be a 10mm Auto. If you try to turn it into one, you're going to run into problems regardless of how much case support you have, and anyone with a brain is just going to grin and nod as you describe how your POS Glock blew apart your hand because you were using the latest super-atomic +P nuke rounds instead of common sense. Some with less discretion than me might suggest you let your mangled digits remind you stupidity is painful.
 
Yea,
extreamly unsafe...that's why all the LEO's carry them...if your an idiot, yea, they're unsafe....in that case, you don't need a firearm in the first place.
 
Thanks. This has been productive. MTMilitiaman, thank you for the information. Makes me want to get an aftermarket, tighter chambered barrel, because I would like to be able use my brass again, without having to really work on it to resize.

Hardball: My old Detonics Combatmaster VI had a fully supported, tight chamber. Every once in awhile I'd get a case that was bulged a bit. What would happen is the gun wouldn't quite get all the way into proper position before the firing pin hit the case. In other words, the round was touched off, in rapid fire, before the slide had a chance to get all the way forward into position. I shot the gun 2-3 hours a day, every other day, for 5 years, and hardly ever
cleaned it. Was too busy shooting and reloading.

Anyway, the cases would every once in awhile be bad enough to keep the gun from locking up. Never had a Kaboom, but, with a sloppy chamber, or large chamber, I could see this happening using reloaded ammunition, after it has been fired in the gun a few times. I was shooting 451 Detonics level loads, around 30k pressure, in stock 45 ACP brass, and, thanks to the tight chamber of the Detonics, had zero problems, other then those few rounds that bulged above the case head, caused by the above situation. In a lesser, poorer designed gun, I could see
those rounds kabooming.

I also don't think ANY 45 ACP Glock has ever kaboomed.
Why? The pressure of the 45 ACP is so low, unless you screw up loading, I just can't see getting enough pressure
to blow up a 45 ACP case, and, I was asking for it, for 5 years, using stock brass, with heavy loads.

S J.D.
 
I.m sorry I'm so stupid so explain just how a 1911 can Have a PRECHAMBERING DETONATION KABOOM.
Click to expand...

A round going off before it is chambered? I've been a member of GlockTalk for years, and never even heard of that happening with a Glock. I don't even see how it would be possible. By the time the slide starts its forward motion, the striker is behind the breech face. In fact, by the time a round is stripped from the magazine, the striker assembly is already being pulled backwards to the approximately 60% loaded tension it will rest at until the trigger pull completes and releases it. By this time, the firing pin safety is in place, and blocks forward travel of the striker until the raised portion of the trigger bar disengages it during rearward travel caused by the operator pulling the trigger. Even if the operator only lets the trigger travel forward to reset, a cam on the bottom of the slide pushes the raised portion of the connector in to the left, the trigger spring drives the trigger bar up, and this catches the lug of the striker assembly, pulling it backwards to its set position. At its set position, there is not enough energy, even if it is released and manages to bypass a failed firing pin safety for it to set off the cartridge.
 
Idiots manage to shoot themselves all the time with all sorts of guns. An idiot is an idiot no matter if they wear a badge or not.

If some morons pulls the trigger on a loaded firearm and the firearm discharges it is doing exactly as it was designed to do.
 
"Ahh, now we get into the kBs, with an interesting twist; I've never had someone actually be stupid enough to presume kBs were unique to Glock."

You don't talk to the anti Glock crowd much do you?

Many of them "know" the Glock is the only gun to ever have that problem.
 
"Also, you have to pull the trigger to take the gun down for disassembly, another thing that's led to Glock NDs".

If you pull the trigger on a pistol without checking the chamber you are a damn fool that has no business with a firearm of any kind.
 
If you pull the trigger on a pistol without checking the chamber you are a damn fool that has no business with a firearm of any kind.
Click to expand...

There it is - in a nutshell. If only more people recognized this simple truth.
 
I am personally aware of three explosive-disassembly events, one of which resulted in a wrist injury to a friend of mine. His 10mm Glock let go with the first round of a reload (can't say what it was- I didn't load it) that we had been using with fine results in Colt Deltas. The other two were .40’s, which cracked up with factory ammo. Glock seems determined to correct neither the out-of-battery firing nor unsupported chamber issues, which obviously contribute to this. Lead is a no-no in their barrels. The polygonal rifling may also be a factor, but I suspect it is more the manner in which the leade is cut into the rifling, which collects bullet metal until it contributes to a KaBoom. Wild speculation on my part; I can’t say for sure. Glock is obviously selling enough guns that they aren’t concerned about it, and a very small percentage of their .40+ guns have KaBoomed.

There are several manufacturers who make aftermarket barrels for these guns, which feature much better chamber support and conventional rifling. You can bet your reloading press that I would be installing one in any .40+ Glock that resided in my holster...
Click to expand...

...get a good hard holster that covers the triggerguard and work on your trigger-finger & muzzle discipline. Be damn careful when disassembling the gun, as it requires the trigger to be pulled. The internet is loaded with ‘shot left hand’ images from folks who forgot that pesky little round in the chamber- and somehow got their off-hand in front of the muzzle when the were pulling the trigger, prior to disassembly.
Click to expand...

http://sargesrollcall.blogspot.com/2006/03/straight-talk-on-glocks.html#links
 
If glocks are unsafe, its because the person that said it was unsafe made it that way his or her self, but there all unsafe if you are an unsafe person in the handling of firearms
 
Uhh Yeah....

Firing out of battery huh? Only the "antiGlock" would believe in such an event! I would imagine the main reason for "Glock not correcting such a problem" would have something to do with the impossibility of such an occurance. You can't blame a case failure on much but the CASE! Oh, wait.... I suppose you could blame it on a Glock! I have heard alot of unsubstantiated claims but that one (out of battery) gets my "Gold Medal Of ASSININITY"
I have had 2 KB's. Both .40, both case failures due to metal fatigue on reloads. One Glock 27, one Beretta 96. Unsupported chamber theory kinda null on the beretta! Failure to lock (into battery) also non-issue as neither system will fire out of battery!
 
Out of Battery? Impossible?

The burst case in one of the factory-load KsBooms mentioned in my post above, was examined by another FTO I have known for years. He told me that nearly the back third of the .40 S&W case was gone (they found the case head-primer was gone) while the front two-thirds looked normal, except where it had flared upon bursting. While Glocks barrels leave a substantial area of the cartridge unsupported- it is nowhere near a third of the case. That one simply had to have blown while two-thirds of the way (or a little more) into the chamber.

I'm not a Glock hater by any means, but that specific incident and information in the TGZ article present compelling evidence that individual guns cand and do fire out of battery.
 
:confused: Wait a minute. Glocks are unsafe! How do I know? Well, I’ve carried one, almost everyday, for the past 5 years. When the moment finally comes that you consider a Glock to be a, ‘safe pistol’ that’s when it’ll probably surprise you! :eek:

That TGZ article is an old one. It is previous to the G-21 upgrade which - thanks the Portland Police Bureau and the Georgia State Patrol - took place earlier this year. I used to have those exact same problems with both of my G-21’s; and, I was keenly aware that something could go wrong at anytime – Especially when using a high peak pressure round like some of the Federal stuff. With the introduction of the new #4256-1 trigger bar the risk of a G-21 going, ‘kaBoom!’ in your face has gone way down.

(It’s, now, been more than 6 months and several thousand rounds since I’ve had any sort of OOB event!)

The new G-22's, et al, now have better chamber support and longer fingers on the lock block. Is there a difference? Well, the frequency of 40 caliber kaBooms! seems to have gone way down – At least in 3rd generation pistols that have been manufactured this year.

Please don’t confuse me with a, ‘Glock apologist’. I don’t drink Kool-Aid; and, I’ve been in, at least, as many arguments over Glocks with people like WalterGA as anyone else on this board. I’ll say this: In my opinion, Glock is finally coming to grips with its real world problems; perhaps, because the factory has been forced to straighten itself out. Happily, as user experience accumulates, it’s getting tougher and tougher for Glock to continue hiding their problems with different models; and, from what I can see, things really are starting to improve and get safer.

Now, is the Glock design inherently unsafe? Yes, I think that it is; and, this is the principal reason, ‘Why’ I use an Israeli carry. In my opinion Glock’s design is and will continue to be unsafe until Gaston finally breaks down and agrees to include a functional manual safety on his pistols. Will this ever happen? I’m optimistic! To my mind the only real question is, ‘When’? :)
 
I think of it more like a person's task keeping system. Some people use a notepad. Others a PDA. Still others a tape recorder. Yet others on their wall calendar. It's all in what you can use the most effectively as an individual and what you can automatically reference in your mind. Is a 1911 safe for ME? Definitely. Is a Glock safe for ME? Might be, might not be, haven't tried it in person. It appears that Glocks are safe for a lot of individuals, and this is a very, very individual matter. I for one wouldn't have one always stuffed with kids in the hosue, but that's just going by what I know.
 
I stand corrected

Invssgt.
Thanks for the links! Very informative! I must admit that my knowledge and training with Glocks started in 1995 apparently after these issues were detected and resolved and the oldest model I currently have in my safe(out of seven) was built in 1998. I have attempted to cause such failures to no avail although my .40 KB with my G27 was unexpected! In my first post on "anyone have a kaboom?" thread included a picture although poor quality that showed that particular case that failed with at least 25% of the case blown out but a centered primer strike. I had several failures to lock in my G22 when using a .357 barrel and rounds I had sized from .40 cases due to headspace issues but no firing was possible on those. It was interesting to read that it was at one time a possibility! I appreciate being corrected on that.
 
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