Aguila Blanca said:
Very few people have difficulty gripping a 1911. The problem Glock faced was that many police departments wanted their duty weapons chambered in .45 ACP, but the Glock .45 ACP model (whichever number that is) has such a big, blocky grip that most females and many smaller males can't hold it properly. So Glock's answer was to create a cartridge that packages .45 ACP performance in a cartridge that's the same length as 9mm and .40 S&W.
Here's something that I've never understood about Glock. Practically nobody actually "likes" the way that the Glock fits in their hands. Many folks have grown accustomed to the feel over time, but even then, the most they'll say in favor of Glock grips is "it works" or "it's okay" perhaps followed by "one you get used to it" but nobody ever says "it feels good in the hand" much less "it fits like a glove" or anything even vaguely resembling actually praise or favorability towards how it feels in their hands.
So why is it that Glock has never made an effort to actually address the fact that their pistols have a reputation for feeling awkward in shooters hands? Sure, they've changed the texture a few times, experimented with finger grooves, and now they have interchangeable back straps, but let's face it, all they have managed to do is treat the symptoms of the actual underlying issue that is poor grip angle/geometry.
Honestly, way back in 1994, Smith & Wesson released what was essentially a blatant clone of Glock's design with the Sigma Series, and they even got sued over it. However, the one thing that Smith & Wesson completely changed was the grip, which they based off of the M1911A1. Granted that the Gen 1 Sigmas had reliability issues, but one thing that practically everyone can agree that Smith & Wesson got right was the grip. The grip of the Sigma has remained more or less unaltered to this very day in the current iteration of the Sigma which is the SD Series as well as the M&P Series, albeit the M&P Series (sans the single stack M&P Shield) has replaceable backstraps to better accommodate bigger or smaller hands, but for most the basic grip angle/geometry is viewed favorably.
Smith & Wesson figured out how to improve the Glock's grip angle/geometry way back in 1994, by adopting a variation of grip designed in the early 1900s, yet to this very day, the grip angle/geometry of Glock pistols remains more or less unchanged.
Why in the world is Glock so stubborn about changing the grip on their firearms? Why are they willing to go to such extreme lengths that they would sooner redesign a cartridge than redesign the firearm itself? Heck, forget "redesign" they don't even need to put money into R&D when they could just do the exact same thing that Smith & Wesson did and adopt a variation of the 1911's grip to the Glock design and the decades-long criticism of their grips would instantly be replaced by glowing praise, so why won't they do it?
Sure, the new Glock Gen 6 probably couldn't use the same magazines anymore, but who cares? Would anybody actually be angry at Glock over that?
It's absolutely absurd to think that Glock would make an entirely new cartridge sooner than make changes to the grip angle/geometry of their pistols, but then again, it's completely absurd to think that after all this time, Glock still hasn't bothered to address the issue that is the poor grip angle/geometry of their pistols. They've made plenty of internal design changes over the years from pins, to RSAs, to barrels, but they just won't change the grips, eventhough its easily the single most non-cosmetic criticism of an otherwise household name in firearms.