Can we put this’ Glocks are unsafe’ myth to bed please?
Through the years, almost every time you hear of a negligent or accidental discharge with a Glock, you inevitably hear the resulting noise about how Glocks have no (active) safety and a very light/short trigger that contribute to causing accidents, thereby making them poor choices for law enforcement (and then by extension civilian) use. Well, let us talk about that.
KaPow!
In recent articles we have brought you tales of police chiefs that have accidentally shot themselves due to jacket drawstrings, officers who have had accidental and tragic gunplay at barbeques and in bathrooms, as well as Glocks that mysteriously go off when officers are cleaning them. These instances, with trained law enforcement officers, often come back to statements about how the Glock has no external safety– thus blaming the gun and not the training.
For example, when the police chief of Connersville, Indiana accidentally shot himself when his jacket drawstring caught the trigger, the mayor, Leonard Urban, defended the chief and “It was just a little accident. Dave is an excellent marksman,” Urban said. “Apparently the Glocks don’t have the trigger safety that they should have.”
As noted by Town Hall in a piece about the U.S. Capitol Police leaving guns behind them in a bathroom, the publication took pains to point out that this was especially dangerous, “as the Glock system has no external safety… thus making it easier for children who have no experience handling firearms susceptible to egregious harm–even death–from this negligence.”
But, even if you contend that many of these instances reported in the media are dropped by anti-gun publications, you are only partially correct. Even pro-gun websites throw rocks sometimes
Noted pro-2A writer and blogger Bob Owens over at Bearing Arms wrote a piece for the left-leaning LA Times slamming Glocks as a poor choice for law enforcement (even though some 60 percent of agencies voluntarily chose the guns) that he largely republished on his site.
“The underlying problem with these pistols is a short trigger pull and the lack of an external safety. In real-world encounters, a short trigger pull can be lethal, in part because a significant percentage of law enforcement officers – some experts say as high as 20 percent – put their finger on the trigger of their weapons when under stress. According to firearms trainers, most officers are completely unaware of their tendency to do this and have a hard time believing it, even when they’re shown video evidence from training exercises,” wrote Owens.
However, two of the instances that Owen’s cites occurred in New York– an agency that uses Glocks, but also orders them modified with extremely heavy ‘NY’ triggers. These increase the pull from the factory-standard 4-ish pounds to a downright double-action revolverish 12-pounds to help prevent negligent discharges by amped-up officers.
Yet the department, the largest police agency in the country, still has the occasional problem with premature discharges. Owens does not offer what magic gun that when the trigger was pulled on a loaded chamber would not have fired up as an example, however.
Could this all be solved by…Training?
