Glock – An empire in decline part II
I’ll toss in my 2 cents (which, adjusting for inflation, you probably owe me) because it’s my blog and talking about gun stuff is what I do.
My first CCW piece was a Glock 29. Yes, the 10mm is a ridiculous, boutique cartridge, but it works for me. I had shot Glocks for years and years an until recently, I had NEVER had a single failure that wasn’t directly attributable to the ammunition (my G20 has choked on 2 rounds and had FTFs). Literally a decade of shooting Glocks of various calibers, and 2 FTFs were the worst I’ve seen. Heck, I had a blown case and the pistol shrugged it off.
The Glock is much maligned for it’s grip angle. I believe it’s much maligned by people who couldn’t tell you the trigger weight on their pistol and are parroting what they hear from high end shooters, but that’s just opinion. I personally feel that the 1911 points better than the Glock, but that the adjustment is so minor in my shooting to be easily dismissible. However, I have a different view on Glock grips because I have large hands and the thick, bulky grip works better for me enough to not concern myself with the angle. Not everyone is me though, and Glock does pretend that what they have is ‘perfect’ and doesn’t need to be changed.
Now other manufacturers are coming out with polymer based pistols with adjustable straps and better angles and… well, they’re eating Glock’s lunch from what I’ve seen.
Let’s talk about the rusty bar scraping across a sand laden wooden dowel… I’m sorry, I mean the trigger. Out of the box, the Glock trigger sucks. Period. It’s spongy, heavy, and the breaking point is just slightly better than trying to snap a green twig. I replaced my G29 trigger with a 3lb. job, had it smoothed out and it made ALL the difference in the world. I’ve yet to invest in the G20’s trigger and have simply adjusted my shooting to deal with it, but at some point I will get the same thing done to it.
I realize Glock Safe Action requires a different trigger, but honestly it shouldn’t be any different in feel than most DA’s. Maybe I’m just pampered because I’ve shoot Sigs and their triggers are things of beauty straight from the packaging. I understand that it would increase the cost of the gun to improve the trigger, but you’re going to have to pay it anyway, why not do it up front?
Glocks are great guns, at least Gen 3 and before. The Gen 4’s are having issues and Glock doesn’t seem to be engaging those head on. And like Richard says in his article, Glock isn’t really engaging the customer as well, seemingly happy to sit on their brand name because it is so well known. That will carry them for so long, but it doesn’t take much for that name to get tarnished and without the ability to quickly change, that can bring a company down a few notches.
I love Glocks. I’ve been happy with mine and would have no issues owning more. But you can get a cheaper pistol from Smith & Wesson that has the features that people want from their Glocks and honestly, I’ve seen nada in innovation from Glock in years. That doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in me. I get it that there isn’t really anything revolutionary in firearms – it’s a tube sealed at one end that emits a projectile – and most ‘innovation’ is really going to be in the ergonomic realms and those in the mechanical operations are bound to have issues up front (see the Chiappa Rhino and people’s reluctance on it’s increased complexity). Glock has the mechanical operations sewn up, why not try to get some ergonomic improvements in there?
I don’t think Glock is going away. I don’t think that in 3 years, Glock will be held in the same regard as Jennings. I do think that unless they really start changing things besides finger grooves and stippling patterns on the grip, they will lose a lot of market share, which is sad because Glock can make a decent pistol and we all benefit from innovation.
And thus concludes my 2 cents worth of writing which seems to be longer than the original post I linked to, and I managed to write all this without getting paid for it. Great job! *facepalm*