Then no one should carry Glocks
Bob says the police shouldn’t carry Glocks because Glocks fire when the trigger is pulled. Like it’s suppose to work. This is not a hardware problem. It’s a software problem. The police should be trained better to avoid cases of Glock leg. Via Glenn, who has more as do several hundred of his readers.
May 11th, 2015 at 5:42 pm
Maybe the police should go back to revolvers then.
Oh.
May 11th, 2015 at 5:59 pm
I dunno. If there really are more accidents among cops with glocks than whatever other semiautos are on offer, changing to a different gun is a lot cheaper than more training. Like way, way cheaper. So if you’ve got, say, a $100 fix that will definitely improve things, maybe do that first. ($100 is my SWAG about value of glock police discounting; really I have no idea).
May 11th, 2015 at 6:31 pm
Remind me what side Bob’s on?
Oh, right, the Dorner situation made that quite clear.
May 11th, 2015 at 7:46 pm
“Glocks fire when the trigger is pulled”
Fancy that, if your booger hook or anything else squeezes the bang switch, there’s a bang.
Maybe the problem is that instead of better guns we need better (trained, behaving, etc) cops.
May 11th, 2015 at 10:22 pm
I have never owned a Glock (or M&P, either) so I wasn’t particularly aware of the details of the guns. The reputation is good on both, from what I hear, but the lack of a safety would probably be a turn-off for me for a personal gun.
May 11th, 2015 at 10:52 pm
“The police should be trained better to avoid cases of Glock leg.”
An old saying; “You can teach ’em, but you cant learn ’em.”
May 12th, 2015 at 5:01 am
“There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
The Glock safety is between your ears.
May 12th, 2015 at 7:22 am
People are accident prone, not Glocks. That said, I prefer a manual safety to the trigger thing. It’s just how I was trained and what I’m used to.
Maybe cops should be able to chose between a Glock and a Sig or Beretta with a manual safety – and be expected to practice with whichever until proficient.
May 12th, 2015 at 9:09 am
My understanding is that the larger instance of negligent discharges early on were mostly from PDs moving from double action revolvers to Glocks. Yes, the long, fairly heavy trigger on a revolver is more forgiving than the shorter, lighter Glock trigger. However, as others have stated, the issue was more due to bad gun handling habits (that were bad even when the gun is a revolver) than to the gun itself. The proper fix was training.
I still don’t tend to like Glocks for brand new shooters who are likely to forget a rule or two along the way until they get them drilled into their heads, or do something bone-headed like having one of those super-light trigger kits installed without realizing the downside. But that’s just me, YMMV.
May 12th, 2015 at 11:38 am
I hope Bob Owens likes his new pals Jim Zumbo and Dick Metcalf. The three of them should do the Second Amendment a favor and die in a fire.
May 12th, 2015 at 11:38 am
One of Bob Owens’ main points was that trained police officers fail to index their trigger fingers off the trigger when under stress, despite training and even after being shown videos of their boogerhooks on the bangswitches in videos of their gun handling.
Owens suggests that fingers on triggers is a default for some 20% of officers when under stress, and implies there is little that can be done via training to improve that statistic.
NY went with a heavier trigger on their Glocks after a short period of use; perhaps that is the best way to handle the issue, rather than condemning the firearm for misuse by a large portion of trained police when under stress.
I have a Glock 42 .380 with a heavy but short trigger pull. At the range, a guy in the next station was shooting with a woman who was using a pink Sig .380. When he took a turn with the pink gun, I complimented her on her choice of color for her boyfriend’s gun. She laughed, he laughed, we traded pistols for a magazine each.
My first shot with the Sig, loaded and cocked, occurred as I was raising the gun to the target, because I put my finger on the trigger and the very light weight on the single action, compared with my Glock, fired the gun. However, the rest of my shots were well grouped because of that same light trigger.
The guy using my Glock had a spread as wide as mine had been on the target, because of the heavy trigger. He’d been shooting 1″ holes at 7 yards with his tiny Sig.
So maybe the lesson of Glocks with heavy triggers is, after you learn to shoot one properly, you can shoot even better with a single action.
But watch where you put those trigger fingers.
May 12th, 2015 at 11:44 am
One of the examples he cites is a cop pointing a Glock at another cop and deliberately pulling the trigger. You can’t fix stupid.
I think it’s worth noting that the PA state police switched from Glocks to Sigs. Among the problems that they had with Glocks was that a trooper shot his wife dead while trying to disassemble his service piece. During the rollout of the Sigs an instructor pointed his shiny new Sig at a student in his classroom, pulled the trigger and shot him dead. Does this mean we need to add Sigs to the list of firearms that cops don’t know how to had safely?
May 12th, 2015 at 4:33 pm
I carry Glocks and Sigs (that have safeties) and I also help train state police to shoot better. They carry Glocks with LEO Triggers.
You cannot use hardware to fix someone who only does the bare minimum required to keep their job. They will always perform minimally. That holds whether they are a cop or an accountant.
There is no hardware answer because at the end of the day an LEOs all-too-frequently deploy a lethality system that depends on a human for safety control. That means it will, at times, fail spectacularly.
An external safety won’t stop ‘trigger finger’ because schools will train cops to disengage the safety as part of the draw. Then people will revert to trigger finger, just like they did with a Glock (or whatever).
Heavy triggers bring their own problems with accuracy and control. That’s what I do – help cops cope with the heavy trigger. Some of these guys carry a G27 (Baby 40 Glock) in plain clothes. The heavy trigger makes qualification a challenge for some.
Anyway. Click-bait.
May 12th, 2015 at 5:21 pm
“The fellow officer failed to do a chamber check before pulling the trigger as part of the handgun’s normal disassembly procedure.”
And an external safety or longer trigger would have … made him clear the chamber?
May 12th, 2015 at 5:24 pm
Glocks have several mechanical safties.
1. The little trigger latch thingy on the front of the trigger. You can question it’s purpose, but it is there.
2. It has a standard firing pin safety, like most other pistols.
3. It’s only partially cocked when chambered, and so you have to finish cocking the striker (by pulling the trigger, similar to a DAO) before it can fire. It’s nothing like your SA 1911 being carried cocked and unlocked with its one pound trigger.
I’m sure that the people at Glock could point out several other safety features.
Oh; The new ones also have a tactile, loaded chamber indicator, by way of a tab on the extractor that sticks out proud of the slide when there’s a round in the chamber.
Another important safety feature is that the gun has to be actually pointed at someone when it fires, otherwise the bullet won’t strike them.
May 12th, 2015 at 7:06 pm
Bob must have a split personality. Half the time he’s talking out the operator side of his ass about defending his spread from 1200yds with his 6.5 AR, the other half the time he talks out the brain damaged fudd side of his ass with shit like this.
May 13th, 2015 at 6:48 am
LOL.
A commenter at my site says that Owens shot the Gunsite 250 class with…a Walther PPQ.
Which has a shorter, lighter trigger than a Glock. Not just on paper, but in actual use. I’ve shot both side by side as a comparison.
What a hypocritical dumbass.
May 13th, 2015 at 3:12 pm
My response that I posted to the original article:
Mr. Owens, in reading your blog and this article, I noticed that you are a proud Gunsite graduate, and use same to lend authority and credibility to your pontifications on the subject of defensive handguns and shooting – so, I got to wondering which pistol you used for Gunsite 250?
http://bearingarms.com/gunsite-brilliance-basics/
Oh, a Walther PPQ – ummmm, that looks a lot like one of those “unforgiving” polymer-frame, striker-fired pistols with a short trigger pull and no external safeties…
Wonder what the trigger’s like on that pistol?
“Quick Defense Trigger: Smooth, light 5.6 lb trigger pull for all shots. Short .4″ trigger travel and .1″ trigger reset for fast, accurate second shots. Facilitates double-taps. Superb trigger feel aids accuracy.”
By Jove, that sounds an awful lot like…a Glock or a S&W M&P. But, since it’s a *Walther*, it must be OK…
http://www.waltherarms.com/ppq-m2/
So, how did you do at Gunsite with your “NotAGlock” Walther PPQ?
“Yes, I “died” three times at Gunsite.
In two runs on different indoor simulators I got tunnel vision. I cleared the rooms with deliberate intent, focusing so closely on every interior corner and angle that I simply failed to notice solitary bad guys standing outside the windows as I passed by.
My third “death” was simply mortifying. I successfully cleared a room, and then encountered a target almost right on top of me in the narrow hallway beyond. I pointed, instead of looking at the front sight, and yanked the trigger instead of pressing it. I missed twice at five feet.”
Golly gee willikers, you went to some of the best defensive handgun training in the world, and during a run in the Gunsite Funhouse – still regarded as one of the premier facilities for police gunfight and CQB/house-clearing training – you STILL ganked a couple of close-range shots with “a polymer-frame, striker-fired pistol with a short trigger pull and no external safeties.”
Guess “the brutal reality that short trigger pulls and natural human reflexes are a deadly combination” worked out somewhat differently for you…
http://townhall.com/…/11/13/gunfighter-school-n1914586
If only you’d been using one of those “DA/SA handguns like the Sig Sauer “P”-series, the Beretta 9 series and PX4 series, CZs, Smith & Wesson’s metal-frame semis,Ruger’s SR series, etc.” “with much longer double-action triggers that are just as easy to fire deliberately but that are much harder to fire accidentally,” as the founder of Gunsite, the late Col. Jeff Cooper advocated – oh wait, here’s what Col. Cooper ACTUALLY said about DA/SA pistols:
October 1973–“Double action in an auto pistol seems to me an ingenious solution to a non-existent problem.”
“In reflecting upon a recent all-cop pistol session we conducted over in California, it is apparent once again that cops, as a group, are pretty hard to train. Those who are stuck with the crunchenticker – and these are many – will persist with the slow-crunch technique in spite of all advice to the contrary. This system is almost universal in the law enforcement establishment. If it is done accurately it is too slow. If it is done rapidly it is inaccurate. It is possible that I am paying too much attention to unrealistically high levels of performance, which are really not necessary in gun fighting. Still, I like to see people do as well as they can. It is bothersome to see them make no effort to do so.
There has never been much question about it, and it is indisputable after decades of observation that the single-action self-loading pistol – the Colt 1911 and its clones – is the easiest, heavy-duty sidearm with which to hit. The crunchenticker is the most difficult, and the Glock is somewhere in the middle. Shooting a Glock is simply shooting a single-action self-loader with no safety and a very poor trigger. If real excellence is not the objective, this is a satisfactory system to employ.”
http://myweb.cebridge.net/mkeithr/Jeff/jeff4_16.html
Perhaps Buz Mills should consider revoking your Gunsite 250 certificate for “blatant public hypocrisy unbecoming of a national gun-rights advocate,” or at least requiring you to repeat the course with a Beretta or SIG DA/SA pistol “with much longer double-action triggers that are just as easy to fire deliberately but that are much harder to fire accidentally” – and you yourself might want to read Matthew 7:1-5 before attempting to pander to low-information readers again…
May 13th, 2015 at 4:07 pm
Yup. You might even end up with more ND’s during the draw, because now they’re resting their finger on the trigger while manipulating a lever with the thumb on the same hand (hello, sympathetic clenching!).
May 14th, 2015 at 10:19 pm
This is my response to a rebuttal elsewhere on Facebook:
I’m glad that Bob Owens got to graduate from Gunsite, and I greatly enjoyed the articles he wrote about his experience when I first read them.
I’m OK with the fact that he used what many would consider a “gamer gun,” his 5″ longslide Walther PPQ, even though he admits that “The Kahr CM9 is my current every-day carry gun.” (http://bearingarms.com/mine-nine/2/) He’s not alone in training with a range gun and carrying a subcompact pocket pistol, although I’d say it’s a shame to throw away 5 days and 1000’s of dollars and rounds worth of top-notch training and “muscle memory” by not carrying the same gun that he trained with(or at least stick with the same operating system, by carrying a Walther PPS).
I like and own several of the DA pistols Bob referenced in this latest post, and I actually agree with him that they’re not that hard to shoot, once you learn how. I just wish he would have argued FOR DA pistols based on their own merits, instead of AGAINST short-trigger, no-external-safety pistols like the one he himself used at Gunsite.
I don’t even have a problem with the fact that he completely missed a target under pressure at extremely close range – I’ve done the same in IDPA matches, and as long as we didn’t harm or endanger ourselves or a fellow shooter, honestly acknowledge our own fault, and learn from the experience, it’s OK(all of which Bob Owens did, to his credit: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/townhallmagazine/2014/11/13/gunfighter-school-n1914586).
However, what beggars his credibility and my credulity, is less than a year later, while speaking in a national forum as a national advocate and authority on gun rights and gun ownership, blithely dismissing the same kind of human fault and error as being an unavoidable part of human nature, and instead assigning blame to the inanimate tool. It’s as if Bob Owens unilaterally decided that cops and other folks who carry Glocks and similar pistols can’t reasonably be expected to learn and adhere to Cooper’s Rules of Gunhandling(as he was personally taught at Gunsite itself mere months ago), because training is “utterly irrelevant,” when “humans are gonna be human,” and instead they need guns designed to take more of the burden of safety out of our frail, fallible, merely-human hands. I can’t imagine that Col. Cooper would have tolerated that for a second, as staunch an advocate of personal responsibility and training as he was, and I doubt that the current staff of Gunsite would feel any differently.
I have to wonder, why the change? Did Bob Owens have an epiphany at Gunsite, or shortly after, that suddenly made him realize why short-trigger, no-external-safety pistols like Glocks and S&W M&Ps(AND his Walther PPQ, AND the Springfield XD9 he ALSO used to own) are such a bad idea? Did Bob, or a fellow student, have an AD under circumstances similar to the cops he cited in his article? Did Bob somehow come to the realization that he wouldn’t have been “killed” in the Gunsite Funhouse if his pistol had had a long, heavy double-action trigger like his Kahr CM9(which he DIDN’T shoot at Gunsite)?
If so, why didn’t he say so in his article? Space limitations aside, surely he could have squeezed in a simple sentence or two about how his personal experience owning short-trigger, no-manual-safety pistols and shooting same under stress at Gunsite made him realize how unforgivingly dangerous they are?
At least he could have covered himself by acknowledging that such pistols are indeed safe(r) in the hands of trained, conscientious handlers – that would have been merely “elitist,” and wouldn’t have offended thousands of Glock owners who ARE trained and conscientious(or at least regard themselves as such).
As it is, the tone of his L.A. Times op-ed and his follow-up article strongly suggests to me that Bob Owens decided to pander to the current popular narrative that “cops shoot too many [non-white]people,” and chose to lay the blame at the feet of the guns used(which are strikingly similar to the ones he himself admits to owning and training with), because that line of reasoning was easier to sell to the Times’ editors and readership…