A de-cocker would be better
And lead to fewer cases of police getting Glock leg. Glock with a thumb safety.
Update: I guess my general smarminess didn’t quite come across all that effectively as I thought it would. I like Glocks just as they come. But several folks seem to want the safeties and other doodads. My point was that if you want a safety, then a decocker would be nice too and even better. Make it like all the other semi-autos out there. But both are unnecessary.
September 17th, 2009 at 9:26 am
How exactly would that decocker work? Seeing as how Glocks don’t “cock”.
September 17th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Sure they do. Part of the problem folks have with Glocks is that to clean it, you must pull the trigger to drop the striker (i.e., de cock it). So, something that did that without firing might help.
September 17th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Every gun design has inherent advantages and disadvantages. I would think that if one doesn’t like the disadvantages of a particular design, then one should choose another design…but that’s just me.
Doesn’t either a safety or a decocker kind of defeat the entire purpose of Glock’s pre-loaded striker system?
If you’re going to add a decocker or external safety, why not just buy one of the myriads of other designs that already have them?
It just adds another point of failure to the mechanism and another control to be manipulated. This would eliminate two of the Glock’s major selling points: simplicity (which can potentially impact reliability), and simplicity of use.
Don’t get me wrong here…I’m not defending Glock’s design or saying that it “shouldn’t be messed with” or anything of the kind. We own one Glock, it belongs to my wife and I don’t particularly like it.
I also understand the concept of them modifying the design to break into a large untapped market. That’s just smart business.
But why change the mechanism to make the gun “safer” for cops? Especially when the change would eliminate some of the advantages of the design?
Cops getting “glock leg” is a function of them not understanding and allowing for the limitations of the design. That’s a software issue, not a hardware issue.
Eliminating a couple of the major advantages of the hardware in an effort to alleviate a software problem seems a little counter-intuitive to me.
September 17th, 2009 at 9:39 am
I like Glocks just as they come. But several folks seem to want the safeties and other doodads. My point was that if you want a safety, then a decocker would be nice too. Make it like all the other semi-autos out there.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:04 am
But a decocker wouldn’t work on a Glock since there’s no double-action trigger pull to re-cock it. You have to manually cycle the slide to cock it (or pre-cock it, as it were). In that case you’re just as well off carrying your Glock with no round in the chamber, and cycling the slide when you’re ready to shoot.
But hell, if they’re going to go that far, why not sell every Glock with a better-looking friend to act as a cock blocker?
September 17th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
If you must put something on a Glock, even as a option, how about a lever on the slide like the Smith or Beretta 9mm? The lever could lock the firingpin safety to keep it from being released when the trigger is pulled.
You flip the lever up or down (depending if you want it to work like a Smith/Beretta or a Makarov.)
For us other folks, you just keep your trigger finger off the trigger till you want the gun to go ‘bang’.
As for cleaning, you clear the gun first before anything else, reguardless if you need to pull the trigger to disassemble. Simple, no?
September 17th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I see uncle’s point about the de-cocker for cleaning purposes…but it’s still a complication of the mechanical system to correct a training and attention to detail problem.
Sorry if I took your post too literally Uncle…sometimes I’m a little slow.
OK…sometimes it’s a bit more often than sometimes.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
“I take exception to you putting a manual safety on your Glock. Most of the time I’m liquored up, or cracked up, or whatever and I do not want to have to mess around with some safety thing when I want to snatch your gun and shoot your ass full of holes. I do not want to have to wait until I sober up and figure out how some kind of safety thing works before I can kill you. So forget about that manual safety shit. I don’t care about no decocker because I can still shoot your ass. Just don’t be doing nothing with that manual safety thing. Little bitty thing on the gun somewhere, gotta push it up or down or sideways or in or out or something. That shit mess me all up. Where my Hennessy at?”
K.W.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Or just keep the booger hook off the trigger.