Gun safety and the legacy of Gaston Glock

Gaston Glock, the inventor of Glock pistols, died this week at 94. Before responding to an Austrian military service pistol competition his company had never produced a firearm.  Hiring some firearm professionals, he started with a clean sheet. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do or what he couldn’t do, which produced the first commercially viable polymer-framed pistol, the Glock 17. Glock nomenclature has nothing to do with magazine capacity. The G17, which coincidentally has 17-round capacity, was Glock’s seventeenth patent, the Glock 43 its forty-third.  As the story goes, when test firing prototypes he used his left hand. If anything blew up, he still had his right.  

One narrative that seems never to die in the gun press is the idea Glocks are uniquely dangerous because the trigger must be pulled to dissemble the gun for cleaning. The implication is this part of the manual of arms is a design flaw. Reportedly some police agencies, due to multiple negligent discharges attributed to this “design flaw,” have sold their Glocks and turned to other manufacturers.

Image: dissembled Glock 17, author

A firearm has a design flaw when it can fire when the shooter didn’t intend it to fire, or when it fails to fire when they did. Anything else must be attributed to the negligence of the shooter, and so it is with the supposed Glock design flaw.

There’s an old maxim among firearm folk: “there are two kinds of shooters: those who have had a negligent discharge and those who will admit to having had a negligent discharge.” I’ve no mea culpas for you. If you’re looking for emotional discharges, look to Oprah.  Negligent discharges are not inevitable. They can be prevented merely by following the four primary gun safety rules:   

1) All guns are always loaded.

2) Muzzle control: don’t point it at anything you’re not prepared to destroy.

3) Keep your finger off the trigger until a millisecond before firing.

4) Be certain of your target and everything around and behind it.

To these primary four, there are other essential rules, but the rule most pertinent to this discussion is: always confirm the loaded/unloaded status of every firearm. If you’re handing a semiautomatic gun to someone else, remove the magazine, clear the chamber, and lock back the slide. If you’re accepting a semiauto from someone else, do the same.  Anyone insulted by your reasonable and essential adherence to safety is someone you don’t want to be around when handling firearms. In this process, remember muzzle awareness; it’s ridiculously easy to point a handgun muzzle where you don’t intend. When the slide is locked back, visually and manually—tip of the little finger—inspect the chamber and accept the handgun, or give it to another, with the slide locked back so they can do the same.

In that simple procedure is the answer to the “Glocks are dangerous” narrative. People have “gun cleaning” accidents every day. “I was cleaning my gun and it just went off!”

Only loaded and chambered guns can “just go off” during cleaning or at any other time. Following the five essential rules of gun safety assures, unless one is so distracted they can’t properly follow them, there can be no negligent discharges. When cleaning my Glocks, I execute the fifth process twice, and even three times if I have an inkling I’ve been in the least distracted. I have no hesitation in pulling the trigger. I have no doubt the gun is unloaded, so it’s impossible for it to “just go off.” Just to be certain, I always put the magazine and extra round in a nearby drawer so they can’t somehow find their way back into the gun before I pull the trigger.  Human beings have an infinite capacity for goofiness.

But Glocks don’t have a manual safety! Correct, but they have a system of three integral safeties: a trigger safety, a firing pin safety and a drop safety. Unless you put your finger on the trigger, depress the trigger safety—that’s the little lever in the middle of the trigger—and fully pull the trigger, the gun can’t fire. That’s the third safety rule. Glock training tells students losing their grip to just let the gun fly. I’ve seen Glocks bounce ten yards down a concrete range undamaged. They never fire under those circumstances. In law enforcement we used to call such fumble-fingered cops “gunflingers.”

To his credit, Gaston Glock did it first and got it right. Virtually every other manufacturer has followed his lead. Smith and Wesson, for example, produces many of their polymer pistol designs with and without external safeties. That Glock holds 70%+ of the American law enforcement and civilian market is a fitting legacy for Gaston Glock.

Mike McDaniel is a classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor and retired police officer and high school and college English teacher.  His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.