Lock Your Glock

Guns Magazine, April, 1999 by Massad Ayoob

I just got off the phone with a big city police official who was concerned that some of his officers had experienced ejection failures with their Clock 19 9mm duty pistols. The agency's Clock armorers and Glock factory representatives could find nothing wrong with the guns.

I suggested the problem might be limp-wristing. Any semiauto pistol requires a firmly held frame to act as an abutment for the slide to work against. This goes double for the Clock, whose polymer frame can be seen flexing very slightly when the gun's firing cycle is observed in "hicam" photography.

Many agencies, including the one in question, have qualification shooting stages that include firing from the "protected gun position," in which the single hand holds the pistol close to the body with the elbow distinctly bent If the officer doesn't actually push the arm slightly forward with muscle tension while firing, the forearm can move straight back, far enough to move the frame as the slide cycles. This robs the slide of sufficient momentum to complete the ejection cycle.

Treat your auto pistol like a hard-trained Doberman. That is, keep a firm band on the leash at all times.