LA Times Article Concerning Glock Pistols

[T2C]

Apparently Bob Owens, Editor of BearingArms.com, does not believe LEO should be issued Glocks.

Has anyone ever met Mr. Owens or attended a course he instructed? Does anyone have any background on him?

The article: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed...508-story.html

[Kain]

Skimmed the article, if I picked up on the major points, every death or issue he pointed out was due to lack of training and breaking safety rules, am I correct? Like keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot, riding the trigger is going to end up with a bang sooner or later. Doesn't matter if you are rolling with a XD, M&P, 1911, a revolver, or a Glock. Sorry not the design's fault.

[WillBrink]

I don't own a Glock, and have never been a fan of them, but everything in that article was a human/training related problem vs. a Glock problem. Such as:

"A rookie officer with his finger on the trigger of his pistol tensed as he pushed open a stuck door; the added pressure on the trigger caused his weapon to fire a shot down the stairwell."

The entire article reads just like that. What the author should be pushing for is better, and ongoing, training for LEOs. A Glock may require a higher level of training than say a gun with a longer trigger pull and external safety, but that comes with it's own set of issues, such as leading to less accidental shootings but more LEO fatalities due to not getting into the fight fast enough fumbling with an external safety, which would also be training related fail vs gun design.

Many Glocks in PDs also have horribly heavy triggers (The "NY Trigger" comes to mind) and it's not a gun design issue per se, but a human training issue. Most LEOs are very poorly trained with their firearms, and that would be $$ and effort well spent to improve on that area. As they say, not a hardware issue but a software problem.

[platoonDaddy]

What about friggin common sense, you can't train stupid!

[MountainRaven]

I've mentioned elsewhere that this has been posted:

1-I wouldn't take gun advice from the LA Times, and;
2-Once they "fix" the guns by giving them stupid heavy triggers, they will next write an article about how those stupid heavy triggers are resulting in dropping qualification scores and increasing numbers of bystanders being hit in OIS's, with the solution being a short, light, crisp trigger such as that of the 1911 that almost anyone can shoot well.

[Voodoo_Man]

The only thing wrong with a glock is the user.

[agr1279]

That jackwad who wrote the article missed the point. It is training and in the issue of Ocala Police Departments loss of Jared Foryth there was a calamity in errors that resuled in a tragic death.

Dan

[TAZ]

Agree with the author that the deaths he cited were needless tragedies. However, as with most other journalists (aka dumbasses) his insight into the issue is on par with a those of a 2 year old. The incidents he cited were ALL end user failures and not firearm failures. Those guns performed exactly as advertised and needed. The end users pulled the trigger and the gun went bang. Maybe he should rail on the piss poor training those officers got before being set loose on society. Obviously none of them have ever heard of the 4 rules nor was their training strenuous enough to bring about failures that can be used to learn and improve in a controlled environment rather than the streets. Maybe instead of community relations, religious tolerance and LGBT acceptance training they should have spent some quality time doing FoF training till they puked and not been handed a badge and gun till they got out of there mistake free. But then that would be pretty un PC and we can't have that.

[MegademiC]

Once again talking hardware with respect to a software problem. It's easier to blame the object.

A big issue I have with the examples he provides is: if the pistol had a safety, would the officer have had the safety off, resulting in a shorter, trigger pull?

[Crow Hunter]

I saw a collection of data on another site that had all the data for accidents that occurred during training at a specific training academy.

Surprisingly, Glock was NOT the primary weapon in most accidents. Very surprising was the number of DA/SA firearms, specifically SIGS, that were involved in accidents.

Just because it has a heavier DA pull, doesn't mean it won't be involved with an accident.

IIRC some were from forgetting to decock before reholstering and I think at least one maybe 2 were related to riding the trigger while reholstering. IIRC it was a police officer that did that.