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/la-oe-owens-glock-accidents-20150508-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.

[19852]

Dangerous weapons are dangerous? Who knew..? A super heavy pull will result in more misses in the field, lower qualification scores and a reduced number of those of small stature, small or weaker hands actually qualifying.

[Firefly]

I honestly could not nor would I want to imagine police work without a Glock.

The old days of Model 10 .38s and Winchester 1300 shotguns were grand times indeed.

But with everyone who has a choice getting a Glock; this article smacks of sensationalism.
I'm not saying police need to kit out like basic infantry but they should have good gear. M4s, good shotguns, and training.

[jck397]

AZ DPS accidentally killed a suspect in the 80s or 90s when an officer was holding his SIG P220 in one hand (finger on the trigger) and grabbed the suspect with the other hand, causing a sympathetic-reflex discharge. Likewise, there is the video floating around of the LVMPD Officer having an ND that nearly kills a suspect. She was carrying a Beretta. As others have pointed out, there isn't a trigger pull heavy enough to counter negligent weapons handling.

About a year and a half ago a Peoria (AZ) PD SWAT officer told me that their SWAT team was being issued 1911s (SIGs, I believe) because they wanted a weapon with a manual safety since they were having too many negligent discharges with their Glocks. I wonder if any agency heads will cite this article when making a similar decision to fix software problems with new hardware...

Beyond the simple ignorance of this article, it amazes me that someone who runs a pro-Second Amendment website would write something that is so harmful to the idea of responsible gun ownership. But hey, his mommy can hang the article on the fridge and is so proud of her little boy for getting his name in a big newspaper, so what else matters?

[Zirk208]

Some people (author of this article) just have to talk to hear the sound of their voice.

[DWood]

That is not an article from the LA Times and it wasn't written by a "journalist". It is an "Op Ed" (Letter to the Editor) from a guy who runs a blog called bearingarms.com. It's just some guy's opinion which I couldn't care less about. Who knows why they published it? Who really cares? This is not news. It's the opinion of a guy who doesn't like Glocks.

[scootle]

They published it because, to the sheep, the author is ostensibly a "gun guy" who is anti-Glock (and we all know that all evil guns are synonymous with Glock) and he's trying to "make our cops safer for the public" yadda yadda. He pandered right to the antis and off the presses it went... nice way to get hits on his blog though. You can read his continuance of the diatribe here (if you don't mind giving him clicks):

http://bearingarms.com/wrong-gun-popular-gun-law-enforcement-mistake/