Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Glock 17 does that quite well, thank you.” With erudition and no small measure of zeal, Kokalis argued that the Glock’s design set it apart from everything else on the market. It was lighter, thinner, and almost gentle to shoot: “The plastic frame’s elastic qualities absorb a significant portion of the counter recoiling forces during firing.”
    Gaston Glock’s “only condescension to conventionality,” Kokalis observed, was the method of operation he adopted for his handgun. Glock borrowed his basic mechanics from John Moses Browning, the greatest gun designer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in Ogden, Utah, in1855, Browning was the son of a Mormon pioneer and gunsmith. The younger Browning developed legendary shotguns and rifles for the manufacturer Winchester. His semiautomatic pistols included the .45-caliber 1911 manufactured by Colt and used by the American military during the world wars and for decades afterward. Browning died in Belgium in 1926 while working on a smaller nine-millimeter model.
    Under the Browning recoil-operated system, as interpreted by Gaston Glock, the barrel of the pistol is locked up in the slide by a single lug that recesses forward of the ejection port (through which spent cartridges are expelled). The barrel moves back slightly with the slide as the bullet leaves the barrel, and the gas pressure created by the explosion of the gunpowder drops back to a safe level. At that point, the barrel separates from the slide and drops downward. The slide continues to move back until the force of the recoil is expended. A spring then pushes the slide forward, and it grabs the next round from the top of the magazine on its return to battery.
    Kokalis marveled at how the Glock’s wide outer trigger couldn’t be depressed unless the smaller trigger safety was pressed first. This arrangement should prevent accidental discharge by, for example, contact with a holster, he explained. “There is no manual thumb safety and no hammer.”
    The trigger operates in two stages, he noted. The first stage has a very light pull of only 2.2 pounds and a travel distance of a quarter inch. During the initial stage, three things happen: the firing pin is cocked, a separate internal safety that prevents the firing pin from moving forward is released, and the previously blocked trigger bar is released. The second stage of trigger operation requires five pounds of pressure that cause the release of the cocked firing pin. The firing pin strikes the primer, which is the part of an ammunition cartridge that ignites thepowder charge. Pressure from rapidly expanding gas propels the bullet through the 4.5-inch barrel and out of the gun.
    “The pistol points instinctively, and despite its large magazine capacity, the grip sits well in normal-sized hands,” Kokalis wrote. Many expert shooters obsess about the angle formed between the grip of a gun and the barrel, as well as the height of the barrel above the top of the user’s hand. Glock fans applaud what they consider the pistol’s “natural” pointing angle, meaning that when they aim the gun, the experience feels similar to aiming an imaginary weapon formed by an extended index finger and lifted thumb. The Glock’s barrel sits relatively low, closer to the hand than the barrels of comparable handguns. That also improves what some shooters call “pointability.” The grip angle and the low bore combine with the flex of the polymer frame to diminish the recoil the shooter feels, which makes the Glock more controllable and accurate. The steel slide striking the plastic frame produces less jarring force and vibration than the metal-on-metal impact of other pistols. The Glock’s lack of sharp metallic edges means fewer shooting-hand abrasions and greater ease in holstering.
    “With a clean, constant trigger system, hit probability is quite high. The Safe Action trigger mechanism should pose no problem to even the rankest amateur,”