Read Online Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun by Paul M. Barrett - Free Book Online
Authors: Paul M. Barrett
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Sauer! You know everybody loves Sig.’ Then, I pull out this black box and pop the thing open, and here’s this Glock. I’m like, ‘What the heck is this?’ I’m tapping it on the table. It’s plastic! What the hell? And there’s nohammer on this thing. I literally said, ‘We don’t want any crap like this,’ and I slung it over onto the couch, didn’t even put it back in the mix with the other guns.”
Kapelsohn noticed the lonely Glock. “You need to give it a chance,” he said.
His words carried weight. Kapelsohn, who came from New Jersey, had a national reputation and heavy connections at the NRA. His credentials were unusual in the weapons-training business: He held a BA in English literature from Yale and a law degree from Harvard. He had worked at a New York firm as a civil litigator for corporate clients; on the side, he drew on a lifetime love of guns to become a noted shooting instructor. Eventually he decided to turn his sideline into a full-time job. He earned gun-instructor certification from the FBI and studied with some of the best-known handgun authorities in the country, including the legendary Jeff Cooper, who ran a school in Arizona. The 1988 treatise
Police Defensive Handgun Use and Encounter Tactics
named Kapelsohn one of the five top trainers in the United States. He also testified as a paid expert for both plaintiffs and defendants in lawsuits over allegedly wrongful shootings.
Kapelsohn’s suggestion that the Austrian pistol be taken seriously proved prescient. Within a few days, “we were fighting over who was going to get the Glock,” Rutherford said. “It’s just like shooting a revolver, and that’s what everybody liked about it. You pull it out, you pull the trigger, and you put it away. That was the beauty of it.”
Revolvers typically don’t have external safeties. As Kapelsohn explained to Rutherford, training a cop—or a civilian—to switch to a standard semiautomatic pistol requires intensive drills on deactivating the safety lever before firing. Many officers forget whether the safety is on or off. Some standardpistols, including the Beretta, remain cocked after being fired, with the hammer poised to fall again. To be safe, the user has to “decock” the gun manually before replacing it in a holster. Between operating the safety and decocking, there is a lot of opportunity to make mistakes.
The Glock 17, Kapelsohn said, presented none of these challenges. There is no external safety lever or decocking mechanism. As Rutherford recalled the lesson: “The safety in a Glock was the exact same as the safety in a revolver: trigger travel, trigger weight. You have to overcome both for the gun to go off, and that’s where the safety is at.”
Rutherford and his colleagues in Jacksonville had a nostalgic affection for the standard-issue Smith & Wesson .38. Some of them liked the look of the large .45-caliber S&W Model 645 pistol, the American company’s nominee in the Jacksonville shoot-off. “But the problem was, several of us had gone out on target [with the S&W 645] with the safety on,” Rutherford said. “That’s chilling. We just had a two-week class on using these guns, knowing about decocking and the safety and all that.… Here we are going out on target with the safety on.”
The Glock had another advantage: a light, steady trigger pull. The Smith & Wesson .38-caliber guns in use in Jacksonville had a heavy pull of twelve to fourteen pounds—standard for revolvers. Shooters who train regularly can achieve accuracy with a heavy trigger. But only a small minority of cops practice diligently. “There’s this myth out there that all police officers are gun enthusiasts, and they train like crazy and shoot all the time,” said Rutherford. A dirty little secret of law enforcement is that many cops don’t take range time seriously. And even in high-crime cities, the vast majority of officers go years, or even an entire career, without getting into a
Kapelsohn noticed the lonely Glock. “You need to give it a chance,” he said.
His words carried weight. Kapelsohn, who came from New Jersey, had a national reputation and heavy connections at the NRA. His credentials were unusual in the weapons-training business: He held a BA in English literature from Yale and a law degree from Harvard. He had worked at a New York firm as a civil litigator for corporate clients; on the side, he drew on a lifetime love of guns to become a noted shooting instructor. Eventually he decided to turn his sideline into a full-time job. He earned gun-instructor certification from the FBI and studied with some of the best-known handgun authorities in the country, including the legendary Jeff Cooper, who ran a school in Arizona. The 1988 treatise
Police Defensive Handgun Use and Encounter Tactics
named Kapelsohn one of the five top trainers in the United States. He also testified as a paid expert for both plaintiffs and defendants in lawsuits over allegedly wrongful shootings.
Kapelsohn’s suggestion that the Austrian pistol be taken seriously proved prescient. Within a few days, “we were fighting over who was going to get the Glock,” Rutherford said. “It’s just like shooting a revolver, and that’s what everybody liked about it. You pull it out, you pull the trigger, and you put it away. That was the beauty of it.”
Revolvers typically don’t have external safeties. As Kapelsohn explained to Rutherford, training a cop—or a civilian—to switch to a standard semiautomatic pistol requires intensive drills on deactivating the safety lever before firing. Many officers forget whether the safety is on or off. Some standardpistols, including the Beretta, remain cocked after being fired, with the hammer poised to fall again. To be safe, the user has to “decock” the gun manually before replacing it in a holster. Between operating the safety and decocking, there is a lot of opportunity to make mistakes.
The Glock 17, Kapelsohn said, presented none of these challenges. There is no external safety lever or decocking mechanism. As Rutherford recalled the lesson: “The safety in a Glock was the exact same as the safety in a revolver: trigger travel, trigger weight. You have to overcome both for the gun to go off, and that’s where the safety is at.”
Rutherford and his colleagues in Jacksonville had a nostalgic affection for the standard-issue Smith & Wesson .38. Some of them liked the look of the large .45-caliber S&W Model 645 pistol, the American company’s nominee in the Jacksonville shoot-off. “But the problem was, several of us had gone out on target [with the S&W 645] with the safety on,” Rutherford said. “That’s chilling. We just had a two-week class on using these guns, knowing about decocking and the safety and all that.… Here we are going out on target with the safety on.”
The Glock had another advantage: a light, steady trigger pull. The Smith & Wesson .38-caliber guns in use in Jacksonville had a heavy pull of twelve to fourteen pounds—standard for revolvers. Shooters who train regularly can achieve accuracy with a heavy trigger. But only a small minority of cops practice diligently. “There’s this myth out there that all police officers are gun enthusiasts, and they train like crazy and shoot all the time,” said Rutherford. A dirty little secret of law enforcement is that many cops don’t take range time seriously. And even in high-crime cities, the vast majority of officers go years, or even an entire career, without getting into a
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