Read Online Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun by Paul M. Barrett - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Paul M. Barrett
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gunfight. The average officer is a mediocre shot, or worse.
With a Glock, poor marksmen become adequate; moderately skilled shooters begin grouping rounds in small bunches near dead center of their target. The pistol’s gentle five-pound trigger action doesn’t require the sort of muscular squeeze that can cause the user to jerk the gun off target.
The Smith & Wesson Model 645 and other semiautomatic pistols at the time had an inconsistent trigger pull that didn’t solve the accuracy problem. On most semiautos other than the Glock, the first squeeze was comparable to that of a revolver: around twelve pounds. This initial heavy pull both cocked the gun and fired it. The momentum of the recoil and rearward movement of the slide automatically recocked the pistol for the second and subsequent shots. Succeeding shots required a much lighter, shorter trigger pull because the hammer was already in a cocked position. As a result, a less-than-expert shooter was prone to fire low on the first heavy squeeze of the trigger, and then high on the second, much lighter pull. With training and practice, these tendencies can be overcome, but few police officers receive sufficient preparation. The Glock requires training too, of course, but its soft, consistent trigger action and modest recoil make it “the easiest semiautomatic to transition to,” Rutherford said.
When word got out that Rutherford was leaning toward the Glock, some of his superiors warned him that could be risky. “Now, John,” he recalled one senior officer telling him, “you know the sheriff and the undersheriff, they really like that Smith & Wesson 645.” Smith & Wesson was what the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office had always known. It was the American cop’s brand.
But Rutherford was adamant. He had worked for months on his report, he said. “Now you want me to change it to something else that I know is not the best gun?” During a two-hourpresentation to the sheriff, he stressed the Glock’s accuracy and safety advantages, as he saw them. He explained that the Austrian pistol was much easier to maintain because it had only thirty-four parts; the Smith & Wesson 645 had more than one hundred. “You can take fifty [Glocks] apart and put fifty guns back together after mixing up all the parts, and they all shoot,” he said. As beloved as the brand had been, Smith & Wesson had allowed its manufacturing quality to slip, Rutherford told his superiors. The story was similar to that of the American auto industry; gun makers in the United States had lost ground to foreign competitors more diligent about engineering and quality control. That is how Toyota sneaked up on General Motors. Out of a shipment of forty new Smith & Wesson revolvers, three or four would malfunction right out of the box. “The damned things wouldn’t even fire,” Rutherford said. This was something the sheriff hadn’t known. In the Firearm Training Division, Rutherford said, “we were a little miffed at Smith & Wesson by that time.”
A decision came quickly: “We’re buying Glocks,” the sheriff said.
An order went to Smyrna for nine hundred pistols to arm the Jacksonville force. Over the next six months, more than one hundred police agencies around the country requested copies of Rutherford’s ninety-page report on Glock. And Rutherford received a promotion to captain.
Not that the pistol conversion went flawlessly. Shortly after Jacksonville began issuing the Glock 17, a deputy mistakenly shot and killed a teenager he was trying to arrest on suspicion of stealing a pickup truck. An investigation revealed that the officer had drawn his gun and had his finger on the trigger, as he attempted to cuff the juvenile suspect. The deputy should have holstered his gun, especially since the Glock requiredmuch less force to fire. “This was a horrific accident, but a training issue, not the fault of the gun,” Rutherford said.
He similarly did not blame the Glock for several incidents
With a Glock, poor marksmen become adequate; moderately skilled shooters begin grouping rounds in small bunches near dead center of their target. The pistol’s gentle five-pound trigger action doesn’t require the sort of muscular squeeze that can cause the user to jerk the gun off target.
The Smith & Wesson Model 645 and other semiautomatic pistols at the time had an inconsistent trigger pull that didn’t solve the accuracy problem. On most semiautos other than the Glock, the first squeeze was comparable to that of a revolver: around twelve pounds. This initial heavy pull both cocked the gun and fired it. The momentum of the recoil and rearward movement of the slide automatically recocked the pistol for the second and subsequent shots. Succeeding shots required a much lighter, shorter trigger pull because the hammer was already in a cocked position. As a result, a less-than-expert shooter was prone to fire low on the first heavy squeeze of the trigger, and then high on the second, much lighter pull. With training and practice, these tendencies can be overcome, but few police officers receive sufficient preparation. The Glock requires training too, of course, but its soft, consistent trigger action and modest recoil make it “the easiest semiautomatic to transition to,” Rutherford said.
When word got out that Rutherford was leaning toward the Glock, some of his superiors warned him that could be risky. “Now, John,” he recalled one senior officer telling him, “you know the sheriff and the undersheriff, they really like that Smith & Wesson 645.” Smith & Wesson was what the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office had always known. It was the American cop’s brand.
But Rutherford was adamant. He had worked for months on his report, he said. “Now you want me to change it to something else that I know is not the best gun?” During a two-hourpresentation to the sheriff, he stressed the Glock’s accuracy and safety advantages, as he saw them. He explained that the Austrian pistol was much easier to maintain because it had only thirty-four parts; the Smith & Wesson 645 had more than one hundred. “You can take fifty [Glocks] apart and put fifty guns back together after mixing up all the parts, and they all shoot,” he said. As beloved as the brand had been, Smith & Wesson had allowed its manufacturing quality to slip, Rutherford told his superiors. The story was similar to that of the American auto industry; gun makers in the United States had lost ground to foreign competitors more diligent about engineering and quality control. That is how Toyota sneaked up on General Motors. Out of a shipment of forty new Smith & Wesson revolvers, three or four would malfunction right out of the box. “The damned things wouldn’t even fire,” Rutherford said. This was something the sheriff hadn’t known. In the Firearm Training Division, Rutherford said, “we were a little miffed at Smith & Wesson by that time.”
A decision came quickly: “We’re buying Glocks,” the sheriff said.
An order went to Smyrna for nine hundred pistols to arm the Jacksonville force. Over the next six months, more than one hundred police agencies around the country requested copies of Rutherford’s ninety-page report on Glock. And Rutherford received a promotion to captain.
Not that the pistol conversion went flawlessly. Shortly after Jacksonville began issuing the Glock 17, a deputy mistakenly shot and killed a teenager he was trying to arrest on suspicion of stealing a pickup truck. An investigation revealed that the officer had drawn his gun and had his finger on the trigger, as he attempted to cuff the juvenile suspect. The deputy should have holstered his gun, especially since the Glock requiredmuch less force to fire. “This was a horrific accident, but a training issue, not the fault of the gun,” Rutherford said.
He similarly did not blame the Glock for several incidents
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