• Waldowal@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    I don’t own one. Can someone objectively confirm a few things about Glocks? Is the following true?:

    • They don’t really have a “safety”. They have several mechanisms that prevent accidental fire when a finger isn’t on the trigger, but if you have a round in the chamber and pull the trigger, it’s going to fire (which sounds obvious, but I mean it doesn’t have a safety switch like a bb gun usually does)

    • You have to pull back the slide to chamber a round and fire. And once it’s chambered, the trigger just needs a light squeeze to fire (as opposed to a full motion squeeze - in other words, the trigger is partially pulled back once racked and easier to fire)

    If the above is true, these two things in combination seem like an irrisponsible design to me. You are asking for accidental fires like the one that happens recently where a guy pointed a gun at some kids in his driveway and claims “the gun went off”. You should either have a real safety, or it should be harder to squeeze the trigger accidentally.

    • StaticFalconar@lemmy.world
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      56 minutes ago

      No its not true. Glocks have a safety its just not your traditional safety. Its not going to go off on its own, cam be dropped on the ground and its not going magically go off. Modern glocks arent double action, so it wont take 15 pounds of pressure to fire the bullet, but more like 4-6 pounds. Thats still quite a bit and way more than what you need to fire a bb gun, paint ball round, laser tag gun.

      The four basic rules of gun safety are:

      Treat every gun as if it’s loaded: Always assume a gun is loaded, even if you think it’s not.

      Point the gun in a safe direction: A safe direction is one where the bullet will not cause injury or damage if it accidentally discharges.

      Keep your finger off the trigger: Keep your finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot.

      Know your target: Be certain of your target and what’s in front of and behind it.

      The irresponsibleness in your situation is the fact a gun was pointed at kids at all. You simply dont take your gun out to have a cowboy monologue of getting off my property and you certainly dont have you finger over the trigger unless you intend to fire. There is no irresponsible design here, only irresponsible owners.

    • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago
      • Yes for most glocks, although there are some glock models that do feature a manual safety.
      • Glocks have a half cocked striker once you rack the slide, and this gives a factory glock a trigger pull weight that is directly in between a cocked single-action trigger and an uncocked double-action trigger.

      Glock’s trigger safety is more secure than no safety although it is not as secure as a thumb safety, and the half cocked striker is easier to pull than a double-action trigger but is harder to pull than a single-action trigger.

      Presumably this compromise was intentional and is one of the reasons why Glocks have become popular through their balance of reliability and ease of use - nowadays most striker fired pistols follow the same design principle.

    • blandfordforever@lemm.ee
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      2 hours ago

      They have a safety device on the trigger. It amounts to a little plastic piece in the middle of the trigger. Pressing on the trigger from the front causes this piece to slide in, allowing the trigger to be depressed. It doesn’t do much but it would prevent the trigger from being pulled by something scraping it from the side, as might accidentally happen during holstering. It seems like the point of this device is to prevent accidental trigger pulls.

      When you pull back the slide and chamber a round, you also pull back the striker. The gun is then ready to fire. The trigger pull is always the same weight. This doesn’t put the gun into an “extra light trigger pull” setting. After a shot is fired, when the gun cycles, this chambers a new round and pulls the striker back again. There’s no way to have a round chambered but not have the striker pulled back. Glocks don’t have a single action / double action like there is on some other guns, where the first trigger pull takes extra weight because it’s also cocking a hammer.

    • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      To me their trigger safety is a joke. It’s a bit of metal that sticks out of the trigger a couple mm than gets pulled when you pull the trigger. It does prevent accidental discharges from being dropped but if you’ve got a Glock racked and ready it doesn’t take much force on the trigger at all to fire.

      That’s why I got my wife a Ruger. It has a proper safety.

    • FluorideMind@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Glocks have a trigger safety, which is a small switch that has to be depressed on the face of the trigger to fire. The second paragraph is bologna.

      • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        Also a drop safety to prevent the gun from going off if you drop it.

        That said it doesn’t have a safety that most people would think is meant by the word, which is a switch that prevents the trigger from being pulled (that is not built into the trigger itself)

        And yes, that second paragraph is BS.

  • Kaboom@reddthat.com
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    12 hours ago

    Well that and they’re inexpensive, reliable, and a really good all around gun.

    I’m not sure what the point of the article is, other than “black gun scary”

    • ATDA@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      I’m not into guns at all and I sat here thinking “could’ve just replaced Glock with Honda Civic and much of this would still make sense.”

    • ours@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Have you read the article? The difference is how Glocks can easily adapted to fire full auto with an accessory.

      Can others be adapted to full auto? Probably. But the adapters aren’t as easilyinstalled and commonly available.

      By being a super popular gun for the reasons you mention and by being a relatively simple gun certainly helped it become the host of choice for such a modification.

      One model of Glock being full auto from the factory probably set the blueprint for the illegal mod.

      • snooggums@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        But the adapters aren’t as easilyinstalled and commonly available.

        Guess what the most popular and easily available mods are for cars? The ones for the most popular cheap and reliable cars!

      • tpihkal@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Have you ever heard of a Shoestring Machine gun? A little creativity goes a long ways and a Glock is nothing special aside from being an excellent self defense weapon.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        I did. It’s a bit clickbaity.

        Yes Glock is a super popular gun.

        Yes it’s possible to make them full auto.

        Then the throw in some weaseling : turning up increasingly, police think it was used this one time, this anti-gun commission says. Spraying bullets.

        Glock has a reputation for quality, they’re cheap and reliable, not having a safety adds nuance of danger for those idolizing them.

        I’m sure there are some people using full auto Glocks, but they’re extremely rare. It’s not this new impending threat. They could have easily done the article detailing the full auto device or given real numbers of use. They’re in it for the clicks.

          • Technoguyfication@sh.itjust.works
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            6 hours ago

            Glocks have three separate safety devices, but they do not have a toggleable safety switch on the outside of the gun, commonly referred to as a “thumb safety”.

            You will not be able to make a Glock fire unless you put your finger in the trigger and pull it. They are 100% drop-safe, meaning even if you have the gun loaded and it falls off a table, etc., it will not fire a round (unlike guns in the movies).

            This makes Glocks a very appealing self-defense handgun. In a real self-defense shooting scenario, it is unlikely that you will have the time or dexterity to disengage the thumb safety before firing. Assuming you remember to do it at all.

            There’s something called the rule of threes in self defense shootings: most encounters happen at 3 yards, last 3 seconds, and 3 rounds are fired. If someone is sprinting at you from 9 feet away, the extra split second of fumbling around with the gun to turn the safety off could make a big difference. Concealed carry instructors will commonly tell students to submerge their hands in a bowl of ice water for a full minute, then attempt to handle their (unloaded) gun and operate the action and thumb safety. It’s nearly impossible. That’s the amount of dexterity you will have in an actual life threatening situation due to the sudden rush of adrenaline.

            When carrying a handgun for self defense, we use other factors to mitigate a negligent discharge. For example, your holster must completely cover the trigger when the gun is seated so it cannot be fired when holstered.

            I carry a Glock daily for self defense and have never had an issue with the lack of a thumb safety, because I follow the rules of gun safety very strictly.

          • mars296@fedia.io
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            10 hours ago

            They have a trigger safety. It looks almost like a tiny trigger within the trigger. Essentially means that it will only fire if you pull the trigger. It makes sense for trained personnel since they won’t be pulling the trigger unless they intend to fire and mistakenly leaving a safety on when you need to shoot can get you killed. Still seems very sketchy to me even though I understand that logically, it’s just as safe.

          • ours@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            I’ll just add most (all?) revolvers have no manual safety other than a heavier and long double action pull on the trigger.

          • Kaboom@reddthat.com
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            10 hours ago

            Glocks do have a safety, but legally speaking, guns don’t actually need a safety. They usually have one since it makes things a lot safer for the guy buying it. In fact, I can’t think of a gun that doesn’t have some form of a safety, outside of some reproduction muskets and other black powder guns. But it’s not legally required.

            • ours@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              The recent Sig P 320 chosen by the US Army has variants with no manual safety and doesn’t have the trigger safety.

              It still has internal safeties but there have been issues with accidental discharges with the earlier productions.

              • baldingpudenda@lemmy.world
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                9 hours ago

                IIRC, those discharge were because the default trigger was heavy, as in its mass not trigger pull, and, if you dropped it at a certain angle, the inertia of the trigger would pull the trigger. The fix was Sig doing a free upgrade to a lighter trigger that wouldn’t have a much mass.

          • dan1101@lemm.ee
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            10 hours ago

            The safety is integrated into the trigger, so if you keep your finger off the trigger then the gun is supposedly in safety mode.

          • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            I believe they are integrated into the handle and trigger. It’s not a switch that you turn on and off, just if you hold the gun in the proper way your are pressing in the safeties.

          • Num10ck@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            thanks for the good responses. i wonder if every gun had fingerprint sensor locks, would that help fix things? or just take away our rights?

            • snooggums@lemmy.world
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              8 hours ago

              Adding a bunch of electrical complexity to a mechanical process would make things worse for everyone.

              People who need it to work reliably (police, military, etc.) would be hindered by the possibility of malfunctioning fingerprint readers and they couldn’t wear gloves. They would probably disable the electronic part.

              A malicious person would just disable the electronic part. It is not hard to remove electronic safeties.

              So the only people the fingerprint locks would apply to are people who don’t really need the extra complexity and they are the ones who will suffer from malfunctions. The glock double trigger thing and regular safeties are reliable and safe already,.

      • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        It is surprisingly difficult to make any handgun fire full auto controllably.

        Not the Glock, the irony is that their safety mechanisms provide a brilliant exploit for full auto conversion. No other striker fired handgun is anywhere near as easy. The 18C was in no way a guide for conversion because the mechanisms of operation are entirely different and far more complex, the conversions are brilliant in their simplicity.

        The second easiest one is the 1911, but you need to modify the frame and slide and make some fairly precise parts that have to be hand fitted to each gun. You can make a 1911 uncontrolled full auto, as some find out by accident when they modify the gun for legal reasons.

      • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        It’s a bit chicken and the egg. It’s a super popular handgun so therefore the accessories get made for it.

        If another gun was as popular, you’d likely see the people who made this accessory make one for that gun instead.

        • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          On one hand you’re correct if Glocks magically disappeared, but you can’t discount the built-in trigger safety on the Glock making it easier.

      • Hydra_Fk@reddthat.com
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        12 hours ago

        Who cares “full auto” neither increases the lethality or capacity for criminal activity of a firearm.

        • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          If you want to cause maximum carnage yes have a full auto Glock to spray into a crowd will be very effective towards your goal. You keep talking like these are one on one scenarios. Yeah you’re right full auto is useless one on one. But think about the other scenarios.

        • DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works
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          11 hours ago

          There’s definitely a lot of fear mongering and ignorance about firearms out there but full auto most definitely increases lethality both in terms of a single target and in terms of hitting unintended bystanders.

          • Hydra_Fk@reddthat.com
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            10 hours ago

            That’s a skill issue. One bullet one dead is the goal. Real life isn’t John wick. Your just as dead if done properly.

            • calabast@lemm.ee
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              10 hours ago

              You say that life isn’t a movie. Then you say that people who need full auto have a “skill issue”? Christ dude, life isn’t CSGO either. You’re right that many shooters probably aren’t that skilled, but the takeaway here is that makes full auto more lethal in their hands, not that they need to git gud.

              • Hydra_Fk@reddthat.com
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                9 hours ago

                Nah you ain’t understanding, maybe if Americans had to be trained before they are given a firearm. You know like before they get to drive a car or fly a plane. But your wrong, lethal is binary you either are dead or not dead. You are never more dead than dead. Try to argue with logic and not your heart homie. If a gun has 30 bullets the maximum amount of lethality is 30. Full auto or not. It doesn’t get more dangerous because you are a bad shot. There is not multi round bonus lol.

                • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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                  9 hours ago

                  The point of full auto is to improve hit probability, not increase lethality. There absolutely is a multiround bonus, and 3rnd burst used by every major military for this exact reason.

      • DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        Yes. You can make pretty much any semiautomatic pistol full auto with a fucking shoestring. There are other mods for other guns that are not even remotely complicated. I won’t get into any specifics for the sake of public safety but Glocks are not very unique, they’re super common which is why parts and mods are so abundant.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    11 hours ago

    Glocks are among the most popular handguns, period. That’s because they work, and they work consistently, even with poor maintenance and cheap ammunition.

    If you try running your expensive Staccato 2011 without cleaning it every few hundred rounds, you’re going to be guaranteed to have jams. A Glock? You can get about 3000 rounds at a range between cleaning.