BREAKING: Glock 17M Recalled By Police Department

[Phineas Bluster]

Deleted

[OS OK]

"WTG?" what the gluck?

[OptimusPanda]

[Sarcasm Alert] Wait, I thought Glocks were perfection itself. :roll:

[Rick Hodges]

My department went to Glocks in '92. Reliable my fanny. We had more fail to feed/fail to function with the Glocks than we ever did with S&W 39's and 59's.(they were no gifts from heaven either) Glock recalled repaired...3 different series of magazines, changed recoil springs went to captured double recoil springs and changed something else in the trigger group before they called them good to go. Took 3-4 years of constant changes and upgrades before they got as reliable as the 39's and 59's that our plainclothes were carrying before the change over. I'm not talking about weak wristing them...last two or three in every magazine failed to feed every time. They redesigned them twice before they got them fixed.
The only thing unusual about this current recall is, apparently, they are getting the guns off the street and repaired instead of leaving the guys to work with the pieces of **** while they figure out what went wrong.

[Walkingwolf]

(chuckle) No gun is perfect, not even a Glock. IMO S&W makes a better tupperware gun, and I own Glocks. Rarely carry them anymore, after a failure that could be fatal in a life and death situation I no longer trust them.

[Ramjet-SS]

No gun is perfect I have a model 20 that has over 12K rounds through it not an issue not one. I actually shoot 1911 platform better but had to dump a Compact 1911 45 (Springfield treated me very well on that deal) it was very unreliable so sure no gun is perfect not even revolvers. However number of failures vs number of rounds fired is an important measure of reliability. But we would not practice reloads and clear drills if they were perfect.

[Earlwb]

I remember way back circa 1987 when one of the police departments out here got in their first batch of Glocks. The demo models all worked perfectly. But the production Glocks all had problems with FTF and other issues. Fortunately the problems all happened with their first new officer recruit class, not in the field. So they cancelled the orders and returned them. Our police department was closely watching what the other one was doing and obviously they stuck to what they already knew that worked. Our PD used revolvers mostly and one could buy and use a S&W semi-auto at the time if they wanted. But the PD only provided practice ammo for the revolvers then. So if you went semi-auto you had to provide your own ammo. They did have restrictions on the duty ammo though, only certain types and brands were approved.

[Bigslug]

I'm not saying that the new gun doesn't necessarily have a problem. I'm not saying that the manufacturer did or did not heavily test the new system.

But one thing working on guns and instructing their use has taught me: Guys who know guns will spend a lot of time thinking of things that can go wrong with a gun, then design a gun, build and heavily test a gun, hand it to a bunch of highly-trained and dedicated firearm instructors who do the same thing which validates their thinking, and everybody walks away feeling that they've got a pretty good gun. . .

. . .which is a feeling that only lasts for about five minutes after it is handed to the end-users.

The long and short is that one of the "Gomer Pyles" will invent and induce more problems than would happen to twenty professional practitioners with even a strand of DNA from the Audie Murphys, and the only way you'll see those problems is through field testing with the Gomer Pyles.

When the technology was evolving rapidly and new firearm systems were coming out seemingly on a monthly basis, you could take a batch of raw, post-basic military recruits and see how they do with a new option and how the new option did with them. Now that the technology is pretty mature, the military is running a 30 year old pistol, a 60 year old rifle and GPMG, and a 90 year old HMG.

The gun factories can't afford to hire Gomer Pyles. Police departments don't have the budget or people resources to wring out a system in that kind of environment - they just want to buy something that they have reason to believe will work.

End result: we sometimes don't see the problems until the rubber hits the road. I don't know that this was the case here, but there are precedents. . .