Glocks Why Nots? - A Historian's Take On 'Perfection'

hi this is Nisha and I thought we would finally do a video on the Glock obviously because it's on the table oh yeah we're to begin first off I am in no way an expert because it's just not my cup of tea so this is just kind of being my little take on it the history the slight evolution there's so much to be said about the Glock you could do a two hour video and probably still not hit it all up because it has been around since 1981 it has seen extensive police and civilian use and even some military use so we'll just kind of go under the history and look at the generations briefly and you know whatever there's a reason I'm doing this video the day and I'll explain it later on this is the original Glock 17 now the day is a gin one generation one this one was produced in 1987 so it's a relatively late gin one but still very much a gin one so how did this gun come to be by modern standards this is a pretty conventional conventional gun we have a four and a half inch barrel polymer frame double stack polymer seventeen shot mag a well we can argue about the nomenclature of this trigger but this Glock safe African trigger has been used in so many guns and today's standards this is very standard but for the late 70s early 80s nothing like this really existed well as the eighties rolled around the only real polymer-framed handgun in production was the HK vp70 it was not very successful for multiple reasons mostly because it sucked and in 1980 the Austrian military finally decided it needed a new service weapon it had been using old Walther p38 left over from World War two such as this one here this is a double single action gun with a decocker all steel eight shot perfectly good gun in fact West Germany was still using the p1 in the 80s but it's getting dated and they did also have some effin browning high powers while this is single action only it does utilize a third team shot mag double stack single feed so it has that over the Walther and these are pretty much the two standard guns in Austrian military service at the time but they were aging they needed a new one the new gun you need to fire the nine by nineteen parabellum round it needed to be simpler of course there which was always the name of the game and easier to mass-produce they also had a lot of concerns about safety they wanted the new gun to be safe to operate they wanted it to have under sixty parts the fewer the better they wanted it to be able to go several thousand rounds without failures they wanted it to be able to be operated and one-handed they had several requirements pretty typical nothing extraordinary by today's standards and they would try out about a dozen different pistols were going the trials you had several entries from HK the p7 including the m8 in the m 13 also the p9 beretta would submit a version of the m92 Sig would submit a version in the 220 family kind of a forerunner of the 226 in that Errol area you will also see a submission by steyr who is obviously an Austrian company that would be the GB and honestly this was considered to be the sure thing who was gonna win steyr had been producing the the AUG for the military they had produced many guns for the military before the the GB was essentially a modernized gun it used a gas system it was a high-capacity 18 shots he was also quite heavy but it was a more modern gun than I've been a p38 but in a way it was also very conventional being metal and bulky well that was until Gaston Glock got involved Glock as a company had never produced a firearm before as is famously known it had done military contracts for other things it was big into knives it also did some home goods such as curtain rods it was used to working with the military but on tertiary items never a standard-issue gun well what Gaston Glock did he pretty much called the major minds of Europe beginning in 1979-1980 got them together formed a team set it off in 1981 and within 3-4 months they had the first prototypes ready to go and several these early Glock pistol prototypes are going to the Austrian trials and they just they swept it away they won in 1982 with the Glock pattern 17 this version here it it was kind of an interesting decision rather than kind of playing it safe with the G be the Austrian military went with a complete unknown they really went ultra-modern I guess after having kind of obsolescent pistols for nearly 40 years they decided just to jump ahead you see this in history from time to time look at what Germany did they went from the old revolvers to the Luger kind of the same idea let's just skip ahead and they really did the Glock 17 as most people know it uses a modified browning style system which is today considered pretty much the standard weird this barrel locks into the slide as I said we have the safe action system where there's a lever on the trigger that has to be pressed in before it can be pulled then it's a dead trigger till it [ __ ] again we don't have an external safety all your safeties are inside over the years they would increase the safeties but they always had a pretty safe reputation because that was one of the major requirements of the Austrian military trials firing pin safety out of battery safety so on and so forth and of course the trigger itself this is not a super light trigger it's about six pounds stock that can be upped or downgraded as necessary depending on the pistol we have a standard four and a half inch barrel now this is a polymer frame but it's very resistant this polymer has been tested to make sure it doesn't corrode or get eaten away by all kinds of different chemicals materials situations additionally it has kind of metal fibers reinforcing it almost like a grid so it does have metal and of course there is a metal locking block where the barrel itself locks in now interestingly this locking block is investment cast cheaper and easier to do by the standards of the 1980s and what investment casting is done right it's perfectly fine as on the Glock as is famously known this has political rifling a lot of people think this was the first gun to have polygonal rifling actually the Czechoslovakia era should say the first military service sidearm got Polly Goodall rifling but interestingly the Czechoslovakian VZ 82 beat this one barely but the VZ 82 was designed before the the 17 was finalized so on and so forth now the original gen ones there's no rail under the barrel it's just rounded full-sized grip as you notice there's just very light checkering on the sides and the back the mag release is not reversible it's very flush we do have a slide release here the original barrels used in the first couple of years were called the pencil barrel this is not one but this was actually originally a thinner barrel officer originally we had a two-piece guide rod system where the spring was not captive it was free when you took the gun apart it would come off the guide rod the original mags were not dropped free I wish I need to get an original mag because they're kind of interesting they would actually intentionally swell up when loaded and so when he hit the mag release they would just kind of hang and so you could pull them out this was actually to satisfy the Austrian military the original mags were also just pretty much polymer they did not have much metal in them it's time to go on they would add more and more metal first around the feed lips and then more and more around the frame is it kind of a skeleton so they would be upgraded over time in the beginning and as today they were still a double stack single feed was 17 rounds the normal capacity for the standard sized service pistol so adopted in 1982 the first few years they would see some changes and and you know kind of upgrade these they would start to appear in America in 85 for the law enforcement and the commercial market in the Austrian military would continue to purchase them the initial order was for twenty five thousand they got him they liked him so they kept on buying throughout the eighties there were were several like I said upgrades and little changes there was a recall in the late 80s really replaced the internals that's for a different day however in 1988 we have this here two things we have the 19 the Glock 19 this is the compact model it was actually introduced at the very tail end of June 1 production so there are a handful of June 1 19 for the intents and purposes the 19 came out around the time of the gin tooth now you notice we go to 19 there was an 18 in the middle it was introduced in 1986 it was a select-fire machine pistol obviously it's not really civilian legal because it came out after the May of 86 prohibition on civilian owning transferable guns so yeah it's pretty much a law enforcement thing in glock is very tight with it but there is the select-fire 18 it had a longer barrel at least in the beginning it could also be compensated in the beginning and it could have a optional shoulder stock it had a selector for both semi and full oil of course and it would have been issued initially with extended 31 round mags and then later they would add a +2 base plate coming up with the 33 round we noted so anyway we get to the nineteen is the compact model we have a half inch shorter barrel bringing it to right about four inches we also shorten the grip it's still a large enough grip from the hospital to get their hand around it it's a little bit shorter to go with we also have a shorter 15 round mag however the 17 round mags of course is how much everyone knows well fit they'll just hang out but that shows you just how much the grip was shortened at least the 31 or 33 round mags will also fit these so this was introduced as a compact model and became popular as far as the Jim - aside from some just minor upgrades to the internals and things and safeties we introduced a new pattern to the grip we have more aggressive checkering and patterning on the back strap and the front strap the sides are a little bit different but almost exactly the same still do not have any kind of rail under the barrel so the Gentoo really wasn't a huge change from the gin one except for the grip checkering but of course that's a big deal because it does mean a better grip on the gun but we still don't have anything really substantive changed with this although there was the recall as I said where we go to different internals for safety reasons also the 19's will have a ribbed trigger as you see that's for import points the 17 does not now these guns would have all kinds of finishes over the years originally we had a kind of a salt bath applied nitride 'add tenifer finish and then after that we had a poker eyes door phosphated finish applied over this would kind of look a little different over time as they would change up the phosphating and whatnot but this was a very hard durable finish very corrosion resistant that's why a lot of older Glock still look quite good even with them a lot of use in them now both the 17 and the 19 were adopted by the Swedish military they would use them to replace their older lodi m40 and even some really old browning 1907 pistols but we'll save that for the the Swedish video we did an old one on Swedish pistols time ago well probably visit that but these would start to see Swedish service as the the pistol or pissed 88 and they had ended up adopting both versions as time would go on and this was really one block hit the scene ladies a lot of law enforcement in the USA started to use them my own brother was in law enforcement for 30 years and he was initially issued a Smith & Wesson revolver and then a Beretta 92 type pistol and then finally a Glock Gen 1 very similar to this gun here which he kept for nearly 30 years actually until it finally just gave up the ghost they had a lot of rounds anyway at first a lot of them were really skeptical of this polymer frame to gun it was very new and of course there was the whole thing about airport you know there's kind of a stigma against it oh these could be smuggled on the airplanes which is obviously not true as we know today but once a lot of law enforcement got their hands on these they really enjoyed them they were simple to use they didn't take as much training they have a relatively low bore axis you have all kinds of options starting to appear from Glock in the 90s as I said a good durable finish magazines were cheap and reliable and as they would start to add more reinforcements and also dropped free that made it better they quickly were won over once they saw these guns perform and really once the the law enforcement agency started to accept these the civilian market became interested now it's worth pointing out that the cost was also a factor these were quite a bit cheaper than fullmetal automatic guns of the day or the so-called Wonder nines they were quite a bit cheaper and they were still had that nice Austrian pedigree as a result in 1995 the 26 the subcompact model and I don't have one here I'll throw up a picture was introduced most people know about it of course we have an even shorter barrel an even shorter grip and we have a 10 round mag as standard and while this was you know used by some law enforcement it was really introduced for the civilian market is an early option for carry and as the nineties would go on we would introduce more and more variants all kinds of things and then in 1998 a little rearranging here again we would introduce the generation three is that it was an informally no and we introduced a different pattern as well this is the 34 introduced in 1998 right after the generation 3 as far as I know there were never any generation 234 this was their practical tactical or competition model it was based on the earlier Glock 17 l4 long slide which had about a 5.5 inch barrel this has about a 5.3 so just a little bit shorter and the name pretty much tells you what this was meant for however a large number of law enforcement users actually did purchase the 34 in fact a batch of police trade in 34 s hit the market a couple of years ago so they these did see police use which is interesting well to go along with the Jim 3 introduced a pretty new frame we have the same patterning on the back strap as the two same sides up to here but now we have these finger or thumb rests we also have finger grooves in the front and most importantly we have a Picatinny rail or at least a weaver rail under the barrel here on the dust jacket it only has one notch on this version but at least it really was the first time you could install a device on a Glock and if you think about it the late nineties were really the beginning of pistol laser devices before that you just didn't see them this is also when the kind of I think it's kind of colloquial known as the orange peel finish was around this is just another variation of the the nitride tenifer finish they came into use in the late 90s and ran through the early 2000s as I said both this and the gen 3 were 1998 this particular one was made in 2002 and this is actually the gun that inspired me to do this video and I'll explain at the end and why well other features are the 34 we have adjustable sights we have an extended slide release with a little shelf on it and we have an extended mag release which just sticks out a bit not great for holster but for competition it's definitely easier to hit you can even use your other finger to kind of wrap around and hit it if you have to or you can do that I definitely like this extended mag release and finally this has a lightened trigger whereas the standard trigger is about six pounds I'd say this is about three and a half on this gun and of course it is a little old and has been shot a good bit but you get the idea a couple of pounds lighter interestingly because of this overall link we're really about the same dimensions as standard government 1911 this takes normal 17 shot mags as well now of course more and more models and variants will come to be over the early 21st century once the assault weapons ban ends you really start to see interesting guns like this because people can buy high-capacity pistols with new mags before I should say again sorry guys they would also introduce changes to the G generation 3 they would add a secondary pin to the frame corresponding with a larger locking block that's really the most noticeable they would keep the gym threes in production in fact I think they're still in production to this day but in 2010 they would change their their way of applying finish they would go from that salt that night tried Jennifer to kind of a gas nitride finish still with phosphating on top so this results in a different appearance after about 2010 now some people has say this was because of the American EPA I don't this tends to be a common explanation but it's never been verified and anyway the change was originally done in Austria and then carried over to Glock USA so I don't know I'm not gonna get into it I will just say it's not a that even though it's repeated all the time that gun shows and gun shops it it hasn't really been verified by Glock so it may or may not be true you know how this kind of gets started another change they would introduce would be adding a loaded chamber indicator later on in generation 3 production to the extractor so you can know if you obviously had to ran in the chamber see this one - has the rib trigger this is a quite late production Gen 3 from about three years ago and then we would move on to the generation for this critter here the generation four as you see is just another evolution this is just a 17 probably the biggest important thing about this has finally Glock themselves accepted the generation nomenclature in started well marking the guns so we're taking the standard gun the grip is quite similar we have a rougher texture on the sides and back this was actually an evolution of the RTF which is something that glock played around with for a number of years they would go kind of course and they would kind of make it a semi Archaea they found basically the right the right coarseness and then they would come out and put this on the gin for they would also kind of slim down the finger grooves in the front and the whole grip and this is because this was the first one to have people call them interchangeable backstraps that's more like what would happen on the on the Walther this actually just has additions they have little grooves here you can add on extensions to the back strap and if you put the medium extension on it's like earlier for example this one so without any extensions the grip on the gin four is a little slimmer which I personally like with my hands this one's okay I really like the gentoos as well we have a larger mag release it's still pretty flush but it's larger extended back and for the first time it's reversible they did offer reversible mag releases is an option earlier on but this really standardized it and as you see the magazine's have to have cutouts on both sides to work with it so while these will take older generation mags it will only do so well if you have your mag release of course all on this standard left side for right-handed shooters if you are a left-handed shooter you'll need the newer Jennifer mags finishes like you saw on that one this also has a newer style of two spring guide rod guide spring this was actually developed from the 26 which used it the compact goes I should say the subcompact guns used it and they carried it over to the full-size they claim this helps control recoil a little better lessens recall them and I would agree it's a little stiffer feeling it seems like this gun does recall a little less it's probably just my imagination but the trigger feels a little better on the Jenn force too I think they've cleaned it up a bit it's a little smoother less kind of creep I don't just mean Glock triggers are not fantastic don't get me wrong but it feels a little better on there on the jet force to me you have some other internal changes they also did a recall in 2011 on these guide Springs swapping the mount has a few early problems with the gin four it's also worth noting that Gen 4 parts don't always interchange with older gin one gin - gin three parts whereas the older the other generations tended to be more or less interchangeable Gen 4 introduced enough changes that really wasn't that said they very quickly worked out the bugs I remember when these first started to come into the gun shop people would say well why mess with Glock perfection kind of saying it tongue-in-cheek in the earliest gin force had a few teething issues nothing too bad but they worked it out and now there's reliable as the older Glocks maybe even more so ergonomically I would definitely say they're superior the checkering on here is just enough to give you a really good grip the finger grooves are less obnoxious than on the earlier guns and the back straps are always a welcome they even ship these with ones that have extended beaver tails in addition to just medium and large so they actually give you four different extensions which is nice we still have the rail which is fully Picatinny compatible on the June 4 and of course they make this and all the other versions to around 2013 the british army selected the glock Gen 4 as its next service pistol the L 131 a one it took them a couple of years to really get these into the field but as with Austria they had been using older high powers and frankly they were just worn out I mean they had some high powers that dated back to World War two that were even made up in Canada by Inglis which the last year they made those was around October and November of 1945 so eventually they had to face reality that they had to get get new guns and so they went with the the Glock Gen 4 they went with the 17 like this one here that's actually why I own this one it's kind of my representative British Glock it's not exactly the same but you get the idea it's also worth noting that the British military did purchase a very small number of Walthers they were the p5 compacts for use most especially in like Northern Ireland that Canaria so they had a few more modern guns as opposed to the high-power but for the most part that was the standard up until the Glock and of course most recently and I don't have one here sorry folks the Gen 5 came out this year middle of 2017 it has a whole host of new features kind of like with the June 4 it's not all that backward compatible part wise with the newer you know with the older guns so you know it's own critter well Glocks really aren't my thing I'm more to historical guns and it's not that I don't I respect Glocks more than I like them if that makes sense they work they're affordable they're just very vanilla to me and most people in the gun industry but over the years I've accumulated a few as you see the the newer Jin 319 is just out of the store there the rest of mine the Jun 4 I kind of just held back is a because I wanted to shoot it and I've used it on a few different things to put it up against other guns however like I said my brother was issued a Gen 1 back in the eighties so that was the first Glock I ever really handled and I always wanted to get a gen 1 and luckily I picked him up before they became collectible I do find it a little funny that they're collectible now this is a pretty good example I wouldn't mind getting a slightly earlier one with a few earlier features but you know until one comes in my way this will do just fine that's why I own this and I actually kind of like the field Wilda grip the smooth grip but then again I'm not operating with it I mean it's objectively the newer ones are better but you know for just interest and this was the version that the well actually both the Swiss and the Swedish military's excuse me the the Austrian and the Swedish military's used Switzerland does use the Glock but a different newer version sorry that's why I picked this one up now this 34 I actually just got this back about three days ago this was my very first Glock that I purchased I bought this in 2002 new from a local store I had looked at the Glocks online to set it I wanted one kind of went back and forth between the different versions and for various reasons kind of went with the the 34 at the time it was still quite new to the market as was the June 3 I like the better trigger the extended controls the longer barrel even let's cut out in the slide it really is only there people think sometimes this is for compensation it's not only a compensator of course because the barrel is smooth and closed but it is a weight it's to balance out the weight to keep the gun from not being too front heavy and keep the the cycling correct these guns are actually pretty well balanced out that Glock put a lot of time and energy these are very simple guns there's only about 34 or 35 parts but each part is very custom made very specifically weighted and measured to work in the system and to keep the slide working with this frame that's why we did it yeah this was my my first Glock had it actually the first time I took it out it jammed I guess but it was new that was with the tin round mags that were mandatory back in the early 2000s during the assault weapons ban when I actually got some law enforcement 17 round mags it worked fine and I eventually even sourced one of the early 31 round extended mags but yeah obviously after that a couple of a couple of rounds it broke in and ran just great and ever since then it has been a fantastic shooter I owned it for probably four years and then traded it off to a family member for one reason or another it might have even been to get my original sar1 back I honestly don't recall right now but anyway it's been in the hands of a family member for over 10 years and just just this week he picked up one of the new 34 gen 4 mos is in the green in the OD green and so he really did not need this older jun 3 for that said it actually took quite a bit of doing to still get him to release it because he thought for a time well he wanted 134 with the with an optic on it and m1 with the iron sights anyone i ended up with and I'm happy to do it one thing it really has a nice trigger it's a good shooter and I was just I've always liked kind of the 34 profile and since these have seen at least police use its legitimate enough for my collection well that's my little rundown of Glocks for what it's worth again I am honestly pretty much a novice with these I just know the history of the service and how they came to be and that's about it all the little generations and engineering changes aren't really my aren't really my thing but these are very very popular guns and around the world and in the USA they're made in both Austria in the USA there are millions out there I wouldn't be shocked if it was 10 million now and obviously of course there's the whole block vs. sig thing in the XM 17 trials that happened just about a year ago we will do that I do have two p320 and you know got the Glocks but that's that's a story for a different video and a range day today it's nice and raining and about 35 degrees out so not the best time to go shooting so I thought we would just do a table top Glock Talk I know a lot of you will have your own things to say and I know there are things that I got wrong and that's fine I really do want you to point them out in the comments but I just asked if you'd do it politely because you know this is just something we do for fun I'm not pretending to be an expert or anything so feel free to correct me I will take that in mind but I just wanted to kind of show blocks a bit and go through the generations after at least four and if you liked the video please click like and if you have not already subscribed this video is a little abnormal for our content but you might want to check out what else we've done and see if it also interest you and tune in again next time for hopefully another interesting video this is Misha and we'll catch you then

Channel: Mishaco

Views: 8,222

Rating: 4.964179 out of 5

Keywords: Educational, Historical, Documentary, Historic, History, Preservation, Glock, Glocks, Glock Pistol, 17, 18, 19, 26, 34, Gen 1, Gen I, Gen 2, Gen II, Gen 3, Gen III, Gen 4, Gen IV, Gen 5, Gen V, Austria, Austrian, military, service, G17, G18, G19, G34, Competition, Target, 9mm, 9x19, review, misha, mishaco, L131A1, L131, British, Britain, English, England, P38, P.38, Walther, German, Germany, FN, HI Power, High Power, P35, P-35, Inglis

Id: u41_CoFUqD8

Length: 37min 54sec (2274 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2018