I'm going to take some flak for this post, but here goes...
BACKGROUND
In the late 1990’s, when I started down the whole police rabbit hole and dinosaurs roamed the earth, the traditional double action auto pistol ruled the world. Most departments issued some flavor of Beretta, S&W 3rd Gen, Sig Sauer, H&K USP or Glock. Most departments, around here at least, had transitioned to 40 S&W, although there were a few holdouts that stuck with 9mm usually because they had no money to “upgrade.” There were still a few guys close to retirement carrying S&W wheelguns and the truly high speed guys, like a select few departments and some SWAT dudes, carried some flavor of customized 1911…I say customized because Kimber hadn’t really busted on scene and turned that particular market upside down. Outside of the 1911’s though, the universal truth to almost all the other aforementioned guns is that they were
all completely stock.
If you had an opened-minded department they may have allowed you to do something crazy like change the factory grips out for a set of Hogues…and maybe…just maybe…you could throw on a set of Trijicon night sights. Super progressive places may let you send a Glock frame out to Robar to have them cut off the backstrap and slap on some of their proprietary goop to give it a “better” grip (I did and regretted it almost immediately upon receiving the gun back).
The nice thing about all these guns is that they almost all worked and straight out of the box. There also was very little if any variation. A Glock 17 either came with night sights or it did not. Same with Beretta except for when INOX was a choice. With a SIG P226 or P229 you got to pick the caliber, the finish (Nitron or two-tone), DA/SA or DAO and whether or not it came with night sights. The nice thing was the quality control on all these guns was extremely good. You could literally take thirty SIGs completely apart dump them in a barrel and rebuild thirty guns with all the parts mixed and matched.
During the early 2000’s there started to be some variation. Beretta and LTT came out with the uber cool Elite and the Vertec. SIG had some special editions followed by the SRT and DAK triggers and then some folks like Ghost started to come out with different connectors for Glock. New finishes like Black-T and NP3 (fairly proprietary and applied by only their respective vendors) had been around since the 1990’s done by a select few, but by the late 2000’s everyone and their cousin was applying Cerakote or some spray and bake in a commercial store front or in their garage.
I had spent (wasted) lots of money on custom 1911’s already, but the aforementioned guns really didn’t need anything custom. They were what they were….and furthermore they were good to go right out of the box.
Late 2000’s I remember going to a pistol class taught by Kyle Lamb and Mike Pannone and before the decade was over a Blackwater USA class taught by the man himself Bill Go. What all three instructors had in common is that they were shooting stock Glocks as were most of the attendees with a few classic SIGs and 1911’s sprinkled in.
The point is that up until about 2010 or so most of guns used for social purposes, especially for police duty carry, were pretty darn stock.
Then the wheels fell off…
INDUSTRY CHANGE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
I’m really going to give the credit to Youtube here with a dash of Instagram and to guys like Costa.
I’ll also give credit to the folks that cheapened SigArms and the whole Glock Gen4 debacle.
I would also be remiss though from giving credit to cheap CNC machines and 3D printers that any jackwagon can buy and the ability to sell whatever you want on the internet.
What we have seen in the past few years is an EXPLOSION of aftermarket parts and accessories…especially for Glocks and other polymer guns.
I had played with “custom” Glocks for a long time, but for the most part “custom” meant changing the sights, the connector, maybe the barrel, and doing a stipple job….oh and of course…putting in ridiculously heavy guide rod.
In the early 2010’s when Magpul was the shiz, I got talked by some co-workers into going to a class taught by Chris Costa. It was a complete waste of time and money (he spent about half the class posing for pictures), but I got to shoot a Glock 19 done up for him by a company called Salient. I was shocked by the insanely light trigger pull and the lightening cuts in the slide. I was flabbergasted by price as well, but was not shocked at all when it had some failures to feed. I asked him about the gun and he told me he was carrying it. It boggled my mind that someone, especially someone providing training to others on defensive pistolcraft would think that a trigger that light would be a good idea. His response was something along the lines of, “Dude, but it looks cool!” I shouldn’t have been surprised…
Since that time I have seen so many aftermarket Glock slides and frames copying that “look” that it is mind boggling. SOOOOOOO many Youtube videos and Instagram posts. SOOOOO many tattooed dude-bro’s talking about “mods.” SOOOOOO much wasted money…
What I did not expect to see, but should have seen coming, was these parts finding their way into law enforcement…
THE CRESCENDO
Around 2009 or so we had an otherwise very competent guy and accomplished shooter at my department stick a Ghost connector on his otherwise stock Glock 35. He also put a Surefire X200 on it the same day. He took it to the range, put a few hundred rounds through it and began carrying it. No one really saw a problem with it. A few weeks later on a prowler call he came across said prowler lurking in a bush….and promptly put a round of 40 S&W into the ground a few feet from him. The combo of the manipulating the light with his trigger finger and a super light trigger nearly lead to disaster. He immediately put the gun back to stock. Lesson learned…for him and for us as a department regarding WML’s and training.
Flash-forward a few years and there are two guys carrying Salient Glocks and a guy with an Agency Arms Glock. I’m not a fan, but they’re carried by competent guys and the guns seem to work for them. Want to waste $2k on a $500 pistol that’s your choice.
What happened last week though is going to cause a change.
A guy working overtime shows up in uniform, on duty, and shoots a qual for the heck of it. His gun is a stippled factory Glock 17 Gen5 frame with an aftermarket slide (looked like moths had gotten hold of it), aftermarket barrel (fluted of course), aftermarket guide rod, aftermarket trigger, aftermarket connector, aftermarket magwell, with aftermarket magazines. Sweet.
He literally could not make it for more than ten rounds without some type of malfunction.
Now if this was a “play-gun” I could care less, but this was the gun he was carrying at work that night. The best part was that during his attempt to shoot the qual the RMR plate fell off the slide when the screw sheared (who cares right?). Unfortunately it made the gun stick in the Safariland ALS holster.
Needless to say he was told he could not go back on the street with that gun. He spent the weekend finding all the factory parts he had taken off so that another armorer could put his gun back together.
As a department we are planning to do an “armorer inspection” this fall (something we always used to do until a certain supervisor didn’t think it was necessary anymore).
The guy with the super-modified-but-did-not-work-sorta-Glock is a young guy working nights that fancies himself a gun guy. He watched too many stupid Youtube videos and social media posts and drank the Kool-Aid. Unfortunately, it very easily could have cost him or someone working with him their lives if he had tried to rely on it in a lethal encounter.
SO WHAT’S YOUR POINT?
I am not against well thought out modifications to a defensive gun if they serve a purpose.
I am totally against any modification that detracts from reliability and safety.
Shooters, especially new shooters, are overwhelmed by the amount of aftermarket garbage being pushed on them these days. It is available and if a coolguy on the internet says it makes my thing better it must be good right?
What I told our hapless young man with his broken roscoe that night was this:
“A billion dollar company with a fleet of engineers in Austria came up with this thing that passed government testing and various safety tests and that same company stakes their liability on their product designed the parts you took off this gun and designed them to work in concert with one another. A dude with a CNC machine in his garage probably made most of the parts you stuck on it. Which parts do you want to trust your life on?”
Every now and then someone may come up with a better mousetrap. I think Randy Lee with his Apex M&P trigger components is a good example. But these examples are few and far between.
Changing the sights on a Glock to something more robust and useable is accepted common sense. I installed a Wilson barrel in my Glock 17 almost ten years ago because I wanted to shoot lead reloads safely and wanted the little bit of extra accuracy it provided at distance, but I tested the living crap out of it before I ever relied upon it to live in my duty holster.
If you are going to modify a gun, make sure the modification has an expressed purpose and that you properly vet its reliability before trusting it with your life. Don’t just stick something on your gun because it looks cool…
Originally Posted by Gadfly
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