How Glock Accessories Can Make You A Faster Shooter

By Kristen Baird


The underlying principle behind all firearms, everything from cannons and muskets to shotguns, rifles and hand guns, is the same. Take a sealed metal tube with an opening at one end (called a bore), drill a hole in the sealed end (the breech) and pack it with gunpowder. Thread a flammable length of material called a fuse through the hole and into the gunpowder. Place a cannon ball on top of the gunpowder. Understand how this works and it will be easier to understand what Glock accessories are used for.

When the fuse is lit, the gunpowder ignites, creating a large volume of very hot gas. The pressure on the cannon ball as a result of the gas is greater than the atmospheric pressure coming in through the open end, so it is propelled out of the tube at a high rate. Note that it is the momentum of the cannon ball (mass times acceleration) that causes the damage at the other end; the projectile itself does not ignite or explode.

Early handguns like the flintlock and the percussion pistol, often used for dueling, had a disadvantage in that they could only fire one shot at a time. While this is acceptable in the dueling scenario, when gentlemen are expected to be decent enough shots that a single shot does the job, it doesn't work so well on the battlefield. The next generation of hand guns was the revolver. Here, the projectiles, or bullets, were placed in a revolving chamber which moved forward one bullet after each shot. This was in the 19th century.

Revolvers were great, but people wanted to kill each other even faster. This is where the semi-automatic pistol comes in. In these devices, the ammunition sits in a holder called a magazine residing in the butt (handle) of the gun. Some of the larger magazines were capable of holding up to 15 bullets.

A pistol also has a lighter trigger action than a revolver. The problem with a pistol, however, is its propensity to jam, which revolvers don't seem to do. Finally, semi-automatic weapons evolved into fully automatic firearms, which fire bullets automatically as they are fed into the chamber.

The Glock is an example of a semi-automatic pistol. Designed by engineer Gaston Glock in the late 1970s, the Glock semi-automatic answered the needs of the Austrian army, in need of a new sidearm. Glock owned a company that had made a success out of manufacturing things like grenades and knives using plastic. He and his engineers got together and entered a design using a plastic frame and other parts made of steel.

Satisfied with what the Glock team came up with, the Austrian Defense Ministry ordered 25,000. Widely considered America's favorite hand gun, the Glock is made in all major calibers, of which the 9 mm is the favorite. Among the accessories available for the sidearm is the magazine. The Glock magazine holds more ammo than magazines of other gun manufacturers.

What is intriguing about the Glock magazine is the difference between those made for use in European military and law enforcement agencies, and the one preferred by American users. The practice of allowing the magazine to drop onto the ground is frowned upon by shooters in Europe, while the Americans insist on it.




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