When pressure from anti-gun state and local governments finally put enough pressure on Glock Inc. over its pistol design, the company chose to redesign its striker-fired pistols after several decades of success.
Glock Opts to Redesign Its Pistols
The problem arose from felons converting America’s most popular striker-fired pistols to full-auto firearms by the use of an auto sear, commonly called a “Glock switch.” Rather than crack down on these felons, some municipalities and states chose to put pressure on Glock, with California even banning the company’s guns.
“As part of Glock’s commitment to future innovations, we are making necessary updates to our product line to align with upcoming offerings,” the company said in a statement obtained by USA Carry. “Our dedication continues to be with maintaining the highest level of quality, reliability, and accessibility that you expect from Glock.”
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Everytown Takes A Bow
As most readers know, so-called Everytown For Gun Safety doesn’t really care about gun safety. What they care about is as few guns being in private hands as possible, and they support all manners of laws to reduce that number.
After Glock’s decision, Everytown quickly took a victory lap.
“Following a multi-year, multi-pronged pressure campaign to end the proliferation of semi-automatic pistols that can be easily converted into illegal machine guns with devices known as ‘Glock switches,’ Glock is reportedly discontinuing nearly all of its existing pistols and launching new ‘V Series’ models with what the company calls ‘necessary product updates,’” Everytown crowed in a news release following the announcement.
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“In recent years, Glocks modified with switches have caused harm across the country, as cities have seen a sharp increase in these machine guns being used in violent crime.”
For his part, Everytown President John Feinblatt called Glock’s capitulation to pressure a “major victory” for his organization.
“If the reports are true about Glock, this would be a major victory for the gun safety movement’s efforts to hold the gun industry accountable and confirm what Everytown has said all along: It’s always been within Glock’s power to address this deadly problem,” Feinblatt said.
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“While the reported discontinuation is an important step in the right direction, it only underscores the scope of the damage done, the lives lost, and the communities shattered while Glock sat on its hands. It is imperative that the V Series design prevents the easy conversion of machine gun conversion devices. This is only the beginning of accountability for Glock.”
Moving Forward
Ultimately, Glock changing its design won’t make anyone safer, especially anyone buying a new version whose reliability hasn’t been proven for decades. Criminals will still be criminals, and the hundreds of thousands of Glocks on the streets can still be converted to fire full-auto.
If anything results from it, it will likely be that Glock’s competitors carve out a larger portion of the striker-fired market. And that gun-ban groups will have a “victory” to fundraise on over the next several months.
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