Glock

Glock ( ; stylized as GLOCK) is a brand of polymer-framed, short-recoil-operated, locked-breech semi-automatic pistols (as well as some rifles and one machine pistol) designed and produced by Austrian manufacturer Glock GmbH. The firearm, designed by company founder Gaston Glock (1929–2023), entered Austrian military and police service in 1982 as the P80 (later known commercially as the Glock 17) after outperforming established competitors in reliability and safety tests. Despite initial market resistance due to its "plastic" construction, the Glock became the first commercially successful line of pistols with a polymer frame. The weapon uses the company's proprietary "Safe Action" system, which consists of three independent internal safety mechanisms: the trigger safety, the firing pin safety, and the drop safety. These mechanisms prevent accidental discharge without an external on-off switch. The pistols are also noted for their high magazine capacity relative to their weight and their resistance to corrosion, originally achieved through a ferritic nitrocarburizing surface treatment known as Tenifer. Glock pistols have become the company's most profitable line of products.…

Glock ( ; stylized as GLOCK) is a brand of polymer-framed, short-recoil-operated, locked-breech semi-automatic pistols (as well as some rifles and one machine pistol) designed and produced by Austrian manufacturer Glock GmbH. The firearm, designed by company founder Gaston Glock (1929–2023), entered Austrian military and police service in 1982 as the P80 (later known commercially as the Glock 17) after outperforming established competitors in reliability and safety tests. Despite initial market resistance due to its "plastic" construction, the Glock became the first commercially successful line of pistols with a polymer frame. The weapon uses the company's proprietary "Safe Action" system, which consists of three independent internal safety mechanisms: the trigger safety, the firing pin safety, and the drop safety. These mechanisms prevent accidental discharge without an external on-off switch. The pistols are also noted for their high magazine capacity relative to their weight and their resistance to corrosion, originally achieved through a ferritic nitrocarburizing surface treatment known as Tenifer. Glock pistols have become the company's most profitable line of products. They are supplied to national armed forces, security agencies, and police forces in at least 48 countries, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the majority of police agencies in the United States. The product line has evolved through six generations of design changes ("Gen 1" through "Gen 6"). It is available in a wide variety of calibers, including 9×19mm Parabellum, .40 S&W, 10mm Auto, and .45 ACP, as well as various sizes ranging from the full-sized Glock 17 to the subcompact Glock 26 and "slimline" Glock 43. The widespread adoption of the design has made the Glock rise in popularity and a subject of gun control debates. In the 2020s, the pistols faced scrutiny regarding the proliferation of "Glock switches," illegal aftermarket auto sears that convert the firearms into machine pistols. This led to lawsuits filed by the states of Minnesota and New Jersey in 2024, and legislation in California in 2025 (Assembly Bill 1127), aimed at forcing design changes to prevent such conversions. In October 2025, Glock announced a major "right-sizing" initiative, ceasing production of over thirty variants to streamline manufacturing and introduce redesigned components to mitigate full-auto conversion. ====2011 recoil spring assembly exchange program==== In September 2011, Glock announced a recoil spring exchange program in which the manufacturer voluntarily offered to exchange the recoil spring assemblies of its fourth-generation pistols (except the "subcompact" Glock 26 and Glock 27 models) sold before 22 July 2011 at no cost "to ensure our products perform up to GLOCK's stringent standards", according to the company. ===Magazine=== The Glock 17 feeds from staggered-column or double-stack magazines that have a 17-round capacity (which can be extended to 19 with an optional floor plate) or optional 24 or 33-round capacity magazines. For jurisdictions that restrict magazine capacity to 10 rounds, Glock offers single-stack, 10-round magazines. The magazines are made of steel and are overmolded with plastic. A steel spring drives a plastic follower. After the last cartridge has been fired, the slide remains open on the slide stop. The slide stop release lever is located on the left side of the frame directly beneath the slide and can be manipulated by the thumb of the right-handed shooter. Glock magazines are interchangeable between models of the same caliber, meaning that a compact or subcompact pistol will accept magazines designed for the larger pistols chambered for the same round. However, magazines designed for compact and subcompact models will not function in larger pistols because they are not tall enough to reach the slide and magazine release. For example, the subcompact Glock 26 will accept magazines from both the full-size Glock 17 and the compact Glock 19, but the Glock 17 will not accept magazines from the smaller Glock 19 or the Glock 26. The magazines for the Glock 36, the Glock 42, the Glock 43, and the Glock 44 are all unique; they cannot use magazines intended for another model, nor can their magazines be used in other models. ==Users== ==Criminal use== Glock pistols have been used in numerous high-profile criminal incidents in the United States. Mass shootings involving Glock pistols include the 1991 Luby's shooting, the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, the 2011 Tucson shooting, the 2012 Aurora theater shooting, the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the 2015 Charleston church shooting, the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, and the 2022 New York City Subway attack. Notable single-victim killings include the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur. In February 2020, stuntwoman Cheryl Wheeler-Dixon and her husband Robert Reed Sanders were killed with a Glock pistol by her ex-husband in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in an incident where both sides were armed with Glocks; a grand jury determined the shooting was a justifiable homicide after investigators found evidence the couple had driven from North Carolina intending to murder him. In June 2022, Ilene Steur, a survivor of the 2022 NYC subway attack, sued Glock and its Austrian parent company for compensation for her physical injuries and emotional pain. Glock pistols have also been used in mass shootings elsewhere in the world, including the 2001 Nepalese royal massacre, the 2002 Erfurt massacre, the 2002 Nanterre massacre, the killings committed by Viktor Kalivoda in 2005, the 2011 Norway attacks, the 2012 Bucharest hair salon shooting, the 2016 Munich shooting, the 2023 Rotterdam shootings, the 2023 Prague shootings and the 2025 Graz school shooting. A 2014 report by the Chicago Police Department found that Glock pistols were the third most traced handgun, coming after those from Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co. Experts on gun control, mass shootings, and defense training have cited factors such as reliability, ease of use, and commonness for why Glock pistols are so often involved in mass shootings and other criminal acts. The criminal use of handguns, including Glocks, has led to calls for increased gun control in the United States. This common usage, however, has been described by Paul M. Barrett to be a result of Glock's overall popularity and market presence in the US and that "this level of violence isn't necessarily tied to a particular[,] to a brand". Glock pistols were singled out for restriction by some jurisdictions. They were branded the "hijacker's special" based on the false assumption that they could bypass airport metal detectors because of their polymer frame. This was refuted in Congressional hearings by the ATF, FAA, and other organizations responsible for airline security, which proved embarrassing for the ban's advocates and provided significant publicity for Glock. In December 2024, the states of Minnesota and New Jersey sued Glock over the design of the 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, claiming that the company had failed to make changes to prevent the easy conversion of the pistol into an illegal and much more dangerous machine gun. The conversion is done using a small, illegal device known as a Glock switch. On October 10, 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1127 into law, prohibiting the retail sale of new semi-automatic handguns that can be readily converted to fully automatic fire using Glock switches. The law primarily affects Glock pistols and similar designs featuring a cruciform trigger bar, and has been described as a "Glock ban." The law aims to address a perceived design flaw allowing illegal modifications, with proponents hoping to pressure manufacturers like Glock to redesign their firearms in the interest of public safety. The National Rifle Association and other gun advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging the statute soon after. ==See also== Glock GmbH ==References== ===Bibliography===

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1377588700 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.