Have you ever been accused of being a fanboy? You know, that friend who loves a product just a little too much? The person who’s always steering the conversation in a certain direction? Well confession time, I’m a Glock fanboy. I used to dislike their bizarre design decisions, not really “getting it.” But after I put a couple of them through years of brutal torture and abuse, they won me over.
When I started Bullet Bouquets 7 years ago, I didn’t give too much thought to figuring out which tools would be the best for the business in the long run. I had immediate problems to solve, so I did the best with what I had: a Springfield XD45C, my wife’s Kahr MK40, and a friend’s borrowed Sig Sauer P938. Yes, how pathetic is that? I didn’t even own a 9mm and had to borrow one from a friend.
My Springfield Armory XD45C
A friend and I shot the first thousand or so rounds for the business using those three guns. We didn’t have many magazines for them, and two of them were completely improper guns for the job at hand. The magazines for the Sig P938 for instance were brutal on our fingers. We’d load them minus one round in order to avoid blisters. The XD was generally a good gun for the type of work we were doing, but it was my carry gun at the time, and getting it filthy and wet over and over made for a lot of tedious cleaning and re-lubing. And for the Kahr, a high speed low drag snappy racehorse of a .40, even shooting 200 rounds through it tired us out to the point that we stopped for safety reasons.
My wife’s MK40
The idea that the business would soon need to buy some guns in order to get the personal ones out of service was an obvious one. But what should I get? I was a longtime fan of Grandpa Guns, the one and only YouTuber Hickock45. He is an unabashed Glock fanboy, who owns dozens of them, and incessantly praises them. He might be in the middle of a Colt SAA video, and still start praising those blocky, black guns. Also there was NutnFancy, another big Youtube Glock fan. I had never shot a Glock, but instead only held them at local gun shops, never really being impressed with their blocky ergonomics. But I did trust those two youtubers a bit.
My friend's Sig Sauer P938, such a lovely gun :)
So that was where my search began. I figured that a popular brand like Glock would have cheap aftermarket replacement parts. I also figured any suppressor adapters (I didn’t have any cans yet, but didn’t want to rule out the option) would be easier to source if I went with a ubiquitous brand. And magazines, I could tell early on that it was going to make my life much easier if I could get several 30+ round magazines for each caliber, and that seemed like a simple thing to do with Glocks. Then there was the discovery that sealed the deal: that a .40 S&W glock 23 can be converted to 9mm with a simple barrel and magazine swap! This reduced the number of guns I needed to buy from three to two, and I was off to Gunbroker to find a solid used Glock 23.
Fast forward a week, and I had a gently used Glock 23, a brand new Glock 21 (I couldn’t find any used 21s), a Lone Wolf threaded 9mm conversion barrel for Glock 23, and a few extra standard capacity magazines. Being a mechanical engineer, I could appreciate the way the Glocks were designed. Everything was simple. Like with an AK-47, I could see how many of the components had been designed for ease of production; stamped steel trigger components, steel inserts molded directly into the frame (eliminating extra pins and failure points), and relaxed tolerances everywhere. Neither gun felt amazing in-hand, both had terrible triggers, and almost nothing about them was inspiring and “cool”. But I was willing to give them a shot and see what all the fuss was about.
The two company guns
Since these two guns were “company guns”, they received far less respect than any guns I had ever owned. After a day of wet shooting, they’d get field stripped, sprayed with some green Brakleen, wiped down, and sprayed with some WD-40 or Ballistol, reassembled, tossed in a box, and forgotten about for a week. The following weekend, I’d toss the box in my truck, load up the rest of my shooting supplies, and repeat the process. Lather, rinse, and repeat for a few months.
And how did the two company guns fare? The 21 had an easy 10k rounds through it at that point, with two thorough cleanings. The 23 had twice as many rounds through it, with the same two cleanings. Yeah, they were abused. But I never had a malfunction with either one. That’s right. Every single of the 30k rounds fired just fine! There was no rust anywhere, no recoil spring or trigger component failures, only some missing paint on the slide stop and takedown bar, and a generally “broken-in” appearance and feel.
I began to realize that the reason the Glocks had seemingly bizarre ergonomics and their poor triggers. They were designed function first, form second. Square slides mean faster machining time and lower MSRPs. Looser tolerances mean they’ll take thousands of rounds between cleanings, and still function perfectly. No extra grip safeties and thumb safeties mean less parts to fail, and less parts to clean. When it came time to fully disassemble the guns for thorough cleanings, that proved simple as well. Only a small punch is required. Toss all the parts on a tray, spray down with green Brakleen, wipe off, and reassemble.
So that’s what Hickock45 and Nutnfancy must love about these guns. They’re simple, rugged, durable, and trustworthy. They made a fan out of me. As much as I disliked their ergonomics, and as little as they excited me, they proved themselves to be trusted tools. No matter how poorly I treated and maintained them, they went bang every single time. For tens of thousands of rounds. And do I now use a Glock to protect myself and my family? You bet I do!