This is what happens when you extinguish a region's gun culture, as NY/NYC has done starting in 1911. You have
"leaders" who both hate and don't understand guns and their use, outfit their men with poor tools (the infamous New York Trigger), and and those men's only experience with guns is very very limited training.
Turns out citizens legally carrying concealed have a much better record. Given how anti-gun the MSM is, do you doubt for a second that if citizens had comitted such an atrocity it wouldn't be nationwide, probably world wide screaming headlines?
Your concern is perhaps legitimate, but not after I point out the above.
I'm sorry, but that's total nonsense. A much better record of what? Citizens legally carrying concealed weapons are rarely called upon to fire weapons in stressful situations with dozens of bystanders, so they only have a "better record" of doing so by virtue of having no record at all.
"Gun culture" has absolutely nothing to do with trained police officers. New NYPD recruits go through 13 days of firearm training, and submit to semi-annual requalifications[1].
People with carry permits are never faced with the kind of stressful situation that an active shooter would provoke. It's utter lunacy to think that they would be able to stay calm and diffuse the situation.
Look, NYC is infamous about cops handling their weapons poorly. I thought everyone who pays attention to current events knew this, but I guess I was wrong.
As for your claim that we never face these stressful situations, that's flatly false. Guns are used ~ 2 million times a year to stop crimes (probably more now, those figures are some years old), and there are a number of active shooters who've been stopped by citizen concealed carriers.
But you of course wouldn't know of them because the national MSM for some inexplicable reason doesn't report these incidents. If your Google Fu is up to snuff you can find them. Try including "mall" and "church" for starters
New NYPD recruits go through 13 days of firearm training...
Is that impressive? The cops in flyover country come to the job with quite a bit more experience than that. 10-15 years of hunting, target shooting, safety training in school at multiple grade levels, and the supervision of experienced adults probably doesn't completely transfer to open carry as a peace officer. However, this "13 days" figure will make me a little nervous the next time I'm around a young cop in NYC.
Could you detail what you mean by "poor tools" a bit more?
Everything I can find on the "New York Trigger" states that it was specially requested by law enforcement and designed by Glock so the trigger weight would more closely resemble that of the revolvers they were then transitioning away from. Were they more prone to failure or..?
OK, I haven't pulled the trigger on a Glock with a New York trigger. But the travel of the two are very different. A double action trigger moves a long distance, as it steadily pulls back the hammer (they're found in semi-autos, BTW, and I recommend them to people for whom a single action M1911 isn't right).
A Glock trigger inherently has a lot less travel, all it's doing is providing some travel and therefore physical feedback before it releases the already cocked striker inside the gun (cocked by the slide).
So I don't personally know, but what I know from first principles per the that they're different, and the above matches with the reports I've read from people who have used them that say it's ... suboptimal. NYC street police marksmanship certainly doesn't contradict this.
And here's a critical detail about "was specially requested by law enforcement": the whole exercise was not to make it feel like a revolver, but to decrease negligent discharges. Which almost every other law enforcement organization in the nation solved (as much as it can be solved :-) with training---see Rule 3 (Keep your finger out of the trigger...). Marksmanship was irrelevant.
Another example of "poor tools" was their "leaders" insistence on using Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) bullets instead of eeeeeevil Hollow Points. Eventually the resulting needless injuries and deaths forced them to get with the program. I can't recall a single other major law enforcement unit with this policy, at least not for long.
The 9 mm Europellet sucks, if you care about stopping people vs. killing them; much much MUCH more so with FMJ ammo. However I can understand law enforcement units going with it instead of .45 ACP before .40 S&W appeared on the scene, which I'm sure was some time after NYC adopted the Glock. Then again they've had many chances to upgrade caliber as they cycled through new batches of weapons.
And, BTW, I think Glocks suck, but obviously lots of people disagree with me. Going back to training, the manual of arms of a Glock is point it and press the trigger. No manual safety for a criminal to have to engage before he can shoot you after grabbing your gun, no death lever to forget to engage before you can shoot. That also bears on training.
Glock the company is pretty sleazy (hey, look at the brand new lawsuit, and there's been lots of other drama), not that this was necessarily recognized when they were first on the market. To my knowledge they've never had an official "recall"; let me assure you they're not that good, not with all the models and generations of models they've produced.
Firing when out of battery, i.e. before the slide has locked home and the brass is sufficiently supported (which is iffy to begin with, especially with their .40 S&W models at least as of some time ago), is another HUGE no no in my book. And pretty much everyone else who's not the Glock equivalent of an Apple fanboi.
As usual, take this with a grain of salt. The handguns I own and carry concealed were designed by John Moses Browning (PBUH), and adopted as standard issue by the US Army in 1911 (sic; the US military is still using a machine gun he designed 7 years later). With of course improvements, the trigger pulls are ~ 3.5 pounds. I carry one every time I walk out the door. I've never had a negligent discharge because I keep my finger off the #(*&$% trigger until I'm on target, and of course keep the safety on. Which from personal examination in detailed field stripping plus a century of experience shows it takes the super-magnet of an MRI machine to defeat.
But I'd shot well over those 10,000 times you're supposed to need to become an expert before buying them, and I don't recommend the model to novices.
> "Firing when out of battery, i.e. before the slide has locked home and the brass is sufficiently supported (which is iffy to begin with, especially with their .40 S&W models at least some time ago), is another HUGE no no in my book."
Is this done intentionally by Glock, or is this a failure mode for glocks? I was reading about open bolt firearms and different blowback mechanisms the other day, and learned about Advanced Primer Ignition which sounds like you are describing. It seems like it would be primarily useful for fully automatic sub-machine guns though; it seems too nuanced and prone to error for a gun is marketed with reliability claims.
Unintentionally. I'm pretty sure there's not enough mass in a normal handgun slide to slam the round home fast enough for that to work, and like pretty much all handguns of this class, Glock actions lock up before firing. I've certainly never heard of it being used for rounds with the pressure of 9 mm Parabellum. It would also be hard on the gun, and again there's less of a mass budget. And of course the Glock's frame is made out of durable plastic (which is not one of it's problems, although might cause problems upon occasion).
This is my understanding from memory: one reason .40 S&W is so popular is that it's a 10 mm diameter round, so it's easy to "bore out" a 9 mm design and in theory make it work (not an option with 11.5 mm .45 ACP). As I've been told, and this is common in handgun designs, the chamber does not entirely support the brass.
You can get away with this because the brass at the base is thick (at a point it has to be because the curve up into the base can't be supported) and this sort of gun design is generally allowed. Compare to the .38 Super, which is 1,500 PSI higher than 9 mm or .40 S&W, and about 50% more than .45 ACP. M1911's chambered for it have "fully supported chambers", the original John Moses Browning (PBUH) .45 ACP chamber isn't fully supported. Also do a search on glock fully supported barrel or chamber, there are after market ones.
However I gather that Glock cuts, or in the past cut the margin a bit fine for their .40 S&W handguns, which is not a good posture to start from for an out of battery discharge.
And then somehow, without warning or requiring lousy maintenance (or of course reloads, which cause a lot of "kabooms" that are no fault of the gun), some .40 S&Ws blew up in user's hands due to out of battery discharges. Which Glock fixed on the QT. Search Google for more details, I found out about this pretty randomly in the first place. It's consistent with many other reports of Glocks having problems and how the company dealt with them, including the NYC police as I recall.
And of course take this with a big grain of salt, I'm an anti-Glock type, due to the accidental discharge safety problems I identify above (no safety, no external hammer).
Turns out citizens legally carrying concealed have a much better record. Given how anti-gun the MSM is, do you doubt for a second that if citizens had comitted such an atrocity it wouldn't be nationwide, probably world wide screaming headlines?
Your concern is perhaps legitimate, but not after I point out the above.