Three months since I bought my first gun—my Glock 19 Gen 4—and it now has about 1750 rounds through it, in six of seven sessions. It has been the birthing period of a new lifestyle. One which I must confess, I’m very happy with.
I have grown quite comfortable with the Glock, and I carry it—in or out of the house—at all times (if I’m not in Assachusetts). My hands have grown calluses at the points where they contact the gun. My concealed carry holster is soft and broken in. The gun is even showing its first signs of wear. Marks of experience and use in my book. Glocks are meant to be used.
My practice has reached something of a plateau until I can either begin practicing in a more dynamic environment, or acquire some training (preferably both). That’s not to say I can’t shoot well, but I’m certainly not satisfied. In slow shooting I have learned the trigger to the point that I can put a single shot anywhere I want it. At least that was the case before I switched sights… but I’ll circle around to that. In panic drills, drawing and firing very quickly, I generally see a good size spread on a torso at 25ft. Performing Mozambique drills (two center mass, one in the head) I occasionally miss the head by an inch if I’m rushing (and I try to rush because I’m sure in a gunfight I wouldn’t be very well composed). With factory sights I can drill the same hole all day at 30ft. The next step will be to attain more consistency during rushed firing and fighting drills. All of my shooting has been at my NH shooting range, and I recently got a membership at a local outdoor range, so I can begin practicing more dynamically.
Enough about me. How’s the gun doing after 1750 rounds? It runs like the sun. The gun has suffered one malfunction, a Type 3 (a double feed of a shell and a live cartridge, cased by failure to eject). This was caused by my girlfriend limp-wristing the gun during her first time ever shooting, while the gun wasn’t really broken in yet. In 1750 rounds, the gun is yet to malfunction when not caused by user error. A good track record for sure, but not surprising.
Cleaning has been performed after every trip to the range, and I have done two complete Glock disassembly detail-cleanings, during which the gun has been stripped down to every component.
For a little while I ran the gun with a NY1 trigger spring and a Ghost 3.5 trigger connector. While I liked the trigger pull and reset, I found that the trigger would creep forward on its own even if the gun hadn’t bee cycled to cause this. This was frustrating, and if the trigger was in the forward position when I racked the slide, it felt like the slide was encountering a lot of extra resistance. The side effects of the mod made me uneasy to I switched back to the stock trigger. Having adjusted to the 7-8lb trigger pull with the NY1 trigger, I actually like the stock trigger pull much more now (as it is around 5.5lbs).
I installed XS Big Dot combat sights on the gun. These are great for fast target acquisition and also contain tritium glow vials. As combat sights, the XS sights are vastly superior to the stock Glock sights, however the XS front sight is large and obscures your target somewhat, making pin-point shooting a bit harder. At the end of the day though, I don’t own a pistol for pin-point accuracy. It just has to be able to hit center of mass and get on target quickly. The XS sights accomplish this.
For ammo, I’ve run a variety through the Glock 19, including some that many shooters would not consider. The gun has seen a bunch of Winchester White Box from WalMart. It’s also been fed Remington UMC, Remington, Federal, Fiocchi, and UltraMax factory-reloaded ammo. Additionally, the gun has had no problem with the 50 carry rounds I’ve put through it. Those are CorBon DPX. All the rounds through the gun have been 115 grain.
In all, the gun is running fantastically and I have no doubt that it’s going to run without issue for tens of thousands of rounds to come. Look for future updates as major news develops with the gun.