By Kristen Baird


The Glock 9 mm semi-automatic pistol is regarded by many as America's favorite handgun. Using the right Glock accessories can make shooting easier. First, it is essential to understand the basic principles underlying all firearms. At its simplest, a gun is a closed metal tube with one end open and the other end, which is rounded, drilled with a tiny hole to accommodate a flammable length of fuse. Gunpowder, a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur, is placed into the closed end of the tube (the breech). The earliest functional model of this apparatus was the cannon.

When the fuse is lit, the gunpowder ignites, creating a large volume of very hot gas. The pressure on the cannon ball as a result of the gas is greater than the atmospheric pressure coming in through the open end, so it is propelled out of the tube at a high rate. Note that it is the momentum of the cannon ball (mass times acceleration) that causes the damage at the other end; the projectile itself does not ignite or explode.

The problem with early handguns was they could only fire one shot at a time, after which the operator would have to clean and reload the weapon in order to fire the next shot. Enter the revolver, which only had to be reloaded after every fifth or sixth shot. The bullets sat in a revolving chamber, which advanced one shot each time it was fired. The revolver came along in the 1800s.

Revolvers were great, but people wanted to kill each other even faster. This is where the semi-automatic pistol comes in. In these devices, the ammunition sits in a holder called a magazine residing in the butt (handle) of the gun. Some of the larger magazines were capable of holding up to 15 bullets.

A pistol also has a lighter trigger action than a revolver. The problem with a pistol, however, is its propensity to jam, which revolvers don't seem to do. Finally, semi-automatic weapons evolved into fully automatic firearms, which fire bullets automatically as they are fed into the chamber.

Today's Glock is a semi-automatic pistol and probably America's favorite hand gun. It was developed by a team of Austrian engineers and designers led by a man named Gaston Glock. Inspired by an open request from the Austrian army for designs of a new sidearm, the team came up with the Glock. Because the company was already making hand grenades out of plastic, the design team naturally incorporated the material into the new firearm.

Satisfied with what the Glock team came up with, the Austrian Defense Ministry ordered 25,000. Widely considered America's favorite hand gun, the Glock is made in all major calibers, of which the 9 mm is the favorite. Among the accessories available for the sidearm is the magazine. The Glock magazine holds more ammo than magazines of other gun manufacturers.

What makes the Glock magazine so interesting is the complete polarization between European and American users of the gun when it comes to whether or not the magazine should drop automatically onto the ground, sometimes partially loaded, or require the push of a button. In Europe, allowing the magazine to drop is not the done thing; in America, the magazine is almost considered disposable.




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