I wanted to get a good feel for my new gun, so I decided that I would splurge a little bit and fire 150 rounds through it. This is something that I would never have done with my Kahr CW45, mainly because I started to have problems after the 30th or so round. After 50 rounds it would be frustrating, after 100 intolerable.
I never really realized how skittish the Kahr made me... I was actually nervous when I bought that many rounds, wondering if I would have to take some home, or if I would get through them all. I should have been worried. The Glock's reputation for reliability seemed to be well deserved this time out as it went boom every time I pulled the trigger.
I started out just trying to get a feel for the pistol, not really attempting to mark where I was shooting, just trying to get it on the paper. My first objective was to simply find out how controllable the pistol was, judge the recoil, and how quickly I could bring my sight picture back on target.
I found the pistol to be quite responsive, easy to bring back on target, and the recoil to be slightly less than the Kahr. The recoil feeling may have been my imagination, the guns are virtually identical in weight and balance. What I did notice was that my shots were pulling left. I took this to be my laxness in aim.
Right away, I was happy I got the pistol with the high capacity magazine. It is SO much nicer to shoot 10 rounds to 6. Not to mention with two magazines I could go through 20 rounds with out having to reload my magazines. Very nice.
I spent my 20 rounds getting a feel for the pistol and went on with my evaluation.
My next goal was accuracy. I set the target at 15 yards, and took careful aim at the center of the target, and fired. First shot was off to the left. I took aim again, and fired. Off to the left near the first shot. Puzzled, I set up and fired, making sure that I was not flinching or pulling to the left with my trigger pull. Off to the left next to the first two. What the hell? My next two were put down range to make a nice grouping directly to the left of where I was shooting. I could not believe that a brand new, modern pistol would deviate that consistently to the left of target. Then it came to me. Glock has a different philosophy when it comes to their grips.
When shooting a "normal" pistol you have to put it in your hand in a bit of an unnatural way. The pistol is built on a straight line, while the alignment between your wrist and your hand is off at about a 105 degree angle or so. It takes practice but when shooting a pistol you need to compensate for this angle, thus the unnatural way you place the pistol in your hand. Glock thought that was stupid and set their grips to be placed in to the had as naturally as possible giving their grips a 105 degree angle. After many years of firing "normal" pistols, I naturally grip the Glock the same way I griped any other pistol. I had to unlearn this and pick up the new Glock just as I would if I had never picked up a pistol before.
After a slight adjustment I started to put the bullets on target. The pistol felt a bit strange at first, but I found that I was able to bring the sight picture back on target easier, and the recoil felt much better.
After putting about 60 or so rounds in to my accuracy test, I wanted to have some fun and open up the pistol a bit. I was getting nervous again, as I was well over the round mark where my Kahr started to give me trouble. I loaded up the magazines and decided to use the rounds with "accelerated pairs" (fancy new legally acceptable name for double taps). When doing an accelerated pair, you want to carefully aim the first shot, then as fast as possible put your sight picture back on that same spot and fire again. It should sound like a bangbang rather than a bang....bang of the closely aimed shots. Doing accelerated pairs with a .45 is really just having fun, because the accelerated pair is intended to give smaller calibers more stopping power. But, anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice.
My accelerated pairs with the Glock were fun, but as with most compact .45s the second shot was high and to the right. It was fun shooting them, because I had no failures. It was like I was shooting my old full size 9mm Smith & Wesson 5906. I went through those rounds quickly, and thought it might be fun just to load up the mags and shoot them dry as fast as possible.
I actually shot some fairly decent groups for just pulling the trigger.
The Glock worked flawlessly and it was fun to run two 10 round mags dry as fast as I could pull the trigger.
About this time I was out of bullets. I felt good that I finally had an accurate, dependable piece to have fun with and to carry around. I just hope it stays that way. I guess I don't have any reason to think that it won't. The biggest complaint with the Glock 30 models is that it is too hard to put the 10th round in to the new magazines. None of the problems that plagued the Kahr.
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