Glock's New G36: A Fistful of Firepower

Page Two

The safety mechanism on the Glock was also innovative in its origin and has also since become a benchmark for such other manufacturers as S&W, Walther, and Steyr. There is no external manual safety; instead, the trigger itself encloses a pivoting, spring-loaded lever that blocks against the frame to prevent rearward trigger motion except when the trigger finger is actually pressing the trigger to the rear in firing. This allows the gun to be carried safely in its chamber-loaded/halfcocked readiness state. The internal parts arrangement is such that the only thing that can move the firing pin to the discharge position is the trigger, so with the trigger blocked the gun can't fire.

All these features combine to define the Glock as essentially a short-stroke, double-action-only (DAO) gun, which in practical terms eliminates the need for a manual safety entirely. And when all is said and done, it is this Glock feature set that has truly defined the nature of modern 21st-century autoloader design-a pistol that can be fully charged and carried safe/ready to fire without need for any mechanically intervening manual safety systems at all. All you have to do is take a glance at the operating mechanisms of nearly every new autoloader system offered by any manufacturer in the past decade-all are variations on this same essential theme.

Glock disassembly for maintenance is equally slick. Remove the magazine, then move the slide about .25 inch backward and pull downward on both ends of the little locking bar that goes all the way through the frame just above the front of the trigger guard. Pull the slide/barrel assembly forward off the frame. That's it. You can separate the recoil spring, guide, and barrel from the slide just as with any other conventional-form autoloader. Reassembly is fast. When the slide/barrel/recoil spring unit is assembled, just slip it on the frame rails and action the slide to the rear.

Shootable In The Extreme
Subjectively, the compact G36 is a very comfortable-even fun-gun to shoot. It much better suits my hand than do the double-stack frames of other standard Glock configurations. This is due to the proportionately longer depth of the grip in proportion to its width (as one of my colleagues has put it, it feels more like a 1x3 than a 2x2) and to the more pronounced incurve of the upper portion of the backstrap. Recoil is not unpleasant or disconcerting, although it is certainly not a quick-recovery gun that could be used in action-shooting competition. And there are some design features concerning Glocks in general that I would like to see changed. The slide release and the magazine release button are too flat. I believe both of these critical operating levers should be made easier to operate by a gloved or hot and sweaty hand.

In order to review the G36's accuracy, I fired my sample G36 for a series of five full-magazine groups from a sandbag benchrest at 50 feet with 10 varieties of commercial .45 ACP ammunition. The results are shown in the accompanying chart. The overall combined average for all groups fired was 2.55 inches. The best factory-load group was with Winchester's Ranger SXT 230-grain JHP loading and measured 1.88 inches. That is a pretty fair result, even at the relatively close (street-width) distance I use for evaluating compact personal-defense pistols. In terms as blunt as the instrument itself, the new G36 is the best handling, most concealable compact pistol Glock has yet made. For .45 ACP believers who are content with six-plus-one capacity, it will be a hard choice to overlook.

Page One - History, Innovation, Plastic Gun?, Specs

This article was originally published in Shooting Times magazine in November, 2000.

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