grousemaster wrote:You gotta love how all the Glock haters on here ignore the fact that nearly every other pistol manufacturer has copied them in some way (new XD-S went to a glock clone striker system)
I've never seen another pistol slide with a finish as tough as a Glocks. I take a screwdriver and hammer to my slide for my buddies to get a kick out of and we cannot scratch it. With my Xd's and Rugers.....not so much.
I guess the best question would be, what features do other striker fired polymer pistols have that Glocks lack (and needs)?
I would say the XD and XDM guns are not copies of the GLOCK. Yes they have a striker and striker safety (so do many other guns), the XD series uses a conventional sear, GLOCK does not. GLOCK has a trigger group or block XD's do not. The XD's use a dampening spring on the striker GLOCK does not. Now if you go to the M&P that thing is 50% XD, 50% GLOCK. The striker even looks like a GLOCK with the narrow long tang. The sear and trigger parts look like an XD.
The cruciform sear is unique to GLOCK as far as I know. This is the part from an engineering stand point I do not like. The problem is there is 3 motions happening to it all at the same time. It moves backwards toward the operator, it slides down as it moves along the disconnector, and it is rotating about its contact point on the striker as the trigger bar moves. It is an effective part BUT there are too many things going on at once with the flimsy part which is poorly constrained to do any one of the functions ideally.
Don't get me wrong, the GLOCK works and reliably. If I wanted a hammer to drive nails with, drag on the ground, run through the mud and still function then I would be looking for a GLOCK (maybe). But I want something more refined, cleaner, and that is why I choose a different make. Plus the XDM just feels better in my hand and it is what I am happy shooting. If you are not happy with a gun there is no point in trying to shoot it.