Adding a Manual Safety To the Glock Pistol

The Glock pistol has been a source of controversy since December 1985 when the availability of its commercial version, the Model 17, was announced on this side of the pond.

The first shot was lobbed by The Washington Post, known to all for its great expertise in firearms, with a column headlined: "Quadaffi Buying Austrian Plastic Pistol." UPI liked the claim so much it put the column on its wire service and newspapers all over the country picked up the blooper, claiming the Glock to be "a hijacker’s special," a "terrorist’s delight" and "the gun that can pass undetected through airport X-ray machines." Did it matter that The Post writer had been told officially by a Glock spokesperson that the company had never sold anything to Libya?

That no Glock personnel had gone to Libya? And that the Austrian Minister of the Interior confirmed that neither Glock nor anyone representing the company had ever applied for an export license to Libya? Has any "Aunty Gunner" or antigun publication ever bothered to report the facts? You know the answer to that one. As usual, the media inflamed antigun mentalities in Washington, and Congress responded, as usual, by proposing inane bills like HR 4223, which would ban the sale of the Glock 17.

The Police Commissioner of New York City stumped for a Big Apple ban on Glock pistols’while neglecting to mention he carried one for personal protection when jogging in Central Park. The Post kept stirring the pot, now focusing on the "undetectable by Xray" angle in subsequent articles. The Washington Times, Fortune and New York Times piled on the bandwagon.

The broadsides continued nationwide until after both the Director of Civil Aviation Safety for the FAA and the BATF poured cold water on the media powder charges with official comments denying the Glock’s "invisibility." So much for Libya, assorted terrorist organizations, and defeating X-ray machines. For a brief moment in time, Glock’s ill-informed, fact-blind critics were quieted. Law-enforcement agencies at all levels began adopting the maligned pistols as their standard sidearm.

First, the Model 17, then the Model 19 until more Glocks were on duty with police, federal marshals, and government agents than any other semi-auto. The second shot was over "accidental" discharges. The most publicized was probably a Utah incident where a four-year-old picked up a loaded pistol after taking it from a locked safe and discharged the gun at close range, killing his three-year-old brother. A Glock must have its trigger fully depressed to be fired.

It also includes a firing-pin safety to prevent the pin moving forward, eliminating the possibility of igniting a chambered cartridge unless and until the trigger is pulled fully to the rear. The drop safety is present for the obvious rea- 45 ACP Glock Model 21 is shown here with the MSK installed. As you can see, the lever is located about where the thumb safety is found on an M1911.

Above left and When the lever is depressed (right), the pistol is ready to fire. son, and is not affected by the trigger. In every instance of accidental discharge I’ve uncovered, the Glock involved had its trigger pulled. In one case, even the pull was accidental. The investigating officer had a finger on the trigger and was standing outside a door to a suspect’s home. The suspect pushed the door open violently.

The door hit the pistol and the gun went off, seriously wounding the suspect who subsequently won a tidy cash award. No surprise there, either. The Glock trigger pull is about 5 pounds as it comes from the factory. After fears arose in some quarters that this was "too light" and therefore the reason for the accidental discharges, Glock provided what has become known as "the New York trigger" as an option. When installed, it increases pull to as much as 11 pounds.

Suffice it to say that may be high enough to provide Manhattan crooks with an extra sense of security, but the heavy trigger isn’t much in demand outside of the Big Apple. The Third Shot’ And Where You Come In With X-ray and trigger-pull problems resolved, the controversy goes on. And perhaps it will for some time to come. On one side are those who believe there’s nothing wrong with the Glock

that ordinary safe-handling practices and effective training can’t solve. On the other side is an equally large group who say they’ll never totally trust the Glock because it has no manual safety. Well, folks, neither does the revolver’t hat obedient servant of law enforcement since the days of the wild, wild, west. And I might point out that the revolver was replaced only when it was belatedly realized that the law-breakers were outgunning the law-enforcers.

It is to this second group’s o desirous of a manual safety’t hat the MSK for Glock pistols will appeal. Contact surfaces of all MSK parts touching one another should be lightly greased. Figure 1. The initials stand for Manual Safety Kit, which sells for about $85. When added to a Glock of any caliber, its safety lever is located approximately where the thumb safety lives on an M1911. When engaged, all three Glock passive safety features are locked in place.

The MSK itself only contains five parts: (1) a mounting block that serves as anew housing for the trigger mechanism; (2) a trigger-bar guide; (3) around tension spring; (4) a pressure plate; and (5) a safety lever with two integral detents that engage the holes in the pressure plate. The MSK is the brainchild of Joe Cominolli, 25-year veteran of a metropolitan police department with heavy experience in firearms training and longtime member of the American Pistolsmiths Guild.

He received a patent titled "Manual Safety for Linear Striker-Fired Semi-Automatic or Automatic Pistols" after amassing a thick file on Glock unintentional discharges and resolving to put an end to the controversy. The Comi Cominolli Custom isn’t difficult to insta be familiar with Glock disassembly/reassembly. Those instructions appear in Gun Digest’s book dedicated to automatic pistols and in a hard cover book called Glock: The New Wave in Combat Handguns by Peter A. Kesler.

The d by Palladin Press and delves deeply into e pistol including the various assaults made upon its presence. MSK Installation Installation begins by field stripping the pistol, after removing the magazine and checking for an empty chamber. The slide assembly is set aside as you remove the trigger-housing block and trigger group from the frame. Two frame diagrams are provided with the kit. One is for the .45 ACP and 10mm Glocks. The remaining one applies to all other Glock calibers.

Though marking and subsequently modifying the frame can be accomplished with the diagrams alone, I recommended that you invest modestly in a set of Cominolli’s fixtures (continued on page 22) Figure 2.

that run about $75. Using them should reduce retrofit time to mere minutes. They include a frame-slotting fixture plate, two locating pins, and a Delrin cutter guide. The fixture plate eliminates the need for the diagrams. It is clearly marked on the back showing which end is to be used for the smaller calibers and which end is to be used for large-caliber pistols. A cutting-guide groove is machined in each end, and holes for the locating pins are drilled through the plate body.

The largerdiameter pin inserts through the frame’s trigger-pin opening, while the smaller-diameter one goes through the trigger-housing pin opening. With the pins in place, the frame is mounted to the fixture plate and secured Binder Ad (p/u from page 18, AGM-Sept 03) with a small clamp.

A 3/32-inch-diameter end-mill cutter with a 1/8inch shank is chucked into a Dremel tool; the Delrin guide is slipped over the cutter; and the cutter depth is adjusted to just reach through the left side of the frame when the guide is inserted in its plate groove. Yes, friends, I said Dremel tool. This is one time I favor the use of the little rotary tool’as long as you can control its rpm to about 9,000. Of course, a Foredom tool can accomplish the same task, but I’m not certain the Delrin guide fits a Foredom.

Secure the plate/frame assembly between padded vise jaws. Crank up the Dremel, set the Delrin guide in its fixture plate slot, and carefully move the cutter downward until the guide bottoms out in the plate. The slot cut in the frame should be absolutely free of plastic particles. Any debris the cutter leaves behind can be cleaned up with extra-fine emery cloth wrapped around a small rattai I file.

Now remove the trigger-bar assembly, trigger spring, ejector, and connector from the original trigger-bar housing block. Install the ejector and connector to the MSK housing block. Lightly lubricate all contact surfaces between component parts of the MSK, assemble them as shown in Figure 1, and install the trigger bar and trigger spring in the MSK housing. The pressure spring should be fit in place with its high areas at 12 and 6 o’clock facing outward, in order to properly contact the pressure plate.

The trigger-bar guide should be forward and the safety lever in the up position as shown in Figure 2. The drop-safe end of the trigger bar’s cruciform must be fit through the triggerbar guide. Install the complete assembly in the frame and insert all the frame pins. Reassemble the slide assembly to the frame, and bench check function. When the lever is up’on "safe""the slide functions normally, allowing loading and unloading with the trigger bar locked in place.

When the lever is down’s afety off’t he pistol is ready to fire. Does the MSK really work? It does according to several police agencies who have had it installed, and to the officers I spoke with. They’ve reported that the number of Glock mishaps have fallen significantly. How significantly? To zero. I