Hiram
Super member
It started in 1970 with the HK VP70, a positively terrible plastic framed, DAO, direct blow back, 9mm handgun. The world averted its gaze. The thing was just too ugly to look at, too hard to shoot well with its staple gun like DAO trigger, and too "cheap toy" feeling.
About ten years later an Austrian guy who owns a plastics company enters his creation into an Austrian military trial. Other entries included in the trials were by companies called Heckler and Koch, SIG Sauer, FN Herstal, Beretta, Browning, Steyr... names long associated with combat handguns. And then there's this guy with zero experience no one has ever heard of, who manufactures parts for curtain rods, showing up with the plainest, simplest, most basic looking handgun shaped object anyone has ever seen. Everyone laughs. Of course, by the end of the trials, when the Glock 17 had absolutely crushed the competition and, reportedly, set records in every category of reliability proving to be not only to be unstoppable but also very accurate and easy to shoot well, no one was laughing anymore. Gaston Glock was on his way. Fast forward to today, and Glocks are practically ubiquitous in militaries and police the world over. The Casio G-shock of the pistol-verse.
I'm old enough to remember when the first reports of Glocks were coming into this country, along with the Glocks themselves. The reports were all excellent. I remember reading an account by a cop in about 1990. He had just bought a G17 for off duty carry shortly before three guys with guns tried to carjack him. In sheer panic he pulled his Glock and just started firing. He said, in his letter to Guns and Ammo (I think it was), that he was certain that had he been carrying a gun with manual safeties he would have been dead. He credited the simplicity of the Glock manual of arms, along with its flat recoil impulse, consistent trigger pull and short trigger reset with saving his life. I don't remember if he said whatever happened to the assailants. Crusty old gun gurus who despised the very idea of a plastic pistol were won over. Everyone was starting to love this ugly plastic weirdo.
Glock, through smart marketing, rebates and framing itself as the safest handgun on the market starts finding its way into police holsters nationwide, en masse. Cheap, simple, shootable, safe and unstoppable, the Glock killed off revolvers as well as DA/SA and DAO pistols in the police world. Glock was a whole new thing. The firing system was a unique concept. It isn't exactly DAO but it's certainly not SA either. It's a sort of hybrid where the striker is about 80% cocked upon chambering a round. The first couple of millimeters of trigger pull (the mush) disengages the safeties and finishes the final 20% of the cocking process before crisply (more or less) breaking and allowing the striker to slam forward. The trigger reset is very short, crisp and tactile/audible.
Since then, just about every major gun company has been working hard to produce the "Glock Killer". Almost all have better ergonomics and better (depends on who you ask) triggers. I've shot, I'm pretty certain, just about every single plastic framed, striker fired gun on the market and I've probably owned most; S&W, Walther, Springfield, CZ, HK, SIG and now Beretta.
These are the plastic framed guns I currently own.
The Co2 HK is a stand-in for my full size 9mm which is at work. So a couple of Walthers, HKs, Berettas and Glocks. Pretty much paired full size and compact. The Berettas are the new kids. I got intrigued by the Beretta APXA1 when I went to Cablelas to have a gander at something else. They had the compact and for $380 I figured it might be worth a sho.... try. So out to the local desert, set up the plates, and 400 rounds later I only stopped shooting because I was dry on ammo. It was so much fun to shoot. So intuitive; punch it out and the glowing red dot just automatically aligns with the blacked out rear sights. The pistol's ergos fit me perfectly. The deep beaver tail and deep trigger guard undercut make the recoil very linear and the fiber optic front sight glows like a bright red light. The APXA1 comes pre cut for optics, if that's your thing. The trigger, which Beretta insists is "best in class" isn't. It's mushy and ever so slightly crunchy and a tiny bit eccentric. It's not bad, per se, but it is nowhere near Walther or even HK. It's fine. That's all, fine. About like a Glock Gen 5, only a little lighter and mushier. At the range today I had the RSO shoot my Glock 19 and Beretta APXA1 side by side and, while he liked the recoil and trackability of the Beretta better, he was pretty ambivalent about the trigger, preferring the Glock.
Beretta created the APXA0 to compete in the US Military XM-17 MHS trials. Beretta tested the hell out of the platform seven ways from Sunday before submitting it to the USDOD. Reportedly the Beretta passed all tests with flying colors and only lost out to SIG because SIG sweetened the dollar and cents part of the deal. From what I read now, the DOD would probably have been a lot better off with the Beretta. The APXA0 was a gigantic yawn to an American public already saturated with plastic, striker fired pistols. Beretta updated the design with A1 and, as far as I can tell, everyone is still yawning. I wonder if they should be. The APX, unlike many of its competitors, was not designed for the civilian market. It was designed, ground up, to be a bomb proof piece of military kit, like the Glock 17 or HK USP, only with better ergos and better recoil management. As far as bomb proof, I hope the pistol sticks around long enough that we can find out, but I do feel confident that Beretta very probably ensured that it would be just that before submitting it to the military trials. When I asked the RSO which pistol he'd rather have to rely on, he said the Glock, because as nice and shootable as the Beretta is, Glock has been setting the high water mark for durability and reliability for over 40 years. The APX may be just as good, but it would take 40 years of widespread adoption to find out.
About ten years later an Austrian guy who owns a plastics company enters his creation into an Austrian military trial. Other entries included in the trials were by companies called Heckler and Koch, SIG Sauer, FN Herstal, Beretta, Browning, Steyr... names long associated with combat handguns. And then there's this guy with zero experience no one has ever heard of, who manufactures parts for curtain rods, showing up with the plainest, simplest, most basic looking handgun shaped object anyone has ever seen. Everyone laughs. Of course, by the end of the trials, when the Glock 17 had absolutely crushed the competition and, reportedly, set records in every category of reliability proving to be not only to be unstoppable but also very accurate and easy to shoot well, no one was laughing anymore. Gaston Glock was on his way. Fast forward to today, and Glocks are practically ubiquitous in militaries and police the world over. The Casio G-shock of the pistol-verse.
I'm old enough to remember when the first reports of Glocks were coming into this country, along with the Glocks themselves. The reports were all excellent. I remember reading an account by a cop in about 1990. He had just bought a G17 for off duty carry shortly before three guys with guns tried to carjack him. In sheer panic he pulled his Glock and just started firing. He said, in his letter to Guns and Ammo (I think it was), that he was certain that had he been carrying a gun with manual safeties he would have been dead. He credited the simplicity of the Glock manual of arms, along with its flat recoil impulse, consistent trigger pull and short trigger reset with saving his life. I don't remember if he said whatever happened to the assailants. Crusty old gun gurus who despised the very idea of a plastic pistol were won over. Everyone was starting to love this ugly plastic weirdo.
Glock, through smart marketing, rebates and framing itself as the safest handgun on the market starts finding its way into police holsters nationwide, en masse. Cheap, simple, shootable, safe and unstoppable, the Glock killed off revolvers as well as DA/SA and DAO pistols in the police world. Glock was a whole new thing. The firing system was a unique concept. It isn't exactly DAO but it's certainly not SA either. It's a sort of hybrid where the striker is about 80% cocked upon chambering a round. The first couple of millimeters of trigger pull (the mush) disengages the safeties and finishes the final 20% of the cocking process before crisply (more or less) breaking and allowing the striker to slam forward. The trigger reset is very short, crisp and tactile/audible.
Since then, just about every major gun company has been working hard to produce the "Glock Killer". Almost all have better ergonomics and better (depends on who you ask) triggers. I've shot, I'm pretty certain, just about every single plastic framed, striker fired gun on the market and I've probably owned most; S&W, Walther, Springfield, CZ, HK, SIG and now Beretta.
These are the plastic framed guns I currently own.
The Co2 HK is a stand-in for my full size 9mm which is at work. So a couple of Walthers, HKs, Berettas and Glocks. Pretty much paired full size and compact. The Berettas are the new kids. I got intrigued by the Beretta APXA1 when I went to Cablelas to have a gander at something else. They had the compact and for $380 I figured it might be worth a sho.... try. So out to the local desert, set up the plates, and 400 rounds later I only stopped shooting because I was dry on ammo. It was so much fun to shoot. So intuitive; punch it out and the glowing red dot just automatically aligns with the blacked out rear sights. The pistol's ergos fit me perfectly. The deep beaver tail and deep trigger guard undercut make the recoil very linear and the fiber optic front sight glows like a bright red light. The APXA1 comes pre cut for optics, if that's your thing. The trigger, which Beretta insists is "best in class" isn't. It's mushy and ever so slightly crunchy and a tiny bit eccentric. It's not bad, per se, but it is nowhere near Walther or even HK. It's fine. That's all, fine. About like a Glock Gen 5, only a little lighter and mushier. At the range today I had the RSO shoot my Glock 19 and Beretta APXA1 side by side and, while he liked the recoil and trackability of the Beretta better, he was pretty ambivalent about the trigger, preferring the Glock.
Beretta created the APXA0 to compete in the US Military XM-17 MHS trials. Beretta tested the hell out of the platform seven ways from Sunday before submitting it to the USDOD. Reportedly the Beretta passed all tests with flying colors and only lost out to SIG because SIG sweetened the dollar and cents part of the deal. From what I read now, the DOD would probably have been a lot better off with the Beretta. The APXA0 was a gigantic yawn to an American public already saturated with plastic, striker fired pistols. Beretta updated the design with A1 and, as far as I can tell, everyone is still yawning. I wonder if they should be. The APX, unlike many of its competitors, was not designed for the civilian market. It was designed, ground up, to be a bomb proof piece of military kit, like the Glock 17 or HK USP, only with better ergos and better recoil management. As far as bomb proof, I hope the pistol sticks around long enough that we can find out, but I do feel confident that Beretta very probably ensured that it would be just that before submitting it to the military trials. When I asked the RSO which pistol he'd rather have to rely on, he said the Glock, because as nice and shootable as the Beretta is, Glock has been setting the high water mark for durability and reliability for over 40 years. The APX may be just as good, but it would take 40 years of widespread adoption to find out.
