The FBI finished its testing, and has adopted a new duty pistol, in full, and compact sizes, to fire its new 147 grain 9mm Gold Dot G2 ammo.

I hate it for the M&P, but the award was not unexpected either.

The award was given to Glock, who apparently submitted improved versions of its G17 and G19. The FBI versions will have no finger grooves, and an ambidextrous slide release.

Too bad for S&W. The SIG Sauer people are probably having fits right about now, as many predicted the specs were specifically written for the P320.

Let the GAO formal protests and lawsuits begin.

Are you sure you don't mean ambidextrous magazine catch? I've seen a couple pics of the 17M, and they don't have an ambi slide stop . . .

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

Watching Fox News I noticed FBI agents firing Glocks on the line in one of their ad feature inserts.

Yes, I am sure that I did NOT mean ambidextrous magazine catch.

I think the FBI made a first rate decision.

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- Change it back -

I retired Thursday, so it doesn't matter to me, but I would have bet the farm the Sig 320 would win.

For several years the Bureau said we would never get Glocks. Then a highly placed Bureau official retired and took a position at Glock. Voila - Glocks were in.

Maybe the handwriting was on the wall when the SWAT guys got the Flat Dark Earth Glock 17s (finger grooves and all).

The guys that are carrying 22s and 23s now have been told to expect to have them for another 5 years. The 17s will go to new guys and will replace the .40s through attrition.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

Anyone know if the M&P 9/40/45 was considered? I so, how'd it fare? Seems like this goes on so much... Can't tell why there is so much turnover in U.S. Gov't guns...... I am still using a Beretta 92 FS that is 20+ and it shoots quite well and I have several hundreds of rounds through it..... It gets shot at least 25-50 rounds quarterly and sometimes more than that in between quarters....

Congrats on the retirement!

I also thought the 320 would be the choice. I like Glocks, so I wouldn't mind being issued a 17/19. I carried an issued G22 my last 9 years.

What I'm curious to see is if Glock will offer the new version (Gen 5?) to the public? Will it spread to other calibers/sizes? The ambi slide release is not a hot button for me, but the lack of finger grooves seems to be big selling point with many owners.

I don't understand why the lack of finger grooves would be considered a point in the pistol's favor. Unless the grip part of the frame is shortened (front to back).

Maybe because the finger grooves are an almost perfect example of form over function? I don't know a single person that is issued a Glock that finds the finger grooves an improvement over the Gen 2 grip. I don't find the finger grooves an impediment, or an improvement, but given the choice I too would opt for a finger groove-less grip with the Gen 4 texture.

An ambi slide stop would be a significant engineering change for Glock . . .

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

I'm one who found my Gen 2 Glock 23, w/o finger groves, to feel like a brick in my hand (I'm a leftie). I picked up a Gen 3 Glock 17, w/finger groves, and it fits me like a glove. FWIW (remember this is free) the G17, Gen 3, is a vast improvement over all the Gen 2 Glocks.

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Old Cop
LEO (Ret.)

Glock are fine guns and the FBI can have their 9mm.

I'm carrying my Glock 10mm.

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_It was love at first shot_

Its a slide lock not a release the hand over should be used .

Another case of giving our men what is the cheapest , not the best . My son served in the Marine Corps for a number of years , served in the middle east . Don't get him started talking about the Beretta 92 , the air quickly turns " blue " from anger/distrust .
I have seen quite a few new glocks have fte, ftf issues . That is not hearsay , that is what I have personally witnessed , right out of the box .
I'm not a semi guy but do have a sig P320 . It started out as a subcompact 9mm . I bought , from sig the x-change kit and converted it to a compact sig 357 . The kit came right to my door , no ffl required . It's an easy swap . I love it love it love it and yes I do reload for it . It's an easy cartridge to reload .
Some will disagree ,but that's my take on the situation because what I have personally witnessed . I wish them ( the FBI ) , " Good luck " they're going to need it .

Don't think S&W wants their pistols stolen from FBI personnel and used for a shooting. The gun will be blamed and not the agents who lost them.

Well, if we're going to get technical, the slide lock is the bar that traverses the frame and keeps the slide on the frame. The slide stop holds the slide back when the magazine is empty, or when manually activated. When the FBI adopted the Glocks 22 and 23, they forced Glock to add a little ledge or bump to the slide stop lever, so that agents could use it to release the slide.

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

My son did three combat tours in Iraq, in the Army. Although he somewhat prefers the Browning MK III and SIG P-226 in 9mm's, he likes the Beretta M-9 and used it very effectively. No one he killed with it has ever risen from the dead, and they expired promptly on being shot. He'd prefer Speer Gold Dot or Federal HST ammo, but M882 NATO FMJ was all that was authorized and available. It worked. He did tend to fire in double taps, and a few men required a third shot. But one of those was dropped with a leg shot to put him down as he ran on the other side of a truck trailer. When he dropped, a couple of shots to the center mass area killed him. He never met a jihadist who had read that 9mm can't kill men well. Not knowing this "fact", they expired quickly. But the bullets need to be placed well. My son is admittedly a far better marksman than are most military personnel, other than Delta Force, SEALS, specialized MP SWAT teams, etc.

He killed additional enemy with a Browning MK III while a security ccontractor after leaving the Army. It, too, was fully effective, using the same ammo. Both guns always worked and shot well.

He did spend his own money for real Beretta and Meg-Gar mags and said that cheap aftermarket magazines caused most problems that he saw with the Beretta, or poor cleaning. Some guns had also been used a LOT, with improper maintainance.

The Beretta M-9 passed really grueling trials before being adopted and since the bugs were worked out to avoid broken slides, is an evolved design that performs well, provided that Gen. 3 locking blocks are used and are changed out before one endures too much shooting. Ditto springs, as with other autos.

My M-92FS is one of my most relied on pistols if I think I might have to use it soon. And I don't mean "use it" as a "range gun" or on jackrabbits. But it'll do well in those roles, too, although I don't think it's the best choice for a high round count routine range gun. That was never its intended role.

For my entire 23 year career in law enforcement I carried a GLOCK, first a Model 17 with a Model 26 for back up and the later a Model 22 with a Model 27 for back up. I stood on quarterly training firing lines for those 23 years and never had a FTF or FTE issue. In fact most of the alibi rounds I saw fired on either side of me were user error issues.

We never lost an officer to a gun fight and never had a failure to stop an armed encounter due to weapons failure. I relied on my GLOCK and never had any doubt it would preform if and when needed. No hearsay here either, just 23 years on the road in patrol.

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Join the NRA today

Well, considering that the Glock has been the standard issue gun of the FBI since 1997, you'd think they'd have noticed over the last twenty years if there was anything to worry about.

Will special agents be able to carry POW's? (Means Personally Owned Weapons, in this usage.) Which ones?

BTW, congratulations to Brad and his SIG .45 on their retirement.

Thanks, my friend.

The POW program continues, but I think its time is coming to an end. Only the Glock 17, 19, 26, 27, 22, and 23 are on it now. Previously grandfathered .45 POWs (Glock 21s, Sig 220s, and Springfield 1911s) will be disapproved come October 1st. I think some grandfathered Sig 9mms and .40s will stay OK for a while, but I'm not sure.

I'm glad my 220 and I could finish out our time together.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

My CZ's all shoot circles round my Glock 17 and 26.

No, actually, YOU do. Big difference.

With my Colt Official Police, I shoot circles round myself with any M&P/Model 10 I own. The Colt just works better for me. That doesn't seem to have prevented something like 70 to 80% of US law enforcement from carrying S&W rather than Colt by the 1970s.

Individual anecdotal evidence and preference rarely has much relevance for large-scale institutional adoptions.

I second that Brother..

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Loyalty Above All.. but Honor

I feel it's too bad that they didn't award the contract to an AMERICAN manufacturer

It's good to hear that the US Gov't has extra cash laying around. I was getting nervous.

Was there a specific problem with the weapons they have now? In five years, we'll hear that they're going back to the 459 and Silvertips...then we can start all over again.

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Because of the metric system?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Glock is an American manufacturer, just the way Beretta is an American manufacturer. Glocks are produced in Georgia, the same as Beretta's soon-to-be manufactured in Alabama. It's just the last dollar of profit goes back to Austria or Italy. The same is true of Japanese, German, and Korean car makers.

I own handguns with better grips than a Glock, better triggers, that are more accurate than a Glock and so on, but the Glock is the one I want in a pistol fight.

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Have Gun Will Carry

Lol!

I'm guessing they were taking old guns off the line and replacing with new. While at it they changed calibers

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Border patrol uses HK.

Secret Service use Sig

When you have to rely on a firearm as a tool what difference does is it who manufactured it?

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The majority of the officers at my old PD carried Glocks, in about all of the calibers available. The biggest problem I saw was the "weak wrist" malfunction. Once corrected with a firmer grip, those went away.

While I was on a UN police mission in Kosovo, the American officers carried Beretta 92s. When we had range day, those that had not oiled their sidearms had failure to feed problems. All of us range officers carried bottles of gun oil. A few drops of oil on the slide rails fixed that issue.

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John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

We were issued S&W autos in 9mm for 32 years. The director decided we would be going to .40 so the testing began. I was commanding our R&D at the time. We asked for samples and got 15 different guns from various manufacturers. We sent them around the state and any Troop could come to their range and evaluate. After a year of testing the top 3 scorers were the SIG, S&W and Glock. We requested bids from the top 3. Our request was to turn in our old 5904/6904 and receive 2553 new guns, holsters, 750 rds of training ammo per Troop and 2 yrs of service ammo. Glock came in with a bid of $250,000. S&W's was double that. SIG's bid was double S&W's bid at about $1.1 mil. While SIG came out #1 in our testing and preference there's no way you can legally justify going with the high bidder if you've already said others have products that meet your demands. People go to jail for bid rigging.
Some have asked why agencies trade guns so often. Very good reason. Night sights have a life of about 12-15 yrs. We swapped guns every 7-10 yrs. When we put out bids we could get new guns with new night sights for the same price as getting new night sights and installing them on new guns. That deal is a no brainer. New guns with new sights v old guns with swapped out sights for the same price. Our last swap out cost us $53 per gun.

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183rd FBINA

In the end it's all about the mighty dollar, period. Do I like it? No. Can I change it? No. So it is what it is...

Glock does their homework and that's why they are still successful and can be found in many PD's or federal agencies.

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Jorge

If you're worried about wasting money, your concern can be much more profitably employed elsewhere; this whole thing costs less than the cost overruns on a few F-22's or F-35's.....

From everything I've been able to discern, this is mostly a big deal on the usual hyperventilating gun blogs and among overly excitable internet "experts". The fact that the "new" gun is a newer version of the old gun is already by far the most rational and cost-effective choice that could have been made, with minimal changes in training, materials, tools, armorer support, etc. Sigp.220.45 can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that the FBI introduces "new" guns by simply starting to issue the new gun to the new starting classes of agents, not by collecting and scrapping everyone's current gun. So I don't have any particular anxiety about my taxes being wasted in this case.

So the FBI chose the Glock 9mm. It's a fine piece with a proven track record. Do I own one? No, as I've mentioned before, my issue isn't with the product, it's with Gaston. A despicable human being IMHO. Getting back to the original subject at hand. When was the last time anyone here based their next purchase on what the FBI or and other government entity does? I buy & carry what I like, what suits me.

When my agency initially went with the Glock 19 we had no gun related problems, but the 9mm ammo of the time was inadequate when compared to our .38 +P FBI load. Glock offered to swap out the 19 for the Gen 2 G23 in .40 at no charge. I retired in 1997 and my agency continues to issue the Glock 23 to everyone, and the Glock 22 to SWAT personnel. Glock seems to have good marketing and service after the sale that has cornered the law enforcement market.

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Old Cop
LEO (Ret.)

You're right. The .40s in service now will be replaced over the next five years or so through attrition. New agents will get the 9mms first. Eventually anyone who wants one will be able to get one, but since we still have .40 ammo around to burn up there will be no hurry.

We were going to have to buy guns anyway, so this makes sense. Existing leather gear will work, and the ammo cost for 9mm is cheaper. When you buy ammo by the traincar load it adds up.

This switch to 9mm was never about recoil or agents having trouble qualifying with the .40s. I was a Firearms Instructor as an additional duty during most of my 25 years with the Bureau and the "snappy" recoil I read so much about was never an issue. Its about money.

Each agent shoots about 1000 rounds per year in qualifications, and right now there about 12,000 agents. New agents in training at Quantico shoot about 1000 rounds a week for most of the 22 week course, 30-40 trainees per class with classes starting every 2 weeks. SWAT agents shoot more than that, and HRT guys go through ammo like nobody's business. The cost of new guns pales in comparison to the cost of feeding them.

Our ammo budget has been cut every year for the last decade or so, in favor of tech gizmos, training, operational travel, and salaries for the gazillion unarmed analysts we've hired to squint at computer screens. If switching to 9mm will help stay ahead of the budget axe, I'm fine with it.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

I bought a new G17 back in 1986 for $286 at a gun shop in Lawton OK, and kept it until 2004 when I sold it for more than I paid. I used the funds to buy a Sig P239 and was amazed at how much my groups improved. My G17 groups looked like a blast of buckshot on the target while the P239 target has the holes group nicely and some actually touching. I don't suck as bad as I thought.

Glocks aren't substantially better or worse than other options. My FFL friend shoots glocks exclusively and he's good with them; I'm not so I bought a P320 recently.

The problem isn't that the FBI went with glocks, it's that they are forcing their agents to take them. You should be able to choose the gun that best suits you, after all it's your life on the line.

I think the FBI and a lot of other departments still remember the aftermath of the 1986 Miami shootout. There is a big problem when officers are allowed to carry different weapon systems,and calibers. In a SHTF situation such as Miami. I would hope when a brother officer throws me a magazine, it fits and is the same caliber. In this climate we are entering into today, this is becoming more and more a reality. I don't mind a Glock, they do work and they are pretty near fool proof.

I am also very glad, and thankful, for that! Congratulations on your service, and thank you for all you did to keep us safe. May you enjoy your hard-earned retirement!

Best,

Shawn

Not all FBI agents are gun people. Not all military people are gun people. So now you are partnered with a guy who thinks a 38 Derringer is good because it fits his hand and it goes bang. You want to go into a dangerous situation with him? Or maybe he likes some obscure weird gun with anemic ammo. Would you be ok with a partner that carries a Nagant revolver in 7.62x38? Poor sight, poor ammo, 15# trigger pull and 5 min to reload. But it balances well.

If it's your life on the line learn to use your gear. Practice. Practice practice then practice more and more. I bet if you practiced more with your Glock you'd be as good as your friend. Most people don't practice enough

The FBI didn't force you to join. You joined so you get used to what you're given.

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Why is Mr. Glock a problem?

Another issue is the new GD ammo they have chosen is getting lack luster reviews.

I suspect some people looked askance at Gaston dumping his wife at 82 and marrying his 31 year old nurse. There are also some allegations of racketeering and money laundering in the ex-wife's lawsuit against Gaston, attempting to force him to return "her part" of the company . . .

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

I missed that one. Details?

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Why is the FBI switching to 9mm. I thought that they went to 40 S&W after being outgunned in the 1986 Miami shootout.

That was 30 years ago. Bullet and load design have come a ways since then, significantly reducing any advantage in terminal ballistics of the .40. Besides, the whole Miami focus was on one freaky 9mm hit that didn't penetrate quite as far as it would have needed to in order to end the fight, mostly due to the odd bullet path; it was never a very good basis for wholesale changes to begin with.

From what I've read the poor results came from the 1st generation of the G2 ammo. Apparently the 2nd generation of the ammo is better, but I haven't read anything to confirm that.

The FBI did a study and found that with modern JHP there was little difference among the service calibers, so they went with 9mm for a combination of reasons: quicker follow up shots, lower costs, etc. I can't recall if longer service life was a factor with the FBI, but other agencies switching from .40 to 9mm have mentioned the extra wear-and-tear on .40 guns as a factor for them.

If I can find the report, I'll post a link.

Update: Found the link to an article summarizing the results. There's also a link within the article to the original documentation.

https://looserounds.com/2014/09/21/f...ning-division/