Gun snobs. I’ve you’ve spent any time, at all, online on either prepper forums or gun forums, you’ve run into gun snob guys like this one:
“I would’t shoot a (____________________) if my life depended on it, they are junk!”
Unfortunately, those kinds of comments are made by guys far too often. Notice I use the word “guys”, I’m not throwing that word around loosely, because very few women talk about guns on the internet, and I don’t think I’ve ever run into a female gun snob.
Salty’s Pink Glock
All Guns Are Not Created Equal, But Most Modern Firearms Are Actually Pretty Good
In general, most modern firearms that are popular and are made by major manufacturers are pretty good. Obviously there are some exceptions and even the best manufacturers produce lemons from time to time. Sometimes, improvements need to be made (such as Glock Gen 1’s retrofit upgrade 6 parts).
Not all guns are created equal, but the free market is a great equalizer. In general, the more popular the gun, the better the gun value vs. cost ratio generally is.
Gun Snob Alert!
It’s human nature to believe that the choices that we have made are right. We see this in all types of products. I don’t know if it’s much of a city thing, but out here where we live in the “sticks” I know a couple of guys who actually got into a fist fight over who makes the better pickup truck, Ford or Chevy.
Some gun brands elicit that type of reaction among many gun snobs.
One you commonly see is “Glock bashing,” often done by proponents of the 1911 Colt (in one of it’s many variants), so I will use this as an example.
I have seen many, many gun snobs bash Glocks for countless reasons, yet I happen to own a Gen 2 Glock 17 that was made in 1989, a 30-year-old gun that I could pull out of it’s box, load and fire a magazine full of ammunition and be confident that it would operate flawlessly (like it has every single time since I have owned the gun).
Not All Gun Dislikes Are Snobbery, But Some Are
I have a lot of likes and dislikes about guns, but I don’t consider myself a snob and I don’t recall ever having been called one either.
Again, let’s look at Glock and use them as an example. Here are a few anti-Glock arguments:
- Polymer guns are terrible
- Glock doesn’t have an external safety
- Sub-par sights
- They are ugly
At least two of these things are pretty demonstrably true, they don’t have an external safety and in most people’s opinion their sights are some of the weakest parts of the guns (we own five Glocks, and have replaced the factory sights on all of them with good night sights).
Snobby fans of “traditional” guns tend to loudly bash Glock owners for shooting “toy guns”. Of course the Glock snobby crowd gives it right back listing the shortcomings of the 1911 design
- Limited magazine capacity
- Heavy
- Big
- Not all 1911’s are created equal, since tons of companies make versions of them
Again, the truth is that both the Glock and the 1911 have been trusted self-protection firearms for decades, and I own both designs. I would trust my life to both.
I’m not a gun snob.
Allana with Salty’s Black Gen 4 Glock 17
The Danger Of Gun Snobbery
Obviously, we all like what we like, that’s why there are so many different options on the market. Choice is good.
Spreading false information, however, isn’t good. What is right for me may not be… heck, probably isn’t… what’s right for you. Just because I happen to drive a Chevy truck doesn’t mean that buying a Silverado is what’s best for you.
It’s the same with guns, and when I do my gun reviews I try hard to remember this.
One review that shows a pretty good example of what I’m talking about is my Keltec PF-9 review. For me personally, I hated one thing about the gun so much that I got rid of it (my thumb rested naturally on the magazine eject button, so I kept accidentally releasing the magazine. I could adjust my hand grip, but it was very uncomfortable to shoot that way). As I state in my review, the gun was a good gun, it was perfectly reliable and your hand position may be completely different.
The PF-9 didn’t work for me, but that doesn’t make it a bad gun, not at all.
Now there are other companies, a couple of low-end manufactures, that I’ve been pretty hard on because every gun I’ve ever owned from them has been a lemon. That’s a different thing entirely.
The single biggest lemon I have ever owned came from Ruger, one of my favorite companies. It was just a bad copy of the gun. These things happen, and Ruger fixed the problem.
I’m not a “gun snob” (I don’t think), but I do have my preferences and thoughts on Glocks. I was a police firearms instructor for my department and at a regional police academy. My department used Sig P-226 and P-228 9mm, DA/SA. I still carry a P-228 as my EDC gun. At the academy, I saw all kinds. I learned a couple of things about Glocks. First, they are much more sensitive to a “wimpy wristed” shooter, often resulting in stovepipes or, more common, failure to feed the next round. This can be, and was, corrected with training and experience shooting. For citizens buying a Glock for their first time semi-auto, they often won’t put the range time in to really get rid of that limp wrist problem.
My second issue with Glocks are their factory triggers. Way too light for a combat gun. I couldn’t count the number of negligent discharges on our range (we had two that I’m aware of, with minor injuries) and at PDs that used Glocks (Detroit PD comes to mind when they transitioned to Glock .40cals, they had NDs up the ying yang). Even an experience instructor from my academy’s staff had an ND with his Glock when on duty. He was injured, not badly, but he resigned from the academy staff as a result. Luckily for the public, most of these NDs occurred while holstering, but not all.
Many of those departments greatly reduced the ND issue by installing NY triggers and increasing training on keeping your flipping finger off the trigger until needed.
My youngest daughter bought a Glock 43 on my suggestion, but I dropped a NY-1 trigger in it for her. Some supervised practice insured she was not limp wristing the thing. She carries it as her EDC and shoots at least once a month with it. No issues, she loves the gun.