Glock vs. 1911?  I’m sure this will spark a conversation just by bringing up this topic in the pistol community.  I get asked all the time at ranges from all types of owners, may they be LE, Military (former or active), or just an individual who owns a firearm for self-protection,

“What pistol do you prefer? The Glock or 1911?”

There are so many ways to break this down, but for the sake of time, let’s look at a few key features that each system offers that I think contribute to its favorability.

Reliability

To start things off regarding reliability, let’s get the obvious out of the way. Both pistols have served in multiple conflicts around the world and have proven their reliability on several occasions, although the 1911 would have to place above the Glock when it comes to notable historical achievements.

Glock

The Glock went into full production in 1983 to replace the Austrian World War 2 era Walther P38.  Some of its initial requirements were that the Glock would have an 8-round minimum magazine capacity, not exceed 58 minimum individual parts, and no more than 20 malfunctions within the first 10,000 rounds.  I have heard stories of Glocks not having a single malfunction when shooting in excess of 50,000 rounds; whether I believe this or not is irrelevant.

As for my experience when shooting standard military ball ammunition, I went an entire year with low maintenance and 11,250 rounds before I saw a malfunction.  I started to see a lot of malfunctions when I began stacking hollow points and ball ammunition in the magazine (every other round would fail to feed).  In some cases, using the 9mm Glock variant

Glock20KB6
A cracked Glock.

Let’s look at the Glock frame, which is made of polymer.  Although these pistols are combat-proven and state the extreme durability of the frame, I have had, as well as seen, Glock frames crack on a few occasions.  I have only seen this occurrence in the .40 and .45 cal Gen.4 versions when the user shoots either “hot” hand-load or lead ammunition.  I have also seen small hairline-type fractures just underneath the slide using certain .40 ammunition and shooting 6 thousand rounds of them.  I’m not sure if this is because of over-pressure issues or not.

1911

When it comes to the 1911, you cannot ignore its past. The pistol has been around for over 100 years and is still carried around the world, including in combat environments. The 1911 is an extremely reliable pistol. I believe this to be in favor of the weapon having fewer “mechanical” parts than a Glock.