We love our handguns. We want them in turn to give us pleasure in handling, aiming, pulling the trigger towards the cardboard target, rejoicing when we see a nice group of holes there, cleaning them, pampering them.
When emotions are involved not everything can be rationalised, measured and rigorously decided upon. If you hate the looks of a gun, if you don't feel it blending in your hand, if it is for you just a good tool, an accurate paper hole perforator, you’ll soon think at other options on the market; and there is plenty of them out there.
I get all the above about Glocks … and something special on top of it: In January 2011 a mad man using a Glock killed six people in Arizona, including a nine year old girl (you see, my heart bleeds first for the child, ahead of political figures). In January 2011 I was preparing as well for the PAL / RPAL exams. I had previous gun experience in the military but not in recreational shooting. Of course it was not the fault of the gun, of course the crazy killer and his mental sickness are to blame but Glocks bring me back painful feelings. And, as any human being my instincts try to pull away from pain.
The phenomenon is strange, personal, irrational and almost impossible to quantify. For instance, I had a similar non-relationship with BMWs for more than ten years after a former colleague got killed in his Bimmer because of brake failure. It went away eventually; hats off in front of the marvelous machines BMWs is making.
And there is no necessary repetitive causal connection in such cases. Look, like most normal people I am totally appalled by the orange hair piece of s**t who just produced the horrible Aurora, Colorado mass killing (another sweet child killed there as well). But AR-15s didn’t go “Glock” for me.
Now, let’s suppose only Glocks would be available on the market. Then, if my desire for making holes in the paper is bigger than painful feelings I would surely go with a Glock and get over it. But the market is full of many nice handguns from all points of view, functionality, esthetics, hand fitting, reliability, accuracy, you name it. I keep hearing that even after thousands of shots “Glocks go bang when you pull the trigger”. But, honestly, only Glocks do this? See, now I switched to rational arguments. Especially when Glocks, let's face it, are not the BMWs of the handgun world; maybe around Toyotas.