Sam1911,
You present some strong arguments in support of your client , the GLOCK. Just as I have come to expect from a lawyer of your experience.
Imho the GLOCK is made for lowest common denominator. By this I mean departments/agencies save mucho bucks by adopting a gun that trains the officer to be proficient with it in the shortest amount of time.
Another brillant tactic was selling GLOCK handguns to law enforcement agencies at low prices knowing full well that administrators are aways looking for ways to stretch their budget and are not "gun guys". GLOCK also recognize that the Police carrying his guns automatically gave it creditability with the general public as a safe, powerful handgun.
GLOCK also knows that any money he loses by selling to LEO agencies he will more than make up with sales to civilians.
The GLOCK is far from perfect.
It has lackluster accuracy.
The trigger is prone to malfunctions. A LEO friend recently had the trigger on his gun totally lock up and refuse to fire during qualification. They disassembled the gun, could not find anything, reassembled it and it worked fine. Failure to work without a detectable cause is disturbing and has resulted a lose of confidence in his gun.
I find the lack of external safety a design fault. The need for a grip safety to prevent children from firing the gun was demonstrated over a century ago by Daniel Wesson. As the story goes Wesson thought he had designed a child proof revolver so he gave one to his children to test. A short time later there was bang so back to the drawing board. The result was the addition of the grip safety, the so-called lemon squeezer.
Sadly two tragic incidents recently involving three year old children shooting a adult after having gaining access to a loaded GLOCK have been reported.
GASTON GLOCK was a pioneer in use of polymers in a handgun design but it far from being the pinnacle of handgun design.
Respectfully.
p.s. Sam1911 I missed your last post as I was busy shooting my mouth off typing this post. I concur that the addition of a grip safety would be a refinement of the basic design and imho a much needed safety feature. This omission was corrected in the Springfield XD model.