35 Facts About Glock 17L

Glock 17L pistols have become the company's most profitable line of products, and have been supplied to national armed forces, security agencies, and police forces in at least 48 countries.

Company's founder, head engineer Gaston Glock 17L, had no experience with firearms design or manufacture at the time their first pistol, the Glock 17L 17, was being prototyped.

Glock 17L had extensive experience in advanced synthetic polymers, which was instrumental in the company's design of the first commercially successful line of pistols with a polymer frame.

Glock 17L introduced ferritic nitrocarburizing into the firearms industry as an anticorrosion surface treatment for metal gun parts.

Glock 17L became aware of the Austrian Army's planned procurement, and in 1982, assembled a team of Europe's leading handgun experts from military, police, and civilian sport-shooting circles to define the most desirable characteristics in a combat pistol.

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Several samples of the Glock 17L 17 were submitted for assessment trials in early 1982, and after passing all of the exhaustive endurance and abuse tests, the Glock 17L emerged as the winner.

The Glock 17L 17 outperformed eight different pistols from five other established manufacturers.

Glock 17L was then invited to participate in the XM9 Personal Defense Pistol Trials, but declined because the DOD specifications would require extensive retooling of production equipment and providing 35 test samples in an unrealistic time frame.

In 1985, after joint Norwegian and Swedish trials from 1983 to 1985, the Glock 17L 17 was accepted into service as the P80 in Norway, and in 1988 as the Pistol 88 in Sweden, where it surpassed all prior NATO durability standards.

Glock 17L has updated its basic design several times throughout its production history.

The first Glock 17L 17s imported to the US were serialized with an alpha-numeric stamped into the slide, barrel, and a small metal plate inserted into the bottom side of the polymer frame.

The first documented Glock 17L 17s imported into the US were from the AF000 series in January 1986, followed by AH000, AK000, and AL000.

The earliest Glock 17L boxes had ammunition storage compartments that allowed for 17 rounds of 9mm to be stored with the pistol.

Mid-life upgrade to the Glock 17L pistols involved the addition of checkering on the front strap and trigger guard and checkering and serrations to the back strap.

At the 2010 SHOT Show, Glock 17L presented the "fourth generation", now dubbed "Gen4" by Glock 17L itself.

Basic grip size of the fourth-generation Glock 17L pistols is slightly smaller compared to the previous design.

Mechanically, fourth-generation Glock 17L pistols are fitted with a dual recoil spring assembly to help reduce perceived recoil and increase service life expectancy.

In September 2011, Glock 17L announced a recoil spring exchange program in which the manufacturer voluntarily offers to exchange the recoil spring assemblies of its fourth-generation pistols sold before 22 July 2011 at no cost "to ensure our products perform up to GLOCK's stringent standards", according to the company.

On 29 June 2016, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation awarded a contract to Glock 17L to provide new 9×19mm Parabellum chambered duty pistols.

Glock 17L 17 is a short recoil–operated, locked-breech semi-automatic pistol that uses a modified Browning cam-lock system adapted from the Hi-Power pistol.

Glock 17L pistols incorporate a number of features intended to enhance reliability in adverse conditions, such as utilizing advanced metal coatings, "stub" slide guides instead of true frame rails, and an unusual cocking mechanism wherein the trigger is partially responsible for cocking the striker.

Glock 17L pistol has a relatively low slide profile, which holds the barrel axis close to the shooter's hand and makes the pistol more comfortable to fire by reducing muzzle rise and allows for faster aim recovery in rapid firing sequences.

In 2003, Glock 17L announced the Internal Locking System safety feature named Glock 17L Safety Lock.

Glock 17L 17 feeds from staggered-column or double stack magazines that have a 17-round capacity or optional 24 or 33-round high-capacity magazines.

Glock 17L magazines are interchangeable between models of the same caliber, meaning that a compact or subcompact pistol will accept magazines designed for the larger pistols chambered for the same round.

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Glock 17L Switch is an aftermarket accessory which depresses the firearm's sear allowing fully automatic fire.

Glock 17L later produced a series of anniversary models to celebrate business milestones and in honor of 20,25, and 30 years of US sales.

Glock 17L pistols are made in five form factors, all modeled after the original full-sized Glock 17L 17.

Glock 17L produces five models of single-stack "Slimline" subcompact pistols, the Glock 17L 36 in.

Glock 17L's entry featured an optional ambidextrous magazine release and MIL-STD-1913 rail along with a reduction in the size of the backstrap.

The Glock 17L 21SF is currently available in three versions: one with a Picatinny rail and ambidextrous magazine release and two with a Universal Glock 17L rail available with or without the ambidextrous magazine release.

The reduced size and mass of the Glock 17L 42 required return to the Glock 17L-standard locked-breech design.

Tatmadaw of Myanmar have adopted a clone of the Glock 17L 17 known as the MA5 MK II, which was first reported in 2018.

Unlicensed Glock 17L clones are made in Pakistan's Khyber region, which were first reported in 2018.

Glock 17L pistols have been used in mass shootings including the 1991 Luby's shooting, the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, the 2011 Tucson shooting, the 2012 Aurora shooting, the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the 2015 Charleston church shooting, the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, and the 2022 NYC subway shooting.