Why I’m Keeping My Glock 42

Glock had not released a new pistol design since the beginning of the century. There were a few old Glock designs rechambered for new calibers, and we got the updated Gen 4 Glocks, but the last pistol the Austrian company produced that could truly be considered a new design was the single stack .45 ACP Glock 36, which became available in 2000.

There have been a lot of rumors and wishful thinking about what Glock’s next new design would be, but it was a long 14 years before the company said anything official. Toward the end of last year, Glock ads hinted at a new concealed carry offering that many people assumed was the long awaited Glock single stack 9mm.

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It wasn’t. The Glock 42 turned out to be a .380 ACP instead, and compared to the competition, a large one. The initial reaction was, to put it politely, lukewarm. Before anyone even had a chance to try the new pistol, Glock was already taking heat because it came in the wrong caliber.

First Impressions of the Glock 42

Here we are nearly a year later and just about every blogger, magazine writer, and YouTube channel in the gun world has thrown in their two cents on the Glock 42. That initial backlash did eventually cool off, and the shooting community has had a chance to evaluate the Glock 42 for what it is, rather than for what we hoped it would be.

Since re-hashing the technical specs and features of this pistol isn’t exactly breaking news at this point, I’m going to save the usual routine review description stuff for the end and cut right to my own take on the Glock 42.