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Horrifically bad idea for a handgun accessory

8K views 42 replies 36 participants last post by  oneshot 
#1 ·
#4 ·
heres a hint....Just cary a glass breaker with you. Either in your service car or on your duty belt. No need to escalate things with a drawn gun. It is a good idea to supply law enforcement with easy entry to a window but not with a firearm lol....maybe they could put one on the end of the Asp/Baton.
 
#11 ·
Someone has one out that replaces the floorplate on a Glock magazine and has a metal cone on the bottom.

Brings new excitement to failure drills. Tap-rack-reassess is so yesterday. Tap-scream-bleed is much more tacticool....
 
#14 ·
Everything must be taken in its context

For a very narrow application, I can see it being useful. SWAT applications and such, we do a lot of extraction stuff on vehicles. Other than that, yeah its a bad idea.
 
#17 ·
For a LEO, I don't see the problem with it. I've seen several high speed chases (on TV) end with officers breaking glass with their drawn handguns, sometimes taking several whacks at it to get it done. Having something pointy to help could only improve that situation.
 
#21 ·
There was a case in the national news recently where this was actually done. An accident victim's car was on fire, and the officer had tried to break out a side window with his baton and couldn't do it. He finally drew his gun, checked for reasonable safe bullet path, and shot the window out. Barely got the victim out in time to save their life. It was all recorded on his dash cam. Was on the news a couple of months ago.

Officer shoots window of burning car for rescue | 6abc.com
 
#35 ·
Being non-LEO, if I was justified in pulling my weapon I'd be justified to shoot through the glass. I understand in the course of LEO duties, this would not necessarily be the case. Oh well, it's creative, but has a very narrow application.
 
#24 ·
PcMAkr,

I saw that item on the news.
A case of the officer not knowing what to do. If he had impacted the glass in any one of it's corners as rather than striking at the center, he'd have destroyed that glass in one stroke.
The center flat of side window glass is the strongest area AND it flexes with each blow spreading the impact force across the entire surface of the glass.
Key to these glass breaker items is that force is pin pointed on a small area to cause fracture and collapse. Anyone can do this by simply impacting into an upper or lower corner of the glass looking at it as being a sort of rectangle. I personally would focus on a lower corner.

Aside from the product the very first thing that came to my mind, and I rewound it three times to be sure, is that the gun handler covers his own hand with the guns bore while attempting to poorly perform a front hand placement press check.
Not necessary for the handler to do when there are multiple other safe ways to effect same net result.

- Janq
 
#28 ·
I really can't add much to the above posts but, while we are on the subject of glass breakers...I bought a few of these for family members.

Seat Belt Cutter...No Effort Glass Breaker.

10 bucks.

 
#29 ·
If you are already pointing a gun at a BG. The goal being you want to rip him out of the car without taking your gun off him. I get it. For a small niche role it could be a useful tool. The other 364 days a year it just sits on the end of your pistol doing nothing.

The haters who think it sucks have probably never tried to pull a known BG out of a car while screaming "Show me your hands!" at the top of their lungs. (for the record, I am not a cop)
 
#30 ·
We had a tragic incident here back in the 90's when an officer tried to use his 1911 pistol as a tool to break open the window of a suspect's car.

His 1911 pistol was cocked and the safety was off, when he used it to smash in the driver's window. However, in the process of doing this, the gun discharged, hitting the suspect in the head and killing him. While resisting arrest, the suspect was unarmed.

The officer was severely reprimanded for his lack of judgement, and was later fired from the force the next year. This incident was the second time that he had shot and killed an unarmed suspect, so the local anti-police crowd had a fit over both shootings.

A very similar incident took place just last month in Humble, TX. That suspect also ended up being shot in the head. Here is a news report about that negligent discharge:


Police: Officer accidentally shoots, kills car-burglary suspect at Deerbrook Mall | khou.com | khou.com Local News


I just don't think that handguns are a good tool for breaking windows.

.
 
#31 ·
I will concede that in a very narrow context, having a suspect at gunpoint refusing to open up, this could be feasible. Still, how do you drag out the suspect while holding him at gunpoint? If you've got to have two free hands to do the deed, having the ability to break glass at gunpoint seems unnecessary.
 
#34 ·
Well, that is what happened in the two incidents that I mentioned.

The problem is that the suspect's head is often right behind the window that you are shooting out.

I don't know what it is like in your local community, but in this liberal hot bed that I live in, there are lots of folks ready to jump on the police for any type of shooting.

Not to mention the legal liability to a city, for an officer to accidentally kill someone.

.
 
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