How to Replace A Glock Trigger to Make it Smooth

 

I do not believe in modifying carry guns outside of factory specifications. A small part of this is because of liability, but mostly it is because of the unknown consequences to reliability.

A firearm is a machine, and the weight of the parts of the gun are factored in with drag, inertia, spring weight, type of ammunition, and hundreds of other factors to create a gun that functions with the desired ratio or accuracy and reliability.

Every part has to work together and when you replace a part you are piddling with the whole. Tiny tolerances add up – and when you replace many parts you may end up with an unreliable gun. Since the most important factor in choosing a defensive handgun is reliability I don’t risk compounding tolerances.

The Smooth Trigger Was What Glock Designed

However, the modification in todays post is actually bringing the gun back to manufacturer’s specifications. When Gaston Glock created his pistol he built it with a smooth faced trigger, but due to some unfathomable reason the ATF has import points and for a gun to able to be imported it has to have enough points. The ATF considers a smooth trigger to be a combat trigger, and a ridged trigger to be a target trigger.

A full sized Glock has enough points to be imported with the original trigger, but the compact and sub-compact guns were one point short. Therefore Glock has to make a target trigger to meet the red tape.

Luckily, many (if not most) of Glock parts are interchangeable, and if you want a smooth trigger for your compact or sub compact all you need to do (in most cases) is to order the trigger from the full size gun in your caliber.

I have a Glock 19, so to get a smooth trigger I just ordered the Glock 17 trigger and swapped them.  It only cost me a few dollars and a couple minutes to change the feel of my trigger pull.

Now this does nothing to change the weight, take up, or break of the action.

If only changes the feel of the trigger on your finger. However if you are going to a high round count school where you will spend 8 hours a day on the range shooting hundreds or thousands of rounds you will feel a difference, and you will be thankful you made the switch. Other than that it is really a personal preference thing and just something nice to know.

The specifics of how to do this can be found here.