Glock 17 Pistol

The Glock 17 is an Austrian semi-automatic pistol designed by Gaston Glock and introduced in 1982 after Glock, previously a manufacturer of curtain rods and other consumer plastic and metal goods rather than firearms, won a contract to design a new sidearm for the Austrian armed forces, and the pistol became one of the most commercially and institutionally successful handguns in modern history. Its use of a polymer frame rather than the all-steel or aluminum-alloy construction of most earlier service pistols significantly reduced weight, while its simple, minimal-parts striker-fired mechanism, in place of a traditional external hammer, and lack of a manual safety lever beyond an internal trigger safety, made the pistol notably easy to train on, maintain and manufacture. Chambered for the 9mm Parabellum cartridge and holding seventeen rounds in its standard magazine, the Glock 17 and its many derivative models have since been adopted by a large share of the world's police forces and numerous militaries, and the Glock name has become broadly synonymous with polymer-framed service pistols generally.