Glock handguns are used by a wide variety of people. Police, military, competition, and private owners who utilize for recreation as well as for home defense.

Unless you are a member of Rainbow Six it is most likely that you do not get enough time to train. It is also not always possible for the user to access his duty firearm, this is especially so with military forces.

We can continue to extrapolate on these circumstances and say that at times local laws or travel will be non-permissive for firearms training.

The benefits of an inert replica for instructional purposes is already obvious, but I wanted to highlight some of the reasons why an individual might want an inert replica to train with on his own.

Glock, for reasons beyond my comprehension, for some time now has been filing lawsuits against anyone with a non-firing training device that remotely looks like a Glock brand firearm. From Airsoft, to rubber guns.

This rash of lawsuits unfortunately doesn’t seem to have a bright side as Glock doubles down by clamping down on distribution of training aids by authorized dealers to civilians.

I think this is unethical, to produce firearms while also discouraging the production or distribution of inert training devices.

Being a professional end user of the Glock I was pretty frustrated at the current state of affairs with Glock training aids. Most of the options out there are frankenguns made to resemble Glocks, VP9s and M&Ps.

Fortunately I found that, for some reason, Blackhawk! was selling plastic guns they labeled as “demonstrator” guns. Sadly they did not have the Glock 19, but I settled for a Glock 17 for a rather cheap price of $25.00 compared to the price of a authorized blue gun.

This product is NOT weighted in any way. That’s probably the second biggest drawback. It is, however, a 1/1 scale replica of a Glock 17 and will fit in any Glock 17 holster.

Mine came with one noticeable blemish.

There are some seams from the manufacturing process that are a little rough. If they offer a snag hazard they can be filed down easily. The type of plastic they used is easily filed…

This is probably the biggest flaw of the gun. The rear sights were just one piece. I had to take a file and create a notch for myself. This may not bother some people but I felt really weird practicing draw strokes with out being able to gain even the vaguest sight picture.

I took a sharpie to the back piece because I felt like due to the light orange color the sights seemed to blend into each other.

The whole process of opening up the sights took 30-45 minutes of filing to get it to where I want.

Last thing to note is that because it is manufactured out of plastic and not rubber this gun is a little easier to mar or scratch.

Despite the flaws listed, Glock owners don’t have a lot of options when it comes to 1/1 replicas of their service or personal firearms. Until Glock decides to support it’s customers desire to train safely in any and all environments, this will continue to be an affordable and effective option.