I picked up the new little Glock 43 blaster last month from my good friends at GT Distributors. After 1,000 rounds here is my review; it is a Glock.
I could stop here, but that wouldn’t be enough for some people so I will try to give you my thoughts on how I see this new model fitting into the grand scheme of things over the next couple of blogs.
Gateway to the future
Honestly, I think it is a great gateway gun for new gun owners and a good backup gun for those who want to carry two guns and here is why. The first time gun buyer will benefit from this pistol in many ways. While I much prefer the larger size pistols, the bigger pistols can intimidate some who don’t have a good grasp on duty pistol characteristics. The smaller and lighter frame will make a lot of people happy. While I find the smaller frame to be more difficult to shoot compared to the Glock 26 it works for some. I only had access to two people who really had not shot guns before and both liked the size in their hands. Albeit, they did not get a chance to shoot it, the feel felt great they said.
Mind the multiple threats
I find the capacity to be severely lacking to be considered a serious duty pistol, one that you carry on an everyday basis, but the capacity doesn’t seem to worry some. With the likelihood of facing multiple threats more and more a reality, 7 shots is severely lacking. Since we have no baseline for how many rounds is necessary to neutralize a threat we generally go with average shots fired. They vary of course, but 3-5 rounds per threat is a good place to start. On top of that, in theory I could fire the whole magazine on a single target in a matter of seconds without giving it any thought. I did some magazine dumps out of curiosity and was surprised during some threat neutralization drills that call for random shots to be fired on a single threat. I generally ended up with 1 round left before my governor kicked in and that didn’t leave me with a good feeling.
Low profile backup
As I mentioned I think it will make a good backup gun. Those that are looking to carry a spare pistol will probably like the size. Since I carry two pistols occasionally I find it severely undermines my ability to really conceal the pistols. Just because you cover them, doesn’t mean you conceal them. This pistol allows me to maintain true “low profile” signature. I would carry my primary IWB and then move the G43 to my weak side appendix. It wasn’t a bad setup, but need to work on the holster setup down the road. It was enough to give me good insight to how it would preform in the backup role. I liked the fact it was a 9mm platform, but still have a hard time knowing that I cannot feed any of my duty magazines through it. I am sure I will get over that with time and I have to remind myself this is a backup and not my primary.
I really like the new blaster, it shoots like you would expect any Glock. It’s reliable like any Glock and as far as accuracy is concerned well you guessed it, just like any Glock. I see this pistol doing well besides the fact I think it is 5 years too late and one round short.
