Glock 43: Submerged, Frozen, Never Cleaned, Goes BOOM Every Time

On July 2 Breitbart News reported that we made sure our Glock 43 was unloaded, then submerged it, froze it into a solid block of ice, let it thaw, and repeated the whole process until the gun had been frozen four times. The fourth time–while still in a block of ice–we tied the single stack 9mm to the back of a Jeep and dragged it down the road until the sights were seared off and the gun’s finish and polymer frame was chipped, scraped, and scarred.

Then we put in a round, racked the slide, pulled the trigger, and BOOM, the gun fired. We dropped the magazine, added one more round, racked the slide, and…BOOM went the Glock 43 once more. We replaced the destroyed sights with AmeriGlo Night Sights, then continued to fire the gun, firing it 105 times in all. Throughout those 105 rounds, we had just two misfeeds–the magazine and mag well were caked with mud and gunk from having been dragged behind the Jeep–and only two failure to fire incidents beyond that occured.

It is important to note that the two failure to fire incidents were early in the 105 rounds, and we believed they were caused by the gunk between the slide and frame that was so thick we could literally hear a gritty sound every time we racked the slide.

Fast forward to August 31 and September 1, and we took the Glock 43 out and shot a few hundred rounds of various types of ammunition. We shot some of the rounds at an indoor range and some of the rounds outdoors.

The gun still had not been cleaned, and we continued to use the same magazine that we froze with the gun those four times in June–the same magazine that was in the gun when we dragged it down the road.

The result? We fired 350 rounds without one hiccup. To be fair, we thought we were going to have a hiccup on the second box of ammunition when we had one hard trigger pull–but even then the gun fired and continued to do so for the remaining 250 rounds with zero hiccups, misfeeds, or malfunctions.

The Glock 43 still has not been cleaned, and the 3-month-old gun looks like it’s 30-years-old. We will be upping the ante on the torture of the pistol in the coming months to see just how much a Glock 43 can take before it breaks.

Right now, the uncleaned Glock 43 we’ve been testing is this author’s concealed carry gun and will continue to be until it gives me a reason to believe my life cannot be trusted to it.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.