And with that, thousands of new flame wars were launched

[TheArmsman]

I carried a G17 with a flashlight above my mags on my plate carrier. No problem with space or drawing.

One thing carrying like that, is that trigger discipline is highly important. Every time you drawer or holster, you are muzzling the people to the right or left or you, depending on which you shoot with.

Worked very well while in vehicles. Hip holsters were very hard to draw from, due to the tightness of the seats and seat belts. Thigh holsters sucked big donkey dicks. If it was on the side of the leg, door got in the way. If you moved it to the top of the thigh, had to contort to get it out, time which one we did not have. And if you had to drive, the limited space was at a premium.

[Weetabix]

Seems to me that with a tendency to grip too high, they're not getting enough leverage on the grip safety, so it doesn't disengage. While that could be a training problem, it might be a tricky one to fix, since a lot of pistol training emphasizes getting as high of a grip as possible.

Not really. I have a very high grip, and it's never been a problem for me. It's only a problem when it's combined with the loose grip (that also causes stovepipes). If you get a good grip, the grip will always press the grip safety, because you wont be able to grip around the beavertail no matter how high the grip is. The grip will automatically be around the grip safety.

I've seen shooters in competition pull the gun from the holster using only their fingers, and they dont get a proper grip until the first shot "sets" the gun in the hand. While this is arguably fast it might not press the grip safety enough to disengage it, and it also often causes them to miss the first shot due to the poor grip. Hence why some of them pin the grip safety, so the gun will fire regardless of the grip. Personally I think it's a poor solution, if you dont have a proper grip you wont be able to shoot with any accuracy anyway, but that's the thinking.
Another problem I've seen caused by poor grip is shooters that engage the thumb safety or even press the magazine release when the gun recoils.

I imagine that if the soldiers use gloves it could make this problem worse since they would have less of a feel, which might cause them to not grip the gun hard enough. But I still think it's a training issue and not a gun design issue. You wont be able to shoot any gun very well with a poor grip. For instance if you grab a Glock with a too high and loose grip the slide could hit your hand or the accuracy would be awful.

A lot of that is how I imagined it would work, but I didn't have enough confidence in my speculation to say it out loud.

[toad]

[Old Grafton]

I carry what I want. Why not service personnel doing the same (within the limits of spares/ammo/training commonality)? Hell, at pistol-fighting distances in a combat zone a gladius might also come in damn handy.

[Jericho941]

I carry what I want. Why not service personnel doing the same (within the limits of spares/ammo/training commonality)? Hell, at pistol-fighting distances in a combat zone a gladius might also come in damn handy.

Because outside of cutlery, the military will not trust you with anything they have not directly issued and trained you with. The days of a personally-owned sidearm are long past for anyone but the most operational operators operating operationally.

Remember, it's a government organization. Which means that if it can have an idiotic, bureaucratic process attached to it, it will.

[JAG2955]

Remember, it's a government organization. Which means that if it can have an idiotic, bureaucratic process attached to it, it will.

Jericho's law?

I like it.

[Aesop]

I carry what I want. Why not service personnel doing the same (within the limits of spares/ammo/training commonality)? Hell, at pistol-fighting distances in a combat zone a gladius might also come in damn handy.

Because outside of cutlery, the military will not trust you with anything they have not directly issued and trained you with. The days of a personally-owned sidearm are long past for anyone but the most operational operators operating operationally.

Remember, it's a government organization. Which means that if it can have an idiotic, bureaucratic process attached to it, it will.

Damn right.

Remember too that unless you breed cattle adjacent to a nuclear plant, the closest thing you'll ever see to tits on a bull is a military pistol, since back to when gunpowder first became a thing.
What they buy or use has far more to do with whose state and district it will be procured from, and/or who greased their campaign fund the hardest, than it ever does with any paltry concerns like utility, reliability, accuracy, or effectiveness.

[MarkD]

I carry what I want. Why not service personnel doing the same (within the limits of spares/ammo/training commonality)? Hell, at pistol-fighting distances in a combat zone a gladius might also come in damn handy.

Because outside of cutlery, the military will not trust you with anything they have not directly issued and trained you with. The days of a personally-owned sidearm are long past for anyone but the most operational operators operating operationally.

Remember, it's a government organization. Which means that if it can have an idiotic, bureaucratic process attached to it, it will.

On top of which:

1) When your pistol goes tits-up in asscrackistan, it would be nice if parts to repair it were in the same time zone. Or hemisphere.

2) It would be nice if the guy whose pistol just went tits-up could pick yours up off your corpse and try to keep himself alive, and if he knew how to work it as well as his own.

3) It's also nice to be able to make two or three non-functioning weapons into one functioning weapon, which (the memorable scene in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly notwithstanding) only happens if all the weapons are more-or-less the same.

A Seal team can each carry whatever they want, and they can carry spare parts in a couple shoeboxes. An infantry division needs a 40' container for spare pistol parts even if they're all carrying the same pistol.

[Jericho941]

All of those concerns are much bigger issues for primary weapons than sidearms, which still aren't commonly issued to begin with. It's primarily a version of #2 that's the issue: Control.

For the most part, weapons are considered a liability. Any variable is to be eliminated wherever possible. This means knowing about all the guns and ammo that are issued, and making sure that everyone who handles them has been through a directly-related training course to prove they're probably not going to come down with a case of Glock Leg or play the Trust Game. And that nobody decides that it's his day to die and starts shooting people with a stolen weapon.

Now, to some degree this is handled a little more loosely with the combat troops than the rear echelon guys. On the infantry side of things, my brother told me that they really didn't care too much about bullet count or whatnot. On the POG side of things, a missing bullet is an Article 15, because Haji has telekinetic powers and can fire loose 5.56 with sheer hatred of Mom and apple pie.

[Netpackrat]

A Seal team can each carry whatever they want, and they can carry spare parts in a couple shoeboxes. An infantry division needs a 40' container for spare pistol parts even if they're all carrying the same pistol.

As one with some amount of experience with 40' containers, I strongly suspect that the entire US military's total inventory of service pistols could fit into one 40' container, with room to spare.