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By Kyle Mizokami,The National Interest
Glock’s most powerful—and compact—handgun is a mix of old and new technology. The Glock 30 subcompact handgun merges the .45 ACP round, a product of the Industrial Revolution, with modern handgun technology. The result is a highly concealable firearm that, once drawn, has few equals.
The .45 Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP) round was developed by prolific arms inventor John Moses Browning. The U.S. Army’s experience with the .38 Long Colt round during the Philippine Insurrection left it wanting a more powerful round able to neutralize with fewer shots. Combat against Filipino insurgents, at times hand to hand, divided combatants into two categories: the quick and the dead. A single .38 Long Colt gunshot wound was often not enough to drop an insurgent before he landed a fatal chop with an edged weapon.
In response, John Browning developed the larger, heavier .45 ACP round. The .38 Long Colt round typically transferred 180 foot-pounds of energy on target. The .45 ACP round, on the other hand, easily transferred twice as much energy. Paired with the M1911 series semi-automatic pistol, also a Browning design, .45 ACP was the dominant handgun caliber of the U.S. military for more than sixty years.
The Glock handgun, designed by Austrian knifemaker Gaston Glock, was a revolutionary, striker-fired handgun that featured a combination of high-capacity magazines, reliability, and simplicity of design. Invented to fulfill an Austrian Army contract for a new service handgun, the original full size, 9-millimeter Glock 17 was a worldwide hit.
After the successful rollout of the Glock 17, the company gradually expanded its lineup into other calibers and handgun types, particularly compact and subcompacts. The ecosystem grew to include everything from long slide 9-millimeter pistols to subcompact 10-millimeter handguns. As a result, it was inevitable that Glock would eventually release a subcompact .45 ACP, the Glock 30.
