This is my carry gun, it hits the trifecta of concealability, reliability, and modability (yes, I’m making up words) where you can’t go wrong.
GLOCK first introduced the 43 in 2015. For a company that began and got to where it is by being the leader, they were way behind in entering the single stack game with the 380 GLOCK 42 in 2014. The 42 and 43 were enormous successes right out of the gate but with competition proving single stack guns with more ammo capacity something had to be done. Thus GLOCK introduced the 43X which provides a ten-round magazine as compared to the six-round magazine of the 43. This is accomplished by creating a longer grip to accommodate the larger magazine while keeping the side the same size. Then came the 43X MOS, as shown here. MOS stands for Modular Optic System, this allows a red dot sight to be added to the top of the slide for faster target accusation.
For many years my normal off-duty gun was my Walther PPS, a gun that by all intents and purposes copied GLOCK’s design. It concealed well, had several extended magazines, and was 100% reliable. I finally decided to make the change due to wanting to put a red dot on my off-duty weapon as well as liking the idea of having more holsters available to me.
Unfortunately for me, I made the decision to buy the 43X MOS about halfway through 2020. As I’m sure we all remember during the first two years of the pandemic people were freaking out and buying anything and everything like crazy. As such firearms were hard to come by and were overpriced when you did come across them. Luckily for me, a local gun shop had one in stock and refused to up the cost so I bought it immediately.
As soon as I got home I ordered the Trijicon RMRcc, Streamlight TLR-7Sub, and CHPWS plate. After placing the order for those goodies I completed a full detail strip, clean, and lubrication of the firearm. As I was doing my function test I found the trigger pull was harder than any other GLOCK I own and it was gritty. I inspected all the trigger components and nothing appeared out of place and everything was within spec. I then tested the trigger pull weight and found it to be a whopping 7lbs 12oz! This wasn’t going to do so and while I normally don’t like aftermarket triggers on protection guns I didn’t feel I had much of a choice. After a lot of research, I decided to go with the Johnny Glock combat trigger system. It’s all stock parts but they are polished, smoothed, and deburred while maintaining all of GLOCK’s standard safeties. When it came in it did come with multiple springs to help lower the trigger weight even more but I decided against that and ended up with an incredibly smooth trigger and a final pull weight of 4lbs 15oz. I know for most people this seems too high for an aftermarket trigger but it keeps GLOCK’s reliability and dropped the weight by a solid three pounds. That’s nothing to sneer at.
The only downside I had to the pistol at this point was the magazine capacity. While ten rounds of 9mm are nothing to scoff at other firearms of the same size were able to do better. I found a company called Shield Arms that made a 15-round, flush mounting (S15) magazine. I was interested, to say the least. Looking online I found some people that had nothing but problems with the magazines while most had zero issues. I was worried as rule number one of having a gun, is having a gun, a close number two is reliability. The gun does no good when you hear a click when you should have heard a bang. I decided it was worth testing them out so I purchased three of their generation two magazines. Since these are metal magazines as opposed to the polymer-covered GLOCK magazines the magazine catch had to be swapped out from the stock polymer one to Shield Arms’ metal one. I purchased their “Premium S15 steel mag catch”.
After everything was installed I first conducted several function tests at home and when those all worked I hit the range. This range session was a mixture of sighting in the RMRcc red dot as well as testing the reliability of the S15 magazines. After getting the RMRcc sighted in I did everything in my power to get the gun to fail. I limp wristed it, fired all 16 rounds as fast as possible, then shot slow, then used very old, cheap, steel-cased ammo, followed by hollow point +p ammo, and everything else in between. I’m happy to say that not only did I vastly increase the magazine capacity but I never had a single issue. It was 100% reliable with everything I fed into it and everything I did to try to force it to fail. I believe the issue with the S15 magazines is a manufacturing issue. That would explain why some people have nothing but problems while the vast majority have zero.
All my duty and off-duty weapons are loaded with Federal Premium HST +p ammo. For 9mm I prefer the 124 gain weight. I’ve had excellent success with the round and they have a long history of large and constant expansion. I carry my ammo for a year, then shoot it to make sure the magazines and gun still like it and replace it with newly purchased ammo. No reason to have a solid gun but then not take care of your ammo needs properly.
Finally, I was happy with the firearm setup. I now needed a quality holster to carry it in. My Walther PPS was carried in a Comp-Tac MTAC hybrid holster and I LOVED it! Sadly for me, Comp-Tac doesn’t make their holsters for firearms with weapon lights attached. After a search I found Falco Holsters, they make custom holsters for anything you need and at excellent prices. I placed an order for both an IWB hybrid holster as well as an OWB pancake-style holster. Both were quickly made and shipped out to me and the quality is second to none. Since the main failure point in semi-automatic firearms is the magazine I wanted to have a second one on me. I ordered a single magazine pouch from Comp-Tac and now I carry a spare magazine and my GLOCK 43X MOS on me every single day and I couldn’t be happier.
Stay safe, be kind, and help those in need.