One thing that has plagued me and plenty of others with the Glock brand of pistols is the slide stop placement. The guns just don’t lock back on the last round for me all the time. For some people, they never lock back on the last round. I’ve had plenty of shooters, albeit none with much training, tell me I need to change my grip and that will solve the problem. And that is true, I could alter my grip to a less optimal one for shooting but more optimized for getting lock back. I suppose if I wanted to compromise my ability to get first second and third round hits in order to perform a reload better 17 rounds later I could do that. Those people apparently don’t really understand the concept of “most likely to least likely”. That is if I did find myself in a situation that I needed to employ deadly force are the first few hits more important or that sweet IG video like sub second reload more necessary? Obviously the former is better so maybe my grip is fine.

I’ve always worked around it and never really considered it a problem as if I don’t get lock back, I’d get a click and tap/rack, then it’s locked back so it’s reload time. Or, if able to recognize that I’d been on the gun for more than a few shots a “click” means that mag gets dumped immediately and a new one goes in. A quick overhand rack and we’re back in business.

Neither are perfect but there is really no other solution, or is there?

Enter the Kagwerks extended slide release. When I first saw this I thought “neat, maybe one day i’ll check it out” and thought no more about it. That is until I saw all the hate it was getting from internet operators. Everything from “a solution looking for a problem” to “it’s a slide stop not a slide release” , and my favorite “shearing forces could cause that to break”. These claims seemed unfounded at face value and it appeared no one making them had any time with the product.

So I reached out to the company and they were happy to send one out for review. I needed to see what the hate was about.

Spoiler alert: I have no idea what the hate is about. I love this thing.

It is installed easily, like any other slide stop but the company recommends a gunsmith do it. One can only assume this is for liability reasons.

I had no fitment issues with any holsters I have, so that was nice. After some dry practice it was off to the range. Long story short, it works as advertised. I had zero failures to lock back. One benefit I noticed that I hadn’t thought of is it puts the release back just enough that it’s a tad more intuitive to hit. There was very little learning curve and I don’t recall ever “missing” on a mag change. I did, however, inadvertently lock the slide back a few times during administrative racking. This gave me cause for concern so I spent a good portion of my next training session on malfunction clearances. The “problem” didn’t manifest itself at real speed in real time once. Despite operating the slide several different ways this only time I unintentionally locked the slide back was during administrative tasks that arguably I should have done anyway or should have done at full speed for positive reps. Personally I’m chalking this up to a nonissue, but your mileage may vary.

Overall the Kagwerks extend slide release gets a huge two thumbs up from me and I just can’t wait for the gen 5 version to come out as I’d like it on both of my carry guns for commonality.

Do you need this? Well, probably not. For the casual plinker or ccw’r its likely to never be a problem if you don’t have this, unless it is. A buddy of mine who is a patrol cop, who trains regularly and shoots competition told me after using one for a while “I like the concept it’s just not worth the thousands of reps to retrain myself on something radically different to maybe shave 1/10 off my reload” he also went on to say he fails to get lock back only about 10% of the time and uses his support hand to release the slide. I use my primary hand thumb to release the slide and saw very little learning curve so there could be something there.

I suppose if the gun always locks back for you it’s not for you either, got it. But, if you do experience failures to lock back from your Glock, I would encourage you to take a good look at this product. I also would really like to see a g42/43 version as the problem is much more common for me in the single stack glocks.