Glock Rear Sight Rail

Strike Industries is developing a rear sight rail for Glock pistols so you can add a red dot or other optic to your Austrianhandgun without having to do any machine work on your pistol’s slide.

Right now, Strike Industries has not published a lot of information on the rail, but it would appear to be a short Picatinny rail that mounts to the Glock by use of the normal rear sight dovetail.  This should mean that a shooter could merely tap out the factory sight and install this rail.  He or she could then drop the optic of choice onto the rail.

There have been several firearms trainers who have experimented with adding a reflex-type sight to the top of a handgun.  I think I first saw Dave Spaulding write about this nearly 10 years ago when he was surveying the effectiveness of different sighting systems.

More recently, I have seen Gabe Suarez really push the concept of a reflex sight on your handgun.  In fact, One Source Tactical, a Suarez company, offers several services where they will modify your pistol’s slide and mount a Trijicon RMR to it.  They currently offer the service for Glock, Smith & Wesson M&P and SIG Sauer P220/P226 pistols. However, compared to the Strike Industries rail, this is a much more expensive option.

I think that a reflex-style sight on a pistol would enhance accuracy in combat shooting situations.  They are very easy to use, fast to acquire and reasonably accurate.  Having a Glock rear sight rail that would allow you to easily add an optic could be a real windfall.  Two concerns do come to my mind, though.

The first is carry.  Some holsters and carry styles my not work when you attach an optic on top of your slide.  While the optics are ruggedized, I doubt any of them are as bulletproof as a plain steel sight.  The Glock sight rail is likely to bump up the height of the optic a little more than if the optic was attached directly to the slide.  So, there is a greater chance of banging it off of things.

The second concern I have is the influence the added optics will have with slide velocity and therefore, reliability.  I know that the Suarez crew has done a lot of shooting and testing of the sights they are mounting to pistols, so I have an expectation that those will run reliably.

Dropping a rail onto the top of the slide and mounting any number of different optics to it will undoubtably have varying affects on how the pistol runs.  All of the combinations are likely to be heavier, not lighter, than the factory rear sight.  So, how will the heavier weight, and presumably slower slide velocity, impact the gun’s functioning?

Like with all modifications, I would strongly suggest testing the Glock rear sight rail and chosen optic with a lot of ammo and live fire before relying on it to save your life.