Anibal Salinas of @Weapons_armament_research has cut a slot into his Glock grip and epoxied windows. With the use of an ETS transparent Glock magazine, he can see how many rounds are in the magazine without removing it or mentally keeping track of how many rounds he had loaded and fired.

I reached out to Anibal via email:

The Glock is still a work in progress, I should be done today with all the frame mods. The windows are epoxied and fused into place, i can squeeze the grip (without magazine) with all my strength and i cannot flex it anymore than i could stock. I plan to shoot it this weekend to put it through it’s paces but i doubt anything will happen.

Now many people will scratch their head and ask “why would you do this”? I like it. If the windows do not come loose and interfere with the function of the gun then it has practical applications. This is like a fuel gauge in your car. Do you need it? Not if you just remember how far your car can drive on a tank of gas, know how far you have driven and if worried top up. But not all of us do that do we? We are not all of the same mindset when it comes to having the same gun or using the same techniques. We are all individuals with our own unique desires and motivations.

I could see this being useful in competition. Most competitive shooters either count mentally or just say screw it, dump a partially loaded mag for a fresh one. Well here you know how many rounds are left. Also it looks cool. If nothing other than pure aesthetics it is neat to see into the gun. Sort of like why companies make cut away models of their guns.

Some will argue that the gas and gun carbon residue will coat the inside of the gun making the window obscured. Well going back to competitive shooters some of them religiously clean their gun after every match. Keep the gun clean and it won’t be an issue.

Just look at how many windowed PMAGs are out there in the world. Do they fail because there is a wndow? Does the window get dirty or somehow cause a malfunction more than a regular PMAG does? Not to my knowledge.

Kudos to Anibal for doing something different.