“The [UK] Ministry of Defence has signed a £9m contract to provide the Armed Forces with more than 25,000 new side-arms and holsters from Austria’s Glock,” bbc.co.uk reports. “It will replace the Browning 9mm pistol which has been in service since 1967. The Glock 17 9mm pistol is lighter than the Browning and can be fired faster, within a second or so.” Yes, well, THERE’S NO EXTERNAL SAFETY. Imagine that. “Colonel Peter Warden, from the MoD team introducing the new weapon, says that after well over four decades in service, the pistol from US manufacturer Browning was no longer the ideal weapon and had become increasingly expensive to maintain. ‘We began to lose a little bit of confidence in its reliability. So we trialled seven different weapons, and got down to the Glock as the best of the bunch.'” Look for the MOD’s weapons selection to stimulate UK civilian sales. Oh wait.