Glocks in 9mm are good guns.

S&W M&P's in all the calibers are pretty good guns too.

Glock Pros:

* Relatively cheap
* Tons of parts out there for them
* Easy to replace the crappy factory sights with good sights like Warren Tactical sights
* Plentiful supply of relatively inexpensive high-capacity magazines

Glock cons:

* The ergonomics of the Glock aren't ideal for everybody but there's not a lot you can do about it.
* Glock is backordered by some insane number of units right now so they might be hard to find on gunstore shelves
* Non 9mm Glocks tend to have a lot more issues than the 9mm versions
* Nobody makes a truly good laser system for the Glock yet
* Crappy factory sights
* You have to pull the trigger to take it apart...which has lead to a lot of people having ND's due to lack of attention to proper safety procedures

M&P Pros:

* Adjustable grip makes it fit lots of people better than the Glock
* Does not require a trigger pull to disassemble
* Can be had with a manual safety...there are certain drawbacks to a weapon with a 5-6 pound trigger and no manual safety that this helps limit
* Tend to be very accurate, especially for a polymer framed handgun
* Interchangeable grip allows the best integration of a laser unit yet seen on a handgun

M&P Cons:

* MUST use snapcaps when dryfiring
* Magazines are more expensive than Glock mags and can be hard to come by at times
* MUST use the proper sight tool to replace sights
* A bit more complicated than Glocks
* The trigger reset on M&P's is extremely weak without a Massachusets trigger bar and trigger spring. (Most M&P's do not have those parts)

The Glocks most similar to the M&P's you've fired would be the G17, G19, and G26. The G17 is slightly larger than a full-sized M&P. The Glock 19 is slightly smaller than the full sized M&P, slightly larger than the M&P 9C. The Glock 26 is smaller than the M&P 9C.

You should absolutely shoot both, preferably side by side to see which works best for you. When someone asks about a first handgun my default answer is a Glock 19. They are concealable, capable, reliable, and easy to use. Weapons with a consistent trigger pull from shot to shot are often better for individuals who are new and/or do not have sufficient time and resources to train to master the DA/SA transition.

How do the M&P's compare to the Glocks? That's subjective. There are a number of police agencies who replaced Glocks with M&P's and are extremely happy with them. As a whole the LE agencies I know of that adopted the M&P have very positive things to say about the weapon. Glocks in 9mm are also very good handguns by any standard and a number of departments who issue them are very happy with them as well. Both platforms can be considered duty quality weapons.

You should pick the platform that you shoot the best and that makes the most sense for you.

Yowsers.....for such a young dude you know exactly the right questions to ask! Congrats.

I own 4 M&P's (including the FS 9 and the 9C) and 3 Glocks (including the G17, G19, and G26) at the moment. I have more M&P's on order, specifically two of the special edition PistolTraining.com M&P 9mm's that you can find out more about here:

http://pistol-training.com/



Personally I prefer the M&P because I suffer from Glock slide bite and because in general I find that I shoot the M&P better than the Glock. I can shoot both well, but the M&P is more effortless for me than the Glock. Feel is a subjective thing, but the M&P handles recoil better than the Glock does, at least in my hands. The front sight settles back into the notch more easily than the Glock. With FMJ target ammo you don't feel the difference in the recoil impulse as much, but once you transition to duty quality ammo like +P hollowpoints you notice that the M&P has a more controllable recoil. (Talking about the full sized, here...)



Correct. The M&P's come with Novak sights standard. Personally I don't like the Novaks because it makes one handed manipulations more difficult. I replaced all my M&P sights with sights from Warren Tactical. The Warren 2 dot and 3 dot night sights are, in my opinion, the best sights on the market. Glocks come standard with crappy polymer sights that suck. I've seen them come off of the weapons in training several times. If you get night sights from the factory with Glocks you're getting quality steel sights. Personally I'm not a fan of the standard 3 dot night sight setup, though. Still, it is a vast improvement over the factory slot fillers.

The nice thing about Glocks is that it's very easy to replace the awful plastic factory sights with decent aftermarkets like Heinies, Warrens, or even Novaks. It's much more difficult to replace M&P sights because they are installed by a hydraulic ram that essentially crush fits them into the dovetails of the slide. To replace them you need the special MGW M&P sight tool. Because I own so many M&P's (and I'm buying more) I invested in the sight tool and it's been a god-send for me.

The trigger depends on the individual specimen. All the ones I've handled lately have pretty decent triggers before any breakin.



Mag disconnects can be installed in M&P's, but the majority of them on the market do not have mag safeties. It's easy to see which have the mag safeties and which do not, as the models without mag safeties have a warning label on the slide indicating that they will fire without a magazine in the weapon.



True...just like the AR.

...and like the AR, a lot of the aftermarket parts for the Glock are a bad idea.

Weapons with a 5-6 pound trigger and no manual safety are very sensitive to trigger finger issues. Unfortunately lots of people have trigger finger issues.

You also need to consider gear. A lot of AD's have happened because people had various bits of gear (flashlight lanyards, holster thumbsnaps, drawstrings on jackets, etc...) get inside the trigger guard of a striker fired weapon (like a Glock or an M&P) while reholstering.

When you have such a weapon it's critical that you:

1. Ingrain proper safety procedures into your subconscious through deliberate practice and perfect repetition
2. Make equipment selections that minimize the chances of something getting inside the trigger guard (Not using jackets with drawstrings, etc...)

Here's a couple of writeups I've done that might be useful:

Learning to live with the Glock

Fighting in low light: The Essentials