Gaston Glock, creator of gun that flooded the world, 94
Gaston Glock, an Austrian engineer who created the flatnosed, plastic-body handgun carried by military and police forces around the world, glorified in films and rap lyrics, and decried by gun-control advocates as one of the growing weapons of the streets, died Dec. 27 at 94.
The Glock company announced the death but gave no other details.
The popularity of the Glock semiautomatic made Mr. Glock a billionaire and added his name to the array of weapons known by their makers: Kalashnikov, Beretta, Colt, Uzi, and others. Mr. Glock’s path, however, may have been among the most improbable: a small-business tinkerer who once made door hinges and curtain rods.
He had not even held a gun since he was conscripted into Germany's military near the end of World War II. Then in 1980, he learned the Austrian military was seeking a new sidearm. Without any formal training in firearm design, he devised the first Glock model, the Glock 17, named for being his 17 th patent after inventions such as a variation on the collapsible shovel, according to the Glock company.
Mr. Glock gradually disappeared from the public eye, even as the 9mm handgun he crafted built a global presence.
He increasingly spent his time behind the walls of a lakeside estate in Velden Am Wörthersee in southern Austria. His company, meanwhile, adopted a strategy of aggressive dealmaking and promotion. The goal was to make selling points out of characteristics that were initially mocked, particularly the Glock's lightweight, polymer frame and blocky metal barrel.
Glock sponsored elaborate displays at trade shows and pitched stories to publications such as Soldier of Fortune, which ran a glowing piece in 1984 titled “Plastic Perfection” on the Glock 17. Mr. Glock already had the Austrian military contract and was supplying Norway’s armed forces and others. He wanted next to break into the US market, with its huge retail gun sales and thousands of law enforcement agencies.
The late 1980s worked to Mr. Glock’s advantage. Increasingly powerful drug gangs and other underworld groups left many police forces feeling outgunned and imperiled. Glock marketed its handgun as an answer.
Police departments across the United States were given Glocks to test on shooting ranges. Discounts were offered. Company envoys touted the weapon’s reliability in all kinds of weather. Unlike a six-shot revolver, the standard Glock had clips holding 17 rounds. (Later models expanded to 33.)
Police started calling the 9mm Glocks “wonder nines.” Glock set up a US plant in Smyrna, Ga., and departments began to line up. In 1988, the D.C. police suspended normal bidding procedures and rushed to purchase 4,300 Glocks for $1.3 million to replace its Smith & Wesson and Colt revolvers.
Over 65 percent of federal, state, and local agencies in the United States have Glock pistols, according to the company. The Glock is also used by police and military in nearly 50 countries.
“And this gun, when it first arrived in the US, was disparaged as ugly, as handgun Tupperware,” Paul M. Barrett, the author of “Glock: The Rise of America's Gun” (2012), said on NPR’s “Tell Me More.”
Barrett noted that Glock’s plan to court US police departments was deliberate. “That would give the gun credibility in the much larger, much more lucrative civilian market, where you can charge full price and get your full profit margin,” he said.
Yet the gun also represented the rise in firepower on America’s streets among gangs, drug networks, and others. The Glock was mentioned in rap songs for decades by artists such as WuTang Clan, Snoop Dogg, and Lil Wayne, helping give it a gangster mystique that drew concern from police forces even as they adopted the same handgun.
Congressional hearings were called over the Glock’s lighttouch trigger and rapid-fire capacity — issues raised by guncontrol groups after a Glock was used in the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech that claimed 32 lives.
Mr. Glock rarely gave interviews and declined to address outcry from gun-control advocates. All the while, the Glock increasingly found its way into popular culture in films such as “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” and “The Matrix Reloaded,” both from 2003. “Get yourself a Glock and lose that nickelplated sissy pistol,” actor Tommy Lee Jones said in the 1998 movie “U.S. Marshals.”
“The Glock . . . inherited all aspects of the American firearm heritage,” Barrett wrote in his book. “It was seen as an instrument of law and security, but also menace, danger and fear."
Gaston Glock was born July 19, 1929, in Vienna. His father worked on the Austrian railroad; his mother was a homemaker.
He studied mechanical engineering at a college in Vienna and later took jobs that included manager of a car-radiator factory. He and his first wife, Helga, opened a business in 1963 in their garage in Deutsch-Wagram outside Vienna, using a metal press to make consumer items such as curtain rods and brass fittings. They later won a contract to make knives for the Austrian Army. Through his military connections, Mr. Glock heard about Austria’s search in 1980 for a new service pistol.
After his divorce from Helga Glock in 2011, she began litigation to seek alimony and a greater share in the company. She was awarded alimony but lost her bid for other payments.
Mr. Glock had three children from that marriage: a daughter, Brigitte, and sons Gaston Jr. and Robert. In 2011, Mr. Glock married Kathrin Tschikof, his nurse after he had a stroke in 2008. Full information on survivors was not immediately available.