Glock: The Rise of America's Gun Paperback – Paul Barrett

[Saluki]

This is a very easy and worthwhile read about the Glock pistol and how it went from zero to the number one handgun in the US in a few years, dominating police contracts and outcompeting rival like Smith and Wesson, Beretta and Sig Sauer who were larger and had been around for a lot longer. 

 

Glock was an engineer in a radiator factory who had a side gig making curtain rods, hinges, and knobs in his small machine shop on an old Russian metal stamping machine.  He heard about a contract for the Austrian military and thought he would have a good chance of winning it because all the companies bidding for it were foreign. So he took out books from the library to learn how guns worked and started with a clean sheet of paper.  He designed a gun with much fewer parts, and therefore had fewer things that would break, that was easier to make and cheaper.  After getting that contract he set his sights on the US market at the perfect time when police wanted to move away from 6 shot revolvers to pistols with higher capacity magazines.

 

With a US headquarters in Atlanta, near one of the largest strip clubs in the US, they would fly in police chiefs and give them strippers, booze, and envelopes of cash, they soon took over the police market. Along the way you'll learn about the tax cheating, the US executive who had jailed (and who may have been framed), and the shady Luxembourg fixer named "Panama Charlie" who hired an incompetent hitman to try to carry out the dumbest planned hit in history. There's also stuff in there about his friendship with Jorg Haider, the Austrian neo-fascist politician.  

 

I listened to it on Audiobook as part of my research into S&W, but it's a fascinating story even if you have no interest in this type of stuff. 

[rkbabang]

Thanks for the recommendation.  My first handgun was a Glock 26 and I always loved them for their ease of use, simplicity, ease of maintenance  and durability.  Search for "Glock torture test".  There are people who try to kill their Glock pistols and can't get it to not work.  Here's one where they freeze it, bury it, run it over, drop it out of a helicopter, and blow it up with explosives. 

 

 

[NnnnotSoSmart]

Love my Glock(s).  I'll get the book.  Thanks for the point out.

[rkbabang]

RIP Gaston Glock (94 years old).  He was a legend and a great inventor.  BTW, I did read this book a few months ago on your recommendation and enjoyed it.  
 

https://nypost.com/2023/12/28/business/gaston-glock-of-the-pistol-that-bears-his-name-dies-at-94/