Posted on 12/28/2023 8:22:26 AM PST by algore
The Glock handgun's reclusive billionaire inventor, Gaston Glock, who 'revolutionised the world of small arms', has died aged 94.
The Glock company said in a statement that the life's work of its founder would 'continue in his spirit'.
As well as being utilised by security personnel, armed forces, gun owners and criminals worldwide, the weapon has also become an American pop culture staple, featuring in several Hollywood blockbusters.
Despite his success, Glock, who once knocked out a professional wrestler hired to assassinate him, has been portrayed as a reclusive character who enjoyed spending much of his time at an Austrian lakefront estate.
He managed to avoid media coverage for most of his life, but gained attention in 2012 when a book about his business was published
Charles Ewert, who managed Glock's affairs in Luxembourg, attempted to have him killed in the late '90s.
The hired attacker, who was a professional wrestler, hit him seven times on the head with a rubber mallet but Glock, who was 70 at the time, managed to knock him out.
Ewert - also known as Panama Charly - was sentenced to 20 years in jail for having organised the attempted murder in a Luxembourg car park.
'Gaston Glock charted the strategic direction of the Glock Group throughout his life and prepared it for the future,' the company said.
It also noted that he had 'revolutionised the world of small arms' and 'succeeded in establishing the Glock brand as the global leader in the handgun industry'.
Glock was born in 1929 and went on to study mechanical engineering in Vienna.
He devised the Glock, a firearm that revolutionised the field: made largely of non-metal components, lighter, easier to take apart, more reliable, and able to carry more bullets than other brands.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
That’s a stretch.
Yep. I have a few of those myself.
RIP Mr. Glock.
I once saw Gaston Glock kill 3 men. With a pencil.
The wrestler made his first mistake when he killed Glock’s puppy.
Small children inadequately supervised by gun owner parents and idiots who ignored the first rule of gun safety by pointing a gun at someone else. Not Glock’s fault some people are too stupid to handle a gun.
"Perfection"
(Second wife got him interested in horses, is my understanding.)
Fun fact. Despite what many think, the trigger safety was not a Glock invention. It was patented in the late 1800’s by Iver Johnson.
For a very interesting read, grab a copy of Glock, The Rise of America’s Gun. by Ron Barrett
And when he married her, Gaston stiffed his ex-wife and kids. He was a good inventor, but a questionable human being.
CC
Just keep the Glock chambered inside a holster all the time. I prefer that to manual safety that I’ve seen get screwed up way too many times in high stress.Just be super careful on with any striker fire when reholstering.
"Striker contol device", Langdon Tactical version. (I have one of the original Tau Development Group SCDs.)
The Sig P365 is one of the top sellers now and has an even lighter trigger without the trigger safety.
I've been carrying and shooting DA revolvers enough lately that almost any autoloader trigger seems scary light to me.
Hardly anyone is making new hammer fired pistols, especially for CCW. Glock made those obsolete over time.
You do see some. Perfect for the AIWB cool kids.
That is such a fudd statement.
CC
I have several. They’re accurate and they go bang with great reliability. I keep them away from my lab pup.
I have a 1911, and carry it when its cooler outside and I’m wearing a long, untucked, shirt or a jacket of some kind, IWB. Otherwise, I carry a Smith J-Frame in my pocket.
However, I’m thinking of getting a Glock 21, simply because I love the .45 ACP, and it has a 13-round mag. Carrying 2 spare mags, plus the one in the gun and one in the pipe, I’ll have 40 rounds...and if I can’t get out of trouble with 40 rounds of .45, then it just isn’t my day. Beats the Hell out of 25 rounds when similarly outfitted with my 1911. But I’m never going to sell the 1911, either...
...nor allow my dogs near the noisy tupperware.
But what IJ introduced is not a safety, either. It's a transfer bar, so it's drop-safe, but pull the trigger and the gun fires. Of course in the case of the IJ it's a revolver, with a long, heavy DA trigger pull. Something no normal 4-year-old would have the strength to manage.
A striker pistol with nothing but that silly lever inside the trigger can be and too often is fired by sloppy re-holstering, or in one case I've read about the drawstring on the guy's jacket snagged it when he sat down.
Did I not read about the "New York" version where they had to install a special the trigger spring to give the gun a 12 pound pull, to protect cops from unintended discharges?
No, the Glock is an inherently dangerous design, which has handed the hoplophobes more ammunition for their drive to eliminate the Second Amendment.
Not true. The Iver Johnson does not use a transfer bar. The transfer bar was a Ruger innovation. The early Iver Johnson’s actually had a 2 part trigger that was a trigger safety.
Iver Johnson “Hammer the Hammer”. Look it up.
Hopkins and Allen also had an interesting design which blocked the hammer until the trigger was pulled all the way. I think my catalog is about 1905.
Ruger certainly did NOT invent the transfer bar.
I carried a Glock 17 for nine years as a LEO. The most dependable service pistol ever made. PS. I went to a fatal shooting once where a security guard was armed with a Beretta 92, which had all the features that you worship. According to witnesses, he drew his pistol in time but squeezed the pistol so hard that the mag dropped out. That mag disconnect safety feature cost him his life.
“White supremacist Dylann Roof used a Glock pistol to kill nine African-American people during a Bible study session at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015.”
The author seems to suggest that Gaston Glock was responsible for the shooting by Dylan Roof and probably everyone ever shot with a Glock. Wait till he finds out how many people John Moses Browning and Sam Colt “killed”.
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