Walther has been around since 1886. Colt got its start in 1855. And Remington, the oldest firearms manufacturer in the United States, has made guns since 1816. Consider the history behind those brands, the way Glock broke into and essentially took over the handgun market is quite impressive.
It’s easy to forget that Glock has really only been manufacturing handguns since the early 80s. Despite that, the company has managed to capture about 65 percent of the market share when it comes to law enforcement agencies in the United States, and it’s also a popular choice among consumers and military agencies.
How did Glock do it? That all starts with the brand’s namesake, Gaston Glock, and a stroke of good fortune while he waited for a meeting.
Gaston Glock Hears About an Opportunity in the Handgun Market
Gaston Glock started his company with his wife in 1963. For over a decade, it focused on a variety of products fit for the battlefield, including polymer munitions belts and practice grenades, but no guns. After all, Gaston had never designed a gun before.
In 1980, Gaston had gone to the Austrian Ministry of Defense (AMD) headquarters to discuss selling them some of his products. Gaston always kept his ears open, and before his meeting, he heard a conversation about a request for a new handgun. At the time, the Austrians were still using Walther P38s that had been around since World War II. The two men were unhappy about how this request was going. Not only was it looking like they’d be waiting five years, but of the 17 “mandatory” features, gun manufacturers were saying they could fulfill about 70 percent of them.
Gaston told the men who he was and requested the opportunity to build a handgun for them, getting a less-than-enthusiastic response. Fortunately, he wasn’t easily deterred, and he managed to snag a spot on the bidders list for the AMD. For the next two years, Gaston would work on his first handgun.
Designing the First Glock
Gaston was 52 years old when he started designing his handgun. What he lacked in experience, he made up for in ingenuity and a resourceful attitude. He first bought all the current pistols he could to strip them, see their designs, and then reassemble them. He also hired consultants and set up groups to help him during the design process.
One thing Gaston had in spades was experience with polymer, and he had been in manufacturing for some time. That polymer experience proved instrumental in making a gun that would use the material quite a bit. Although Glock wasn’t the first to come out with a polymer pistol, it was among that first group of manufacturers who were making handguns primarily of polymer instead of steel.
The handgun was called the Glock 17, and it was a massive success by any measure. It took just one year to develop and had only 34 moving parts, with most handguns having anywhere from 45 to 60. It was lightweight, had a 17-round capacity and a 5-pound trigger pull, far less than the typical 12-pound handgun trigger pull. To top it off, the cost of building the gun was about $70.
The Glock 17 met all 17 of the requirements the AMD had, which made it eligible for the Austrian Army Trials of 1982. The trials weren’t even close, as the Glock 17 blew away the competition, leading to a contract for 25,000 guns. Glock wasn’t an overnight success, but it was close. And it wasn’t done growing, either. It wouldn’t be long before Gaston Glock’s gun was going across the Atlantic to the United States.
Savvy Marketing Makes Glocks Popular in the United States
Let’s jump to the mid-1980s, after Glock’s initial success in Austria. The drug trade is running rampant throughout the United States, with cocaine flowing in from Colombia and crack devastating the inner cities. This would be bad enough for law enforcement, but they’re also dealing with a crisis regarding their weapons of choice.
Most law enforcement officers carry revolvers, with the most common choice being Smith and Wesson’s .38. It’s a fantastic gun, but by this point in time, it’s outdated. It doesn’t have sufficient stopping power or capacity. That issue of law enforcement’s firepower can front and center after the 1986 shootout in Miami, when two bank robbers faced off against eight FBI agents. Both the robbers took multiple handgun rounds despite not being on any drugs. They would kill two agents and wound five others before being killed themselves.
Enter Gaston Glock with a handgun that carries 17 rounds instead of the six a revolver would have. Since it was primarily made of plastic instead of steel, it was much lighter and easier for officers to wear on their hips for shifts of eight hours or more, especially with the right holster. The lighter trigger pull helped them shoot more accurately.
To sweeten the pot for police departments, Glock would even offer significant discounts. This was a smart move on the manufacturer’s part, as becoming the sidearm of choice for law enforcement was big business.
Getting in with the police departments wasn’t the only way Glock built its brand in the States. It quickly became popular in TV and movies. 1990 saw the officers on “Law and Order” start carrying Glocks, and in “Die Hard 2,” John McClane describes a fictional “Glock 7” that can’t be detected by airport x-ray machines. It was completely made up, but it didn’t matter from a marketing perspective.
The Inevitable Backlash Occurs
It should come as no surprise that there was some backlash as Glocks became more popular. Just like they always do, the gun control advocates became hysterical about this new weapon that was supposedly much deadlier than any before it.
That misconception about the Glock being undetectable to airport x-ray machines was used against it by people who didn’t know any better. Tensions rose even more when 20 people were killed in a 1991 Texas shooting where the perpetrator had a Glock.
This led to the passing of the Assault Weapons Bill in 1994, which placed quite a few limitations on firearms, one of them being a ban on handgun magazines with capacities over 10 rounds, despite the evidence that magazine size doesn’t make much of a difference. Fortunately, that bill expired in 2004.
Once again, Glock was a step ahead. It had been manufacturing as many firearms and magazines as possible so that it would have plenty to sell before any bans kicked in, since any firearms and magazines already in a person’s possession were grandfathered in. With a stockpile of in-demand equipment, Glock made a substantial profit.
Now that Glock is an established name instead of a new upstart, it doesn’t get as much personal attention from the gun control crowd, except when it’s used in well-publicized incidents, such as the Munich shootings in 2016. That shooter bought his Glock on the dark web, an increasingly popular place to obtain weapons illegally on the internet.
How Glock Has Continued to Evolve
Glock has come a long way since the introduction of its Glock 17. There have been several variants on that classic design, including the smaller Glock 19 that allows for easier concealed carrying and the Glock 17L with a longer barrel for competitive shooting.
The brand is currently on its fourth generation of handguns, with each improving on the previous design. It continues to do well competing for law enforcement and military contracts, with the Glock 19M recently being chosen as the duty weapon for Marines in the Criminal Investigation Division, who are tasked with transporting the president.
All things considered, Gaston Glock hasn’t done bad with his first gun design.
