Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun Read Online Free PDF

received the visitors from America with an awkward shyness. His English was slight. Walter was struck by how unsophisticated and provincial his host seemed. Glock smiled but even in German demonstrated little facility with small talk. Helga, his gracious wife, served coffee.
    Walter explained that he represented Steyr in the United States. Perhaps he could do the same for Glock.
    Glock responded tentatively. He had not given much thought to America.
    Walter, trying to stimulate conversation, asked his host to explain the mechanics of his pistol. Suddenly Glock grew more animated. The gun maker took apart a Glock 17, showing how its parts were housed in stand-alone subgroups: easy to remove and replace, without the skill of a trained armorer. There was no safety or decocking lever to confuse the user. The Glock 17 couldn’t fire if dropped or jarred, Glock said. Its “Safe Action” system required a user to depress a small device built right into the trigger—a “trigger safety.”
    Walter and Kokalis had never seen such a feature. They were impressed that the Glock 17 had so few components. Walter concluded after just twenty minutes that he could persuade American police departments to consider replacing theirrevolvers with the innovative Austrian pistol. “This is
kinderspiel
,” he thought, child’s play.
    “This pistol will sell,” Walter told Glock. “But it must be sold.” He meant, in a self-serving way, that the Glock 17 required a wizard marketer who could explain to the American law enforcement market and civilian retailers why a gun that looked so, well, strange deserved a chance.
    Gaston Glock seemed intrigued but also overwhelmed. He knew little about the United States and its tastes in guns. He was still building his new single-story factory on a compound adjacent to his home. (He had persuaded the town of Deutsch-Wagram to sell him the land for practically nothing, based on the prospect of his creating jobs and generating taxes.) He had hired about three dozen workers, many of them Turkish immigrants, but he lacked a business plan beyond the contract with the Austrian Ministry of Defense.
    The possibilities were extraordinary: The armies of Norway and Sweden had shown interest. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was considering adopting the Glock 17 as an approved sidearm for member countries. Elite presidential guard units from Syria, Jordan, and the Philippines were inquiring, as were antiterrorist squads in Austria, Germany, and Canada. Yet Glock seemed uncertain how to proceed, especially with finance and marketing.
    Walter had a suggestion: The entrepreneur should give Kokalis and
Soldier of Fortune
a scoop on publicizing the Glock 17 in the United States. Word of mouth would spread in gun circles. By the time Gaston Glock had expanded his manufacturing capacity, America would be hungry for the new pistol.
    Yes, Glock said, the plan made perfect sense. In a celebratorymood, he invited his guests to try firing his creation on the range in the cellar.
    Kokalis remained dubious. Five thousand miles was a long way to travel to shoot another nine-millimeter pistol. Then he lined up the Glock 17’s front sight between the U-shaped rear sights, and he pulled the trigger.

    PLASTIC PERFECTION , announced the headline in the October 1984 issue of
Soldier of Fortune
. The title alluded to Glock’s assertive marketing slogan: “Glock Perfection,” which came stamped on the company’s products, along with a logo of Gaston Glock’s design that highlighted an oversized sans serif “G.” The Glock pistol, Kokalis wrote, “represents an entirely new era in small arms technology.”
    “In our pop culture,” the article continued, “ ‘plastic’ has come to mean vacuous or devoid of substance. Yet plastic is a salient feature of the Glock design. Not only the frame, but the trigger and magazine as well are made of this material. The proof of the pudding, in this instance, is in the firing. And