Thought some of you might find this interesting. Especially Haz as the author uses clips and magazines in the same context in the same article.
How Glock Became America's Gun
If you have a Glock, you need to read this. If you don't have a Glock, you need to read this.
America's Gun
By Paul M. Barrett
How Austria's Glock became the weapon of choice for U.S. cops, Second
Amendment enthusiasts, and psychopaths
For all the anguish and outcry in the days after a community college dropout
named Jared Loughner allegedly sprayed a Tucson crowd with 33 bullets from a
semiautomatic pistol, one response was notably absent:
any sense that America's latest shooting spree, which killed six people and
wounded 14, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, would bring new
restrictions on the right to own or carry large-capacity, rapid-fire
weapons.
The gun control debate has vanished from American politics, but it wasn't
always so invisible. Twenty years ago, when another apparently deranged man
fired a semiautomatic pistol into a crowd, killing 23 people in Killeen,
Tex., politicians rushed the microphones to denounce the weapon itself as "a
death machine," as Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, put
it on the floor of the House. A so-called assault weapons ban became law
three years later.
That law has now expired. Since Loughner's attack, liberal pundits, gun
control advocates, and congressional backbenchers have been talking about
instituting new controls. The voices that count, however, including
President Barack Obama and the congressional leaders in both parties, have
had nothing to say on the subject.
Their silence is just one measure of how thoroughly Gaston Glock-a former
curtain-rod maker from Austria whose company manufactured the pistols used
in Tucson and Killeen -has managed to dominate not just the American handgun
market, but America's gun consciousness. Before Glock arrived on the scene
in the mid-1980s, the U.S. was a revolver culture, a place where most
handguns fired five or six shots at a measured pace, then needed to be
reloaded one bullet at a time. With its large ammunition capacity, quick
reloading, light trigger pull, and utter reliability, the Glock was hugely
innovative-and an instant hit with police and civilians alike. Headquartered
in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria, the company says it now commands 65 percent of
the American law enforcement market, including the FBI and Drug Enforcement
Administration. It also controls a healthy share of the overall $1 billion
U.S. handgun market, according to analysis of production and excise tax
data. (Precise figures aren't available because Glock and several large
rivals, including Beretta and Sig Sauer, are privately
held.)
With all those customers and that visibility, it's no surprise that the
Glock has also been the gun of choice for some prolific psychopaths. Byran
Uyesugi used a Glock 17 to kill seven people at a Xerox office in Honolulu
in 1999. Seung-Hui Cho, who murdered 32 at Virginia Tech in 2007 before
killing himself, used the same Glock 19 model that Loughner is accused of
firing in Tucson. Steven Kazmierczak packed a Glock 17 when he shot 21
people, killing five, at Northern Illinois University in 2008.
A Man and His Gun: The Story of Glock
The smooth-firing Glock did not cause these massacres any more than it holds
up convenience stores. But when outfitted with an extra-large magazine, it
can raise the body count. The shooters in Arizona, Illinois, Virginia,
Hawaii, and Texas could not have inflicted so many casualties so quickly had
they been armed with old-fashioned revolvers. In its 2010 catalog, the
manufacturer boasts that while the Glock 19 is "comparable in size and
weight to the small .38 revolvers it has replaced," the pistol "is
significantly more powerful with greater firepower and is much easier to
shoot fast and true."
The Tucson gunman demonstrated those qualities all too vividly.
Loughner is said to have emptied his 33-round clip in a minute or two, a
feat requiring no special skill. (Glock does not sell magazines of that size
to civilians, but some of its guns can accommodate them. The model 19 comes
with a standard 15-round clip.) Loughner was wrestled to the ground by
onlookers only when he paused to insert a fresh magazine. If he had been
forced to reload sooner, the odds are good there would be fewer victims.
Glock executives did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Loughner seems to have had no trouble acquiring his Glock and its oversized
magazines, and, for an array of reasons, it's unlikely the harrowing crime
will lead to any new curbs on Glock's efficient brand of firepower. For that
the company can thank a remarkable chain of unintended
consequences-including gun control opponents who fueled public interest in
Glock and gun control laws that boosted sales. The more gun foes tried to
ban or curb Glock's weapons because of their potency, the more the company
turned those attacks to its advantage.
Even the tragedy in Tucson has been a boon. Bloomberg News reported on Jan.
11 that $499 Glocks were selling briskly in Arizona. "We're doing double our
normal volume," said Greg Wolff, owner of a pair of stores in Phoenix and
Mesa called Glockmeister.
For decades until the early 1980s, Gaston Glock ran a radiator plant in
suburban Vienna. On the side, he manufactured window fittings and bayonets
in his garage, using a second-hand Russian metal press. Now
81 and living reclusively at a lakeside resort in southern Austria, Glock
got his start in guns by listening closely to the customer.
In 1980 the Austrian Army was looking for a new sidearm to replace the
antiquated Walther P-38. Steyr, Austria's premier arms maker since the
mid-1880s, offered a clunky update which tended to misfire. Glock, though he
had no firearm expertise, saw an opportunity. He studied the best pistols
available and consulted with leading European firearm experts. "We sit
together and made the plan and drawing," he recalled in a March 1998 legal
deposition in the U.S. "It was like a pistol in the future."
The Army colonel in charge of procurement wanted a pistol that was light,
durable, and capable of holding more than the eight rounds the Walther
accommodated. Glock solved the puzzle with plastic. He fabricated a frame
from an injection-molded polymer, a featherweight material that proved
remarkably strong and corrosion-resistant. In the evenings he tested crude
early versions in a basement firing range. He shot alone, using only his
left hand, so that if the gun blew up he would still have his right to do
mechanical drawings. In 1981, Glock filed for an Austrian patent-his 17th,
so he called the gun the Glock 17. Coincidentally, it could store 17 rounds
in its clip, with an 18th in the chamber. In competitive trials for accuracy
and durability in 1982, the Glock defeated models made by Steyr and four
other well-known European arms manufacturers. The Austrian military ordered
20,000, and Gaston Glock had cracked the gun business.
When Karl Walter, a firearm salesman based in the U.S., first picked up a
Glock during a visit to a Vienna gun shop in the spring of 1984, his
reaction was, "Jeez, that's ugly." The squared-off pistol lacked the
blued-steel frame and polished wooden grips of a classic American revolver.
Its black matte finish seemed homely. "But still, I was extremely curious
why the Austrian Army bought it," Walter says.
"There had to be more to it than what meets the eye initially."
A native Austrian, Walter sold imported rifles to American police
departments, traveling from town to town in a motor home custom-fitted as a
rolling gun showroom. For years he had nurtured an idea about
handguns: "Where there really is money to be made is to convert U.S.
police departments from revolvers to pistols."
Ever since the 19th century, when the Colt Peacemaker became known as "the
gun that won the West," Americans had preferred revolvers.
Continental Europeans favored pistols, also known as semiautomatics, with
spring-loaded magazines that snap into the handle, holding more rounds and
allowing faster reloading. "I was astonished," Walter says, "that this
modern country still hung around with revolvers." In 1984 he paid a call on
Gaston Glock and offered to sell his pistol in America.
They made a complementary pair: Glock, the reticent engineer, unfamiliar
with the U.S. and its taste in guns, had a breakthrough product. Walter, the
garrulous expat, had valuable connections in the world's richest gun market.
In 1985, Walter set up Glock's American subsidiary in a small
warehouse-and-office complex near the Atlanta airport in Smyrna, Ga. He
launched at the perfect time. A year later, America's police collectively
decided they needed a new handgun.
With violent, cocaine-driven crime on the rise-the U.S. gun homicide rate
increased 39 percent between 1983 and 1993-police saw themselves as
outgunned. There was little statistical support for this; the typical police
gunfight at the time involved the firing of two to three rounds by the
cops-well within the capacity of a Smith & Wesson revolver. The number of
officers killed in the line of duty had peaked in 1974 at 279 and declined
to 178 in 1986. But in several notorious incidents, including a shoot-out in
Miami in April 1986 that left two FBI agents dead, the bad guys deployed
more firepower than the law enforcers. "Although the revolver served the FBI
well for several decades, it became quite evident that major changes were
critical to the well-being of our agents and American citizens," FBI
Director William S. Sessions said after the Miami bloodshed.
Walter garaged his RV and began zooming around in a Porsche, pitching the
Glock to force after force. In late 1986 the Miami Police Dept.
ordered 1,100 pistols, followed closely by Dallas, San Francisco, and
others. "It's the wave of the future," said the chief in Minneapolis, who
authorized Glocks for his officers. In December 1986, Curtiss Spanos, a cop
in Howard County, Md., fired 16 rounds in a 30-minute pursuit of two armed
robbery suspects. The Glock saved his life and his partner's, he told the
Washington Post. "There would be two dead officers if I didn't have the 9
millimeter gun."
At that time, gun control advocates trying to thwart the Austrian invader
made their first strategic misstep. They claimed that because it was mostly
plastic, the pistol would be invisible to X-ray machines. "Only the barrel,
slide, and one spring are metal," the late Jack Anderson wrote in his
syndicated column in January 1986.
"Dismantled, it is frighteningly easy to smuggle past airport security."
Antigun groups mobilized, Congress held hearings, and the National Rifle
Assn. rallied its troops. "The amazing thing was that nobody had ever heard
of Glock before the Anderson column," says Richard Feldman, a lawyer then
working for the NRA. "'Glock? What's that? Oh, an Austrian gun, a plastic
gun? Interesting. I've got to see one of those.' "
The Clinton-era assault weapons ban seemed likely to hurt Glock. It had the
opposite effect
As the 17-round pistol became an object of curiosity and admiration among
Second Amendment enthusiasts, the anti-Glock campaign fizzled.
The Federal Aviation Administration concluded that if screening personnel
paid attention, they would be able to detect the pistol.
"That was a big 'oops' moment," says Richard M. Aborn, a former president of
Handgun Control Inc., now known as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun
Violence. "We made the classic mistake of failing to do our homework."
Hollywood, never known for accuracy, gave Glock another boost. In Diehard 2:
Die Harder, released on July 4, 1990, mercenary terrorists swarmed the big
screen armed with Austrian pistols. The hero, played by Bruce Willis (who
carried a Beretta), at one point yelled at an airport police captain: "That
punk pulled a Glock 7 on me! You know what that is? It's a porcelain gun
made in Germany. It doesn't show up on your airport X-ray machines, and it
costs more than you make here in a month." It didn't matter that everything
the Willis' character said was inaccurate, says Feldman, the industry
operative who later did consulting work for Glock. "You had Jack Anderson,
and Congress, and now Bruce Willis-everyone's making things up about Glock.
And gun owners, they want to defend the 'porcelain gun' or the 'plastic gun'
or the 'hijacker special,' or whatever the media are calling it. What
fabulous publicity."
In September 1994, after a string of grisly shootings-the 1989 Stockton
(Calif.) elementary school attack, the 1991 Killeen massacre, the 1993 Waco
siege-Congress passed the assault weapons ban, which President Bill Clinton
immediately signed. The law, which limited magazine capacity to 10 rounds,
seemed likely to hurt Glock. It had the opposite effect. Long before the
law's enactment, Glock was running its factory at full tilt. "We're getting
5,000 guns and 8,000 to 9,000 magazines a week from Austria," Dick Wiggins,
a Glock representative, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in May 1994.
"We're tens of thousands of orders behind," he added. "Our pistols are
scarcer than hen's teeth."
As a compromise to get the law passed, the Clinton Administration had agreed
to allow continued sale of gear manufactured before the ban.
Glock executives figured the new law would incite a buying frenzy, and they
were right. "People who own guns that use magazines holding more than 10
rounds-including the Glock 9mm popular with police-are buying extra
magazines as fast as they can," USA Today reported. "'We were cleaned out of
magazines in the space of a few hours,' says Mike Saporito of RSR Wholesale
Guns of Winter Park, Fla., which supplies thousands of retail shops. 'Sales
have gone through the roof.' "
Seventeen-round Glock clips that had sold for less than $20 quintupled in
price over the next few years. The unintended consequence of the law was
that more high-capacity weapons and magazines ended up in stores, at gun
shows, and on the street. Indeed, "the Clinton gun ban," as the NRA called
the legislation, created a fascination with large clips that hadn't existed
before in civilian gun circles.
The Austrian company found new ways to feed the demand the law had
unintentionally created. Having supplied scores of major police departments
with 9mm weapons in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Glock gave these
agencies the opportunity to trade in their modestly used pistols for
brand-new ones. The exchanges earned the company powerful customer loyalty
and gave Glock another large batch of pre-ban magazines that could be resold
on the burgeoning used market. In one exchange in late 1994, Glock received
16,000 used high-capacity clips and more than 5,000 older pistols from the
Metropolitan Police Dept.
of Washington, D.C.
Asked whether Glock was circumventing the magazine law, its in-house
counsel, Paul F. Jannuzzo, sounded indignant. "It's not a way around the
crime bill. It is well within the law," he told The Hartford Courant. "I'm
not sure what the spirit of the crime bill was. I think the whole thing was
an absolute piece of nonsense."
Glock also responded to the assault weapons ban by designing and marketing a
new generation of smaller handguns whose clips held 10 or fewer
rounds-"Pocket Rockets," as Glock called them. In 1995 the company
introduced the Glock 26 and Glock 27 in 9mm and .40 caliber, respectively.
(The Glock model-number system tells one nothing about the nature of the
weapons.) The barrel and grip of the new models were an inch shorter than
standard Glocks, but the ammunition packed just as much punch. The guns
could be conveniently tucked into a pocket or
purse: "a perfect choice for women," Glock said in a press release.
At the same time, the NRA-a powerful and, for the industry, inexpensive
lobbying arm that is funded mostly by gun-owner members -was stepping up a
nationwide campaign in support of state laws that gave civilians the right
to carry concealed handguns to shopping malls, Little League games, and
almost anywhere else. Pocket Rockets were ideal for suburban concealed
carry. Before 1987 only 10 states had right-to-carry laws. In 1994 and 1995
alone, 11 states enacted such statutes, bringing the total to 28. "The gun
industry should send me a basket of fruit," Tanya Metaksa, the NRA's chief
lobbyist at the time, told The Wall Street Journal. "Our efforts have
created a new market." Today, 48 states allow concealed carry; only 10 of
those require applicants to provide a reason. Arizona, Alaska, and Vermont
do not demand any kind of permit at all.
As Glock grew, reaching sales in the U.S. of roughly $100 million by the
late 1990s, according to two former company executives, the company had to
withstand new courtroom assaults from municipalities allied with plaintiff
s' lawyers who sued gunmakers the way states had gone after tobacco
companies. Jannuzzo, the company's corporate counsel, gained influence,
eventually taking the lead executive role in the U.S. once held by Walter,
who had left over a compensation dispute.
A former prosecutor in New Jersey, Jannuzzo displayed a boxer's talent for
jabbing and feinting while opponents tired themselves out. In 2000 he sent
signals publicly and privately that Glock might agree to settle the
municipal litigation then being orchestrated by the Clinton Administration.
In exchange for protection from future liability, Glock and other corporate
defendants would acquiesce to unprecedented marketing restrictions. At the
eleventh hour, however, Jannuzzo rejected the deal, leaving Glock rival
Smith & Wesson as the only industry participant. A retail boycott encouraged
by the NRA nearly drove S&W out of business, while Glock reveled in a
temporary sales surge.
The entire settlement collapsed in 2000 and became moot when a
GOP-controlled Congress passed a statute in 2005 to protect gunmakers from
such suits. Glock had played a risky game and won again. Lost in the process
was a rare opportunity for an industry that makes inherently dangerous
products to police their promotion and sale more vigorously.
The gun control movement was flagging long before 2005. In the closely
contested Presidential election of 2000, Al Gore had lost his home state of
Tennessee in part because of NRA opposition, and Democrats decided that gun
control was a cursed issue. President George W. Bush made noises about
extending the assault weapons ban and magazine limit, but when the NRA and
Republicans on Capitol Hill resisted, he allowed the law to expire in
September 2004.
Glock led the charge back into the large-capacity clip business. Other gun
and accessory makers also pushed ever-larger magazines. Today, Sportsman's
Warehouse in Tucson, where Loughner bought his Glock, advertises a 50-round
"Tactical Solutions Drum Magazine" for .22 caliber Ruger rifles priced at
$64.99. The store also sells Glock-factory magazines, designed for six to 17
rounds, at $29.99 apiece. The outlet's website notes, however, that "compact
and subcompact Glock pistol model magazines can be loaded with a convincing
number of rounds-i.e. ... up to 33 rounds." The online store CDNN Sports,
based in Abilene, Tex., advertises 33-and 31-round Glock-compatible mags
that it labels "Asian Military MFG." Only six states-California, Hawaii,
Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York-now have their own limits
on large magazines.
High-efficiency weapons make American criminals deadlier, and in extreme
cases, such as Tucson, large magazines make them deadlier still. Compared
with other industrialized Western democracies, the U.S. does not have an
especially high level of crime, or even violent crime. What it does have is
"a startlingly high level-about five times the Western
European/Canadian/Australian average-of homicide," UCLA public policy
professor Mark A.R. Kleiman writes in his 2009 book, When Brute Force Fails.
The U.S. "also has an astoundingly high level of private gun-especially
handgun-ownership," an estimated 100 million civilian handguns. Gun homicide
rates are higher in the U.S., Kleiman argues, because robberies, residential
burglaries, and aggravated assaults committed with guns are all more lethal.
Why, then, is all the movement on gun regulation toward more permissiveness?
One key reason is that after rising from roughly 1963 through 1993, crime
began to drop off. In 1993 there were 9.5 murders and non-negligent
manslaughters per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the FBI's annual Crime
in the United States. By 2009 that rate had fallen 47 percent, to 5 per
100,000. offenses committed with firearms also fell sharply. The reasons are
a matter of dispute. Possible factors include a sharp rise in the rate of
incarceration, improved policing methods, and the burning out of rivalries
among crack gangs.
Gun control advocates credit point-of-purchase background checks and the
assault weapons bill. More rigorous studies indicate that those laws
actually had negligible effects on crime, according to Kleiman.
When Glock rolled out the smaller "Pocket Rocket," it called the gun "a
perfect choice for women"
Polls show that even most people who support stricter gun control do not
believe that such laws reduce crime generally. "At some basic level," Dennis
Henigan, vice-president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence,
acknowledges in his 2009 book, Lethal Logic, "the public is convinced that
'when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.' This belief cannot
help but diminish the intensity of public support for further gun
restrictions."
The rise of the Glock and other semiautomatic handguns cannot be linked to
variations in overall crime rates. But that doesn't mean it would be
pointless to take small steps to reduce mayhem, such as restricting magazine
capacity. One lesson of Tucson is that there is a difference between a
33-round clip and an 8-or 10-round clip. The only way to make a limit work,
though, would be to ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of all clips
larger than the cap. Reviving a porous 1990s-style limit would backfire.
Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), among others, is working on a new
restriction. "We are optimistic it will plug the loopholes in the 1994 law,"
says Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, a gun
control group that is consulting on the bill. Even if quite modest, however,
the provision seems unlikely to receive serious consideration in a
Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
Glock's victory, and that of its industry, won't be reversed anytime soon.
-With Michael Riley
This article draws on Bloomberg Business-week Assistant Managing Editor Paul
M. Barrett's reporting for a forthcoming book on Glock and its influence in
America, to be published by Crown in 2012.
America's Heavily Armed Criminal Culture
The U.S. violent crime rate has fallen dramatically since 1993, but the
nation still has a far higher level of gun crime than comparable
industrialized countries
The Glockworks: Inside Gaston's Glock's utterly reliable invention
1. Design:
With only 34 parts in total, the Glock is far simpler than most comparable
guns and less likely to have mechanical problems
2. Finish:
Tenifer, as Glock calls the high-tech surface treatment of its steel barrel
and slide, has tremendous hardness and durability
3. Safety:
For simplicity of use, the Glock does not have a conventional external
safety; a tiny bar on the trigger activates the gun
4. Trigger:
The light, consistent pull weight (5.5 pounds) enhances accuracy
5. Capacity:
The design accommodates large clips in many models, giving the user more
firepower without having to reload
6. Polymer:
The frame is made of corrosion-resistant plastic that is 86 percent lighter
than steel
--
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