Glock targeted the gun world

By M.B. Pell

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Whether you’re a gun rights advocate, a supporter of strict gun control or something in between, the rise of pistol company Glock from a mom-and-pop curtain rod manufacturer in a small Austrian village to one of the largest and most innovative pistol companies in the world is a remarkable story.

Special “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun” by Paul M. Barrett.

Nearly 30 years after the introduction of the first Glock semi-automatic handgun, the company has radically changed the firearms industry and American culture, for better and worse, according to Paul Barrett’s new book, “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun.” Along with the ascent, Barrett details the controversies that have dogged company founder Gaston Glock over the last 10 years, including accusations of theft and embezzlement by his financial manager, two top executives and a team of lawyers and accountants hired by Glock to battle industrial espionage.

Barrett’s story follows the development of this “plastic pistol” in Austria across the sea to Georgia where a gifted salesman, Karl Walter, used endorsements by police officers, gimmicks like dropping the gun out of helicopters and strippers to take over the U.S. — the largest handgun market in the world.

“The Glock became to handguns what Google became to Internet searches,” Barrett told the AJC. “It’s a Glock world.”

Much of the story has an Atlanta backdrop Georgia readers should enjoy.

For example, in an attempt to appeal to the retail market, Glock aimed to sell to police departments first.

To sell the cops, Walter invited department firearms experts to all-expenses-paid training trips to Smyrna. The trips ended with a Thursday night that might be one of the best nights of their year or maybe even their lives, Barrett quotes one police official as saying.

After a lavish dinner in Atlanta, Glock would take the officers to the famous Gold Club. Glock hired out a private VIP lounge where the officer drank champagne, enjoyed lap dances and rubbed shoulders with celebrities. Thursday night at the Gold Club was Glock night.

The tactic seems to have worked; today more than 60 percent of police officers carry a Glock, according to industry experts.

The rapid switch from revolvers to Glock pistols reverberated through the country and soon Hollywood cops started brandishing the handgun, and hip-hop artists waxed poetic about the boxy, black pistol. Barrett does an especially thorough job of explaining how this came about and reminding readers of how often they see Glock in movies and on television.

But even as the company soared, it was wracked by industrial espionage, an assassination attempt against company founder Gaston Glock by his financial manager and accusations of tax evasion, first detailed by Barrett in a series of articles he wrote for Business Week beginning in 2009.

The Glock has received its share of bad press, as well. The pistol has been used in some of the most notorious shootings and mass murders in the country’s history, including a shooting in Casas Adobes, Ariz., a year ago that left six dead and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., with a serious head wound.

Barrett tracks down dozens of former and current Glock employees, police reports and court records to give readers a sense of Gaston Glock’s personality and how that created a corporate culture that may have caused many of the problems the pistol-maker faces today.

The sometimes shocking details about Glock — his penchant for morning swims in the buff and his ingestion of a substance called megamine he believed would allow him to live to be 120 years old — moves the reader from one anecdote to the next.

The detailed account of how the pistol works might be too much for readers without an interest in firearms, but the account of the company’s tactics, the personal struggles between Glock employees and the descriptions of belly dancers hired by the company to sell guns are certain to fascinate audiences regardless of their thoughts on the Second Amendment.

“It’s a fast read,” said Richard Feldman, a gun industry expert quoted in the book. “It’s kind of an adventure story about the rise of and fall of this company, and he used Glock to tell the story of the American gun culture.”

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Nonfiction

“Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun”

By Paul M. Barrett

Crown Publishers, 268 pages, $26