Gaston Glock Died on December 27

**ImminentDanger** · December 28th, 2023, 10:45 PM

Gaston Glock 1929-2023
by Jay Caruso - December 28, 2023
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...lock-1929-2023

Gaston Glock, the inventor of the famous semi-automatic pistol that bore his name, died on Dec. 27. He was 94 years old.

The Glock is almost synonymous with firearms. The Glock pistol and its variations enjoy a love/hate relationship with gun enthusiasts. It appears in pop culture, such as the ceramic Glock 7 in Die Hard II (not true — no such gun) and U.S. Marshal Deputy Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) in U.S. Marshals extolling the ability of the pistol to shoot underwater or after getting buried in sand (true). Hip-hop artists such as Snoop Dogg inserted the pistol name into song lyrics. It is the most widely used pistol in police departments in the United States and is the pistol of choice for security forces in nearly 50 nations.

Glock wasn’t in the firearms business until he overheard a conversation between Austrian army officers about a new military contract for a pistol. After speaking with the officers and handgun experts, he used his engineering background to design and patented the pistol, using a lightweight polymer (not plastic) frame and the striker-fire mechanism as opposed to a hammer-fire. Though that was designed by John Browning, the maker of the .45 caliber 1911, Glock’s use of it in his new pistol would mark a significant change in the manufacture of pistols. The result was a plain-looking pistol, one that did not have the aesthetic of the Italian-made Beretta 92s the company released in 1976. However, the Glock was inexpensive to produce, reliable, and accurate. In 1982, the Austrian army ordered 20,000 of the Glock 17, which was so-named after the number patent filed by Glock during its development.

Glock was born in Vienna on July 19, 1929. When he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht as a teenager toward the end of World War II, it was the only time he handled a firearm until he developed his own. He graduated from a technical institute, training in engineering. He took a job at a company that made hand drills.

He married his first wife, Helga, in 1962. They had three children together: Robert, Gaston Jr., and Brigitte. The family lived in the Deutsch-Wagram suburb of Vienna, where Glock was the manager of a car radiator factory. They started a small side business, making curtain rods and brass fittings before expanding the business and getting contracts to make knives and bayonets for the Austrian army. It was during a visit to the Defense Ministry that Glock heard about the contract for a new pistol.

The firearms quickly gained popularity and, by the 1990s, were a $100 million per year business. In 1999, Glock’s financial adviser, Charles Ewert, tried to have him assassinated. During a business meeting in Luxembourg, a masked man with a rubber mallet attacked Glock in a garage. Ewert ran off, and Glock fought off his attacker. Ewert returned with the police, but they later implicated him in the plot after learning he was embezzling money from the company. The attacker and Ewert were convicted of attempted murder.

Outside the attempt on his life, Glock lived a mostly reclusive life at his estate in Vienna. He and Helga divorced in 2011, and at 82, Glock married his second wife, 31-year-old Kathrin Tschikof, who was his nurse following a stroke in 2008. The Glock divorce was messy as Helga sued in Austria, claiming alimony for their nearly 50-year marriage. She also said he deprived her of a 15% stake in the company. She prevailed in the alimony case but did not win in her attempt at a stake in the company. Helga later filed a lawsuit in a U.S. federal court, claiming she was cheated out of money, but that suit was subsequently dismissed.

The company continued to grow, and today, according to the Glock website, the company manufactures “50 pistols in a variety of sizes, calibers, and styles.” Over 20 million Glocks have been made, and the company sells about 1 million in the U.S. every year. Sixty-five percent of police departments in the U.S. use some variation of a Glock pistol, and in 2019, the U.S. Secret Service switched to 9 mm Glock pistols after using Sig Sauer .357-caliber duty weapons for over 20 years.

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**bortle** · December 29th, 2023, 03:21 PM

Remember he made a plastic gun that would go thru airport x-ray machines. It was going to lead to all kinds of hijacks.
There are guns I like better, but I have no problem trusting my life to a Glock.

**red dog** · December 31st, 2023, 08:57 PM

Big thanks to Gaston! Glock handguns are my favorite working guns. I can flip flop between models and calibers with ease and efficiency. I don*t worry about wear and tear as they aren*t pretty to begin with. I totally trust their reliability and never worry about them working when needed. Thanks again Gaston you revolutionized the handgun industry.