A future article. Comments welcomed!

John

It’s an exceptional individual who can design a handgun from scratch with no previous firearms experience, and in only six months. It’s an exceptional individual who could then guide his design from the drawing boards to worldwide acceptance and usage in less than a decade. And when one of that man’s trusted associates contracts for his murder and he defeats his attacker with his bare hands? That’s exceptional also, particularly for a “senior citizen.” That man was, and is, Austria’s Gaston Glock. His innovative semiautomatic handguns surely qualify as modern classic handguns.

Engineer Gaston Glock founded Glock Gesellschaft GmbH in Deutsch-Wagram, near Vienna, in 1963. The company started out as a manufacturer of curtain rods. Glock moved his business into military items in the 1970s, making machine gun belts, practice hand grenades, plastic magazines, field knives and entrenching tools, primarily for the Austrian Army. Then, to his surprise, a number of firearms manufacturers asked him if he’d be willing to manufacture their pistols at his factory. Inquiring as to why, he discovered that the Austrian government was to test new pistols as possible replacements for their aging stocks of P.38s. And the pistol or pistols selected must be made in Austria! Glock set himself a challenge: design and make a pistol that could compete and win the competition. Glock himself admits that at that time, he didn’t know the difference between a semiauto and a revolver. But he was smart and a quick learner. He and his design staff studied every available design extant. And in six months, they had a working prototype – the Glock 17, so named because it was his 17th patent. To make a long story short, the Austrian Army adopted the Glock 17 9mm pistol in 1982 and the Norwegian Army followed suit two years later. From those beginnings, the Glock attracted worldwide attention and employment as a police and military weapon. Today the Glock empire is worldwide, making an immense variety of pistols of similar design in many different calibers. American police, in particular, favor Glocks above all other makes. With parts made in Austria, Glock’s factory in Smyrna, Georgia assembles Glock pistols for distribution in the United States.

Although little in the original Glock design is entirely new, the combination of design features produced a pistol with many advantages. The grip frame is made from a highly secret blend of polymers, offering strength, light weight, durability and flexibility. There are no guide rails in the frame, only small metal inserts that engage the slide rails. Glocks utilize the time-honored Browning cammed tilt-barrel design, with a block around the chamber serving to lock the barrel into the ejection port. A recoil spring under the barrel returns the slide to battery following recoil. Making the gun striker-fired eliminates complexity and gives a bore line close to the top of the hand, keeping muzzle flip to a minimum. There are no external controls other than a slide release and a magazine release button. Glocks utilize what the company chooses to call a “safe action.” Retracting the slide and releasing it cocks the striker partially. Pulling the trigger then fully cocks the striker and releases it. There is no manual safety. There are, however, three automatic safeties. One is a blocking lever in the trigger, where the trigger must be pulled deliberately to deactivate it. There is also a drop safety and a striker block safety that deactivates only when the trigger is pulled fully to the rear. Trigger pull weight is consistent from shot to shot, and can be changed easily by substituting a single part. A loaded Glock is always ready to go simply by pulling the trigger. There’s not much to remember except that. Keep your finger off the trigger and the gun is safe. Pull the trigger and the gun goes bang. If you believe in the adages that the best safety is between your ears and that simpler is better, then the Glock shines.

The barrel has polygonal rifling, giving better bore sealing, velocity and accuracy. The slide and a number of other parts are given a Tenifer finish, and then Parkerized. This gives rust resistance better than stainless steel. The surface hardness is very close to that of a diamond. The magazines, except for one model, are double stack. They feature a polymer outer body with steel inserts. Field stripping is accomplished easily in seconds. There are now quite a number of models in most popular calibers. Glock even introduced a .40 S&W pistol before Smith & Wesson, the originator of the cartridge! The pistol illustrated is a Glock 21 in .45 ACP, made in 1998. The only alterations made to it were the installation of a factory extended slide release and the substitution of metal-framed tritium night sights for the factory plastic sights. This 14-shot powerhouse is totally reliable with anything it's fed and quite accurate. One caution, though. With polygonal rifling, the factory warns not to use lead bullets. Leading will accumulate in the bore, which could result in very high pressures.

You may have wondered about the assassination attempt to which I referred earlier. It seems that one of Gaston Glock’s associates, one handling the bulk of the company’s finances, was embezzling large sums of money. Glock was tipped to this man’s activities, and when the man found that Glock knew, he contracted for an assassin. The assassin was to bludgeon Glock to death while the associate momentarily distracted him. The thug attacked Glock, but Glock fended him off, knocking the man out with his bare fists. A man to be reckoned with in many ways, Glock saw to it that both men were immediately prosecuted. They are serving extended jail sentences following their convictions.

Gaston Glock is now in his late seventies, still vital and vigorously leading his company, which has become a powerhouse in the handgun world. A strong believer in gun rights, he went toe to toe with the Clinton administration over its efforts to bureaucratically control the gun industry with burdensome “feel good” restrictions. He will undoubtedly react similarly to any future anti-gun rights endeavors. As he’s proved before, he will not cave to misguided politicians.

Glocks have been subjected to grueling tests by just about everyone. Salt water, sand, mud, freezing, and extreme heat have all been applied in attempts to stop them from functioning. But like the proverbial Timex® watches, they just keep working. Many have been fired multi-thousands of rounds without a bobble. Neither reliability nor longevity should ever be an issue to the owner. Police officers bet their lives on Glocks daily and military units worldwide also rely on them.

I admit that Glock pistols are ugly. But by gosh, they work. They go “bang” every time the trigger is pulled with no fuss and no bother. If a gun is a tool, then a Glock is one of the best ones. That makes Glocks modern classics!

(c) 2013 JLM

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- Cogito, ergo armatus sum -