“The revolver I was carrying had six shots, and there were six men,” Hammer noted. “What if I ran out of shots?” With seventeen rounds in her Glock pistol, she felt more secure. When it comes to ammo, in Hammer’s view, more is better, and more is what you get with the Glock.
Glock cultivates devotion to its product with the American gun industry’s most diligent customer-loyalty program. The company-underwritten Glock Shooting Sports Foundation sponsors a series of target competitions limited to owners of the Austrian pistol. For a modest $25 annual fee, GSSF members gain access to events held at ranges around the country. “My whole family and I had a great time at the Beaver State Ballistic Challenge last week,” D.W. of Washington State wrote to the GLOCK Report in 2010 (correspondents to the newsletter are identified only by initials). “This year my wife, sister, brother-in-law, and son joined us. At eleven years old, it was my son’s very first match, and now I can’t get him to take his GLOCK cap off.… We experienced the same thing when my daughter started shooting at the same age. Very cool!” The letter was accompanied by a photo of a smiling boy in a Glock hat and sound-reducing earmuffs, pointing at a cardboard target punctured by bullet holes.
The gun manufacturer and the vendors that feed off its reputation supply all manner of Glock paraphernalia: clocks, key chains, playing cards, lamps, and custom license plates. Curvaceous pinup model Candy Keane grips a Glock in online lingerie photos. GSSF members submit images to the GLOCK Report of Glock-shaped birthday cakes and babies in T-shirts that read FUTURE GLOCK OWNER . A father from Florida submitted a snapshot of his blond daughter at her wedding, raising her gown to reveal a shapely thigh and a Glock 19 tucked snuggly in her silk garter. Her kneeling husband stares at the gun, enraptured. “He enjoyed the surprise,” the proud dad wrote in 2009, “and he promised to love, honor, and shoot GLOCKs with the princess.”
I did not grow up with guns, although my father earned a marksmanship award with his M-1 when he served in the army at Fort Dix in the late 1950s. As an adult, I have fired handguns and rifles from time to time as a part of my journalistic work covering the firearm industry. While researching the mechanics and use of the Glock for this book, I took some private lessons and participated in competitions sponsored by the International Defensive Pistol Association. A private organization, the IDPA promotes “combat shooting” skills and has chapters in gun-friendly precincts throughout the United States and abroad. Despite the military-sounding terminology, combat shooting refers to techniques for defending against armed aggressors in a civilian setting. In contrast to stationary target shooting, IDPA teaches its members how to draw and fire in unfolding circumstances of simulated danger.
IDPA is not officially affiliated with Glock, but it might as well be. During my visits to the First Coast IDPA chapter, which meets at a range outside of Jacksonville, roughly 75 percent of the members competed with Glocks, and most of the rest used American- or Croatian-made Glock knockoffs. A few people shot Berettas or Sigs, and a handful of old-timers brought S&W revolvers.
In preparation for my maiden IDPA match, I sought individual instruction from self-defense expert and gun writer Massad Ayoob and his girlfriend, Gail Pepin, a champion shooter in her own right. Ayoob and Pepin live in a one-story house on several verdant acres about ninety minutes west of Jacksonville. Step one was learning to draw. “Everyone has to start somewhere,” Gail said charitably.
In an IDPA match, the gun starts in your holster, often covered by a jacket to replicate the experience of carrying a concealed weapon. Florida requires gun owners who obtain carry permits to keep their weapons hidden in public. Concealment is thought to discourage precipitate gunplay. Gail explained that one of the most dangerous parts of shooting is getting the gun out of the holster and clear of your clothing without accidental discharge. This is especially so when using a Glock, she said, because it lacks an external safety switch. It is always “on” and ready to fire.
Rookies tend to grab the weapon too abruptly, putting the index finger immediately on the trigger or tangling themselves in their overgarment. First rule: sweep the jacket back with the shooting hand and grasp the gun with index finger extended outside of the trigger guard. “Do not touch that trigger,” Gail said, “until you are prepared to destroy something.”
Just to be safe, she demonstrated with a hard rubber dummy Glock. She handed the yellow fake to me, and I imitated her deliberate motion, withdrawing the pistol from the plastic holster on my belt and pointing it straight in front of me. We were standing in her kitchen, aiming at an empty Coke can on a couple of telephone books on top of the Formica counter. I held the imitation Glock in the two-handed crush grip, arms locked at eye level. It was amazing how much false muscle memory I had to overcome from decades of television and movies. My instinct was to swing the weapon up at the ceiling as I drew. Actors do that in Hollywood, Gail explained, but it is risky showboating. Point the gun only where you will shoot: directly at the target. The proper movement is economical, almost robotic.
At that moment, Massad shouted some encouragement from the living room. I turned in his direction, unthinkingly sweeping the dummy Glock ninety degrees to my right. “Whoa, partner,” Mas said. “You do that, and you’ll get kicked off the range before you even start.” Another unbreakable rule: put the gun back in the holster before turning away from the target.
“Anything that barrel aims at you should be prepared to destroy,” Gail reiterated slowly, as if I were not very bright. “OK, let’s do it again.”
I drew one hundred times in the cramped kitchen that afternoon. Gail showed me how to draw while backing up toward the refrigerator and stepping sidewise in the direction of the sink. Combining the movements felt like spinning plates on sticks while riding a unicycle. And this was with a harmless imitation weapon.
“If you can’t get comfortable with it, you just don’t shoot,” Gail said. Like many avid gun owners, she demonstrated an obsessive dedication to safety. We all read in the newspaper about people who accidentally shoot themselves or, worse, their child. But as a result of more safety training, better storage practices, and a decline in hunting, the rate of reported gun accidents has fallen 80 percent since 1930.
“Practice tonight in your motel room,” Gail told me.
I had three days to figure out how to draw and shoot before firing nine-millimeter rounds at an imaginary hostage taker while darting through a facsimile of a shopping mall. The next day we would go live on the practice range behind Gail’s and Massad’s house; Friday was the competition in Jacksonville. I was going to have a long night at the motel with the fake yellow Glock.
Gail Pepin, at first glance, does not seem particularly threatening, but she would be the wrong five-foot-tall former obstetrical nurse to hassle on a dark street corner. The gun safe she and Ayoob have at home contains more than two dozen weapons. The ammunition shed out back resembles a small military depot. In the supermarket, at Walmart—pretty much everywhere—Pepin carries a handgun concealed in a holster on her hip. She sometimes has another, smaller weapon strapped to her ankle, as a backup. Ayoob also carries, usually a Glock. They see the world as a dangerous place in which it is simply intelligent to be prepared for trouble. Falling crime rates since the mid-1990s do not console them. Like many gun owners who carry, they find last night’s local television news report of an armed robbery at the neighborhood 7-Eleven more compelling than the statistically small chance of being the unlucky customer paying for a Slurpee when a bad guy attacks.