Stepping up the use of ballistic fingerprinting—the technique that digitally matches spent shell casings from crime scenes to guns—is another good idea. It would require liberating federal investigators from a variety of existing legislative limits on compiling a national database for tracing weapons to criminals. And this brings us back to the Glock. Modest as current tracing capabilities may be, they have revealed that the discrepancy persists between the Glock’s image as a leading crime gun and reality on the streets. Although glamorized as the gun preferred by gangsters and thugs, it has not become one of the guns most commonly traced to crimes.
Large numbers of crime-gun traces are thought to suggest makes and models that criminals prefer. The NRA objects to this use of gun traces, but it is accepted by many criminologists. One of the unfortunate constraints Congress has imposed on gun tracing since 2003 bars the BATF from releasing data on which guns are traced most frequently. Before the restriction was enacted, the agency from time to time disclosed rankings. In 2002, Time obtained a BATF study of 88,570 guns recovered from crime scenes in forty-six cities in 2000. Number one on the top ten list was the Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver. The next four were pistols manufactured by Ruger, Lorcin, and Raven Arms and a Mossberg twelve-gauge shotgun. Glock did not appear on the list at all.
Glock, then, is not a particular villain within the fraternity of firearms. Nor is it a hero—regardless of what Hollywood tells us on both scores. As a weapon, a means of self-defense, and a source of recreation, the Austrian pistol has many positive attributes. It also has aspects now shared by many brands, such as large ammunition capacity, that can be problematic, even fatal.
Gaston Glock is one of the giants in handgun history, deserving of mention alongside Colt, Browning, Smith, and Wesson. Glock executives exploited the frequently ill-conceived attacks of anti-gun activists, turning the imported pistol into an object of Second Amendment enthusiasm. Throughout their history, the company and the gun have enjoyed tremendous good luck and uncanny timing.
As an organization, Glock has not been propelled by high-mindedness, but rather by profits—nothing unusual there; that is the way of capitalism. Given opportunities to help lead its industry toward compromise with its political antagonists in the United States, Glock flirted with moderation— feigned moderation might be a more accurate description—and then consistently acted in its own interest. It is a company created to do one thing: manufacture and sell pistols. And this Gaston Glock has done extraordinarily well.
CHAPTER 20
Epilogue
On April 11, 2011, the FBI held a ceremony in North Miami Beach to honor the agents whose deaths and injuries a quarter century earlier marked one of the Bureau’s darkest hours and helped usher in the era of the Glock pistol. The folklore of the Miami Shootout has only gotten more inaccurate over time. In its report on the memorial, the Associated Press recounted a fierce battle in which the criminals “didn’t go down easily, outgunning the agents’ revolvers with machine guns.” Of course, the bank robbers did not have fully automatic machine guns; they had a semiautomatic rifle and a shotgun. And some of the FBI agents did have large-capacity semiautomatic pistols and their own shotguns. No matter. In the wake of the shootout, Gaston Glock responded to a perceived need among law enforcement agencies for greater firepower, and the rest is mythology.
The Glock’s hold on the American imagination remains as powerful as ever. As the FBI recalled its fallen agents, HBO was entertaining viewers with Cop Out , a buddy flick starring Bruce Willis, the actor who first introduced the Glock to Hollywood audiences in 1990. Appearing for the umpteenth time as a cynical cop with a heart of gold, Willis jokes his way with costar Tracy Morgan through the action comedy about a pair of NYPD detectives whose search for a valuable rare baseball card leads to violent shenanigans. Rick Washburn, still the premier East Coast weapons prop man, supplied the guns for Cop Out , which first appeared in theaters in 2010. He gave Morgan, who had never held a gun before, a standard Glock 19 for most of his scenes. Warner Bros. promoted the picture in print and Internet advertisements with the slogan “Rock Out with Your Glock Out.”
As a marketing operation, Glock rarely catches a bad break. In 2011, the company introduced several modest updates for what it calls its Gen 4 models: A “rough textured frame surface” offers a more secure grip. Replaceable “back straps” allow the user to adjust the size of the handle. A redesigned dual spring assembly reduces recoil. The reviews were uniformly warm. “We ran about 200 rounds through the gun and experienced nothing even close to a malfunction,” said Guns & Ammo . “The enhancements have done nothing more than improve its shootability,” added Handguns . The conservative political publication Human Events included three Glock models in its December 2010 list of the “Top Ten Concealed Carry Guns,” more than any other manufacturer’s.
Although characteristically secretive about specific financial results, Glock, Inc., announced it had enjoyed “record sales” for fiscal 2010, and growth in both profits and market share. The company now manufactures some of its pistols in Smyrna, as opposed to just assembling them there. It unveiled plans to build four new buildings on eighteen acres in the Atlanta suburb. Local authorities heralded the expansion as a source of one hundred new jobs, on top of the two hundred people already working for Glock’s US subsidiary.
Law enforcement remains the company’s key customer. In late 2010 and early 2011, it delivered Gen 4 pistols to the Hills-borough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida; the police department in Charleston, West Virginia; and the Madison County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois. In Washington, the BATF ordered new Glocks under a $40 million contract, and the FBI signed another order worth $148 million over a period of years. Glock also won an Army contract valued at $70 million.
Public events continue to favor the company. With relentless lobbying and grassroots activism, the NRA has expanded even further the right to carry handguns in public places. At last count, forty-nine states allow concealed carry (Illinois is the sole exception), and only ten of those require applicants to provide a reason. Arizona, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming do not demand any kind of permit at all. This is all good news for a manufacturer known for its concealed-carry weapons.
The Tucson shooting in January 2011 drew some negative media attention to the killer’s Glock 19, but gun store managers in Arizona knew better and prepared for a sales rush. Sure enough, in the days after the massacre, they could not keep the Austrian brand in stock. “We’re doing double our normal volume,” Gregg Wolff, owner of the Glockmeister shop in Phoenix, told Bloomberg News. “When something like this happens, people get worried that the government is going to ban stuff.”