Gaston Glock, the man behind the gun, dies aged 94 - APA

investing.com:

By Kirsti Knolle

Gaston Glock, the reclusive engineer and tycoon who developed one of the world's best-selling handguns, died on Wednesday aged 94, Austrian news agency APA said.

The Austrian won loyal followings among police and military across the world with the weapons that bore his name. Forbes estimated his and his family's fortune at $1.1 billion in 2021.

His rise began in the 1980s when the Austrian military was looking for a new, innovative weapon.

Up until then, the Glock company had made military knives and consumer goods including curtain rods. But he assembled a team of firearms experts and came up with the Glock 17, a lightweight semi-automatic gun largely made of plastic.

The revolutionary design — with a frame made of a high-strength, nylon-based polymer and only the slide made of metal — beat several other companies' blueprints and secured his upstart outfit the contract.

Soon the easily assembled weapon became a global hit. «Get yourself a Glock and lose that nickel-plated sissy pistol,» Tommy Lee Jones said in the 1998 movie «U.S. Marshals».

Many U.S. police officers used them and U.S. rappers worked them into their rhymes, among them Snoop Dogg's «Protocol» and Wu-Tang Clan's «Da Glock».

U.S. soldiers found toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hiding with a Glock in a hole in the ground in 2003. They later presented that weapon to U.S. President George W. Bush, according to the New York Times.

Gun-control advocates criticised Glock for popularising powerful guns that they said were easy to conceal and could hold more ammunition than other guns.

A former U.S. Marine combat veteran armed with what police described as a .45 caliber Glock with a high-capacity magazine killed 12 people in a bar in