The Billionaire Who Made His Fortune From Glock Guns Used By Cops And Mass Shooters

When a gunman killed 12 people at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, on November 8, he used a Gaston Glock semiautomatic handgun.

Many people are unaware that the guy behind the firearm is an Austrian businessman named Gaston Glock, who has amassed a wealth of more than a billion dollars from the gunmaker. In the early 1980s, Glock began designing and producing pistols for the Austrian army. It has subsequently become a standard in the United States, employed by both law enforcement and mass shooters.

According to the Violence Policy Center, a male gunman with a Glock murdered 33 people and injured 17 at Virginia Tech in 2007. Four years later, an incident at a Safeway in Tucson, Arizona, killed six people and injured 13, including then-U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who apparently also had a Glock. In 2015, a man entered Charlestons Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and murdered nine people.

The gunman, who is currently on death row, used a Glock.45. Almost precisely a year later, a man entered Orlandos Pulse Nightclub and shot and murdered 49 people while injuring 53 others with a semiautomatic rifle and a Glock 17. In October, a man opened fire on worshipers gathering in a Pittsburgh synagogue with various guns, including three Glocks. His shots killed 11 victims ranging in age from 54 to 97.

According to Rommel Dionisio, managing director at trading company Aegis Capital, Glock has a nearly 65% market share of pistols in the United States. Glock, the firms creator, controls 99% of the company through a trust worth $1.5 billion, according to Forbes; neither he nor the company would comment.

This estimate is based on Glocks yearly report, which he submitted to Austrian authorities earlier this year. Glock claimed $556 million in sales in 2017, although its revenue in 2016 was significantly greater. In 2016, the corporation earned around $750 million in revenue.

According to Dionisio, the dip in sales last year was likely due to gun aficionados stockpiling firearms the prior year in expectation of harsher gun controls under a Hillary Clinton president. Glock sold 36% fewer firearms in 2017 than it did in 2016,

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According to The Companys Annual Report

Profits in the gun industry fell 58%. So far, the Trump administration has been less profitable for gun makers, but a measure in Congress called the Hearing Protection Act may make silencers much simpler to obtain, which may lead to a large increase in income for gun manufacturers, according to Dionisio.

After a year in operation, Glock learned that the Austrian army was seeking for a new weapons contractor. He learned that the Austrian Armed Forces were having difficulty locating a producer who could meet their requirements. He noticed an opening and inquired if he might make an offer.

According to renowned writer Paul Barretts 2012 book Glock: The Rise of Americas Gun, Glocks expertise with weapons was limited, as he acknowledged during a court deposition in 1993. (Glock was sued by the family of a lady who was inadvertently murdered by a police officer using his Glock; the company was later found not guilty.)

Glock, who was born in 1929, was recruited as a youngster by the Wehrmacht, Nazi Germanys military forces.

According to Barrett

he stated in 1993 that he spent a few days with the Wehrmacht during WWII, when he saw a rifle, handgun, and hand grenade for the first time. The transition from rods to firearms was risky, especially for someone who had never made a gun before. Glock, on the other hand, had a strategy. Barrett states that he enlisted the help of a team of specialists while attending police academy seminars and private shooting sessions.

Glocks final product was one-of-a-kind. It was composed of plastic rather than metal, unlike its predecessors. This type of design requires fewer individual parts, resulting in a lighter and more dependable weapon. In terms of production, the injection-molded plastic meant that Glock would spend less on creating its weapons than older versions would.

His Glock pistol was quicker than rival revolvers, capable of rapid firing, used high-capacity ammo magazines, and could be reloaded rapidly. According to the Violence Policy Center, its popularity has resulted in an increase in the usage of high-capacity semiautomatic handguns.

Glock submitted a patent for his gun, the Glock 17, in April 1981. Glocks invention, which he designed for professional troops, quickly became a weapon of fascination across the world, drawing international leaders as well as gun lovers. The gun passed the NATO durability test in 1984 and was adopted as the Norwegian Armys standard sidearm.

The gun has been commonly utilized in the United States since the late 1980s. Glock created a subsidiary in Smyrna, Georgia, in 1986 to distribute the firearms. Glock handguns were in civilian handsand even popular culturenot long after Glocks takeover of the United States.

Rappers such as Snoop Dogg and the Wu-Tang Clan cited the gun in popular songs (Good thing we brought the Glock, the Wu-Tang Clan said in a song titled after the handgun in 2001). It was also picked up by Hollywood. Bruce Willis asks his supervisor in the second installment of the action series Die Hard in 1990: That punk drew a Glock 17 on me. Can you tell me what that is?

According to the Bureau of Alcohol

Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the United States imports more weapons from Austria than any other country. In 2017, over 1.2 million handguns were lawfully imported into the United States from Austria. According to researcher Rommel Dionisio, the US government does not track individual brands, although Glock is the largest Austrian pistol producer.

Glock is used as a service weapon by about 57% of the New York Police Department. Thirty-seven years after Glock produced his Glock 17 handgun, the Miami-Dade Police Department claims the gun is the most commonly used weapon among its officersas well as the most dependable and adaptable.

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Glock became the departments officially assigned service weapon in 2009, and by January 1, 2019, the entire Miami-Dade police forceroughly 2,800 officerswill be outfitted with a Glock. According to the manufacturer, 65% of federal, state, and municipal agencies in the United States have acquired Glock handguns.

Meanwhile, the 89-year-old millionaire maintains a low profile and refuses to discuss the use of his firearms in mass killings. He declined to comment on this piece but has already expressed his views. Late in Clintons presidency, Glock attempted to repeal several of the presidents gun control policies, including a limitation on how weapons are sold.

Extortionist, he called the US government and its gun-control policies in 2003, according to Forbes. (After a $1 million payment to the NRA, the corporation was welcomed into the NRAs private contributors club, Ring of Freedom, in 2017.)

Glock now spends the majority of his time at his Austrian house with his second wife Kathrin, who is more than 50 years his younger. Glocks ex-wife Helga reportedly sued the billionaire in Austria immediately after their marriage, arguing she was defrauded out of her genuine interest in the firm, which she claimed was greater than the 1% she now holds.

According to news reports, Helga won her alimony case but lost her stake litigation. She took the case to a U.S. federal court in Georgia in 2014, claiming Glock had emotionally and financially defrauded her. In 2017 and 2018, US judges dismissed her lawsuit. Neither Gaston nor Helga Glock responded to the charges. It is uncertain if Helga, who was married to Glock for 49 years, would go to court again.