Sophie Makris -
From Hollywood to hip hop, it’s the weapon that is wielded by cops and outlaws alike. The Glock pistol has achieved global cult status but the business is still shrouded in mystery in its native Austria.
A new documentary about the Glock, titled ‘Weapon of Choice’, says that since it was invented in the early 1980s by a previously unknown Austrian engineer called Gaston Glock, the brand has been the object of a “cult of secrecy”.
Directors Fritz Ofner and Eva Hausberger have tried to shed some light on the company, whose 89-year-old founder has always shunned publicity.
“Hundreds of press articles (on Glock) have appeared in Austria but they’re almost all about the company’s charitable activities or society events,” Ofner said. That could be because the firm is not reticent about taking action in the courts against those it deems to have unfairly damaged its reputation.
Ofner said the film-makers were threatened with legal action when the documentary was in its early stages, followed by a letter from the company’s lawyers once it was finished, “asking for a list of all the people we had worked with on the film”. That “sword of Damocles” meant a year’s delay to the release date, said Ofner.
The strict secrecy around the Glock empire is of a piece with the character and background of its mould-breaking founder, said Ofner.
In the early 1980s Gaston Glock was running a business making knives and curtain rods when he decided to answer a call for tenders put out by the Austrian army, which wanted to update its pistols.
He devised a firearm that revolutionised the field: made largely of non-metal components, “lighter, easier to take apart, more reliable, able to carry more bullets” than other brands.
“You can really compare Glock — who had no experience at all in firearms — to Steve Jobs who invented the first Apple product in his garage,” says Ofner.
Once the contract with the Austrian army was in the bag, the company’s worth soared when it entered the American and then the global market, being adopted by police, gangsters and even jihadists.
Between 2014 and 2017, the company’s worth is estimated to have risen by almost 50 per cent to $538 million.
American pop culture in particular has helped Glock attain its iconic status.
“At the end of the 1990s, Glock was the most mentioned brand in the American Top 50,” according to Ofner. — AFP
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