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    Glock: The Rise of America's Gun
    Unavailable
    Glock: The Rise of America's Gun
    Unavailable
    Glock: The Rise of America's Gun
    Audiobook8 hours

    Glock: The Rise of America's Gun

    Written by Paul M. Barrett

    Narrated by Kiff VandenHeuvel

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Based on fifteen years of research, Glock is the riveting story of the weapon that has become known as American's gun.  Today the Glock pistol has been embraced by two-thirds of all U.S. police departments, glamorized in countless Hollywood movies, and featured as a ubiquitous presence on prime-time TV. It has been rhapsodized by hip-hop artists, and coveted by cops and crooks alike.

    Created in 1982 by Gaston Glock, an obscure Austrian curtain-rod manufacturer, and swiftly adopted by the Austrian army, the Glock pistol, with its lightweight plastic frame and large-capacity spring-action magazine, arrived in America at a fortuitous time.  Law enforcement agencies had concluded that their agents and officers, armed with standard six-round revolvers, were getting "outgunned" by drug dealers with semi-automatic pistols. They needed a new gun.

    When Karl Water, a firearm salesman based in the U.S. first saw a Glock in 1984, his reaction was, "Jeez, that's ugly." But the advantages of the pistol soon became apparent. The standard semi-automatic Glock could fire as many as 17 bullets from its magazine without reloading (one equipped with an extended thirty-three cartridge magazine was used in Tucson to shoot Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others). It was built with only 36 parts that were interchangeable with those of other models. You could drop it underwater, toss it from a helicopter, or leave it out in the snow, and it would still fire. It was reliable, accurate, lightweight, and cheaper to produce than Smith and Wesson's revolver. Made in part of hardened plastic, it was even rumored (incorrectly) to be invisible to airport security screening.

    Filled with corporate intrigue, political maneuvering, Hollywood glitz, bloody shoot-outs-and an attempt on Gaston Glock's life by a former lieutenant-Glock is at once the inside account of how Glock the company went about marketing its pistol to police agencies and later the public, as well as a compelling chronicle of the evolution of gun culture in America.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 10, 2012
    ISBN9780449009895
    Unavailable
    Glock: The Rise of America's Gun
    Author

    Paul M. Barrett

    Paul M. Barrett, for eighteen years a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, where this book originated, currently directs the investigative reporting team at Business Week. He is the author of The Good Black: A True Story of Race in America.

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    Reviews for Glock

    3.5/5

    68 ratings6 reviews

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    • 1/5
      I often like this sort of thing, but for some reason this book didn't work for me. There was something vaguely dry and academic about the writing that didn't appeal - the musty scent of mothballs mixed with Great Great Aunt Twyla's lavendar sachets (poor thing, she never did find a husband).
    • 4/5
      A fascinating, in-depth account of the history of the Glock and its impact on America's gun culture. Barrett is a journalist and provides a balanced and insightful look at gun manufacturers and gun control. If you have any interest in the issue, I highly recommend reading this.
    • 4/5
      This book has a great story about, is success about being in the right place at the right time verse being a genius and having a brilliant idea. In this story it seems to be both.Gaston Glock the gun maker had a brilliant idea, but not much of a plan. But Karl Walter the salesman had the plan. It is interesting to watch how these two thing play out.But it is also interesting how the timing of a FBI shootout, Washington politics and the TV show Law and Order all play their part in the raise of the Glock gun. If you like this book, then read "The Gun" by CJ Chivers. It is a similar story but on a global scale. Was the AK-47's success as the world's gun because of its brilliant design or because of the fall on the Soviet Empire?
    • 3/5
      This book is a good place to learn the history of GLOCK the company, its founder, and the people who made it the best semi-automatic handgun in the world. The book has very little intrigue, mystery, and / or excitement, so if that is what you are looking for in a book, look elsewhere. One thumb up!
    • 3/5
      A history of the upstart Austrian handgun manufacturer and the reputation it inspired, with scenes from the fight to regulate US handgun distribution. The most interesting parts for me were the pieces of criminology right near the end, not so much the profiles of the influential figures and one or two scandals along the way. The conclusion is that the importance of the brand is not quite as great as its fans and detractors seem to believe.
    • 4/5
      Initially, the subtitle of this book raised my hackles. When at the range, I’ve seen plenty of people firing handguns not the brainchild of Austrian Gaston Glock. And certainly not every American gun owner has a Glock.Yet, Barrett ultimately justifies that subtitle. While not every private American gun owner may have a Glock, most state, Federal, and local law enforcement organizations do own them and so do many elite U.S. military units. And, once you throw in the imitators of Glock, the Smith and Wesson Sigmas, the Springfield XDs, and guns made by other manufacturers, the Glock is, indeed, in the majority.How that happened, the combination of cunning business practices, dead FBI agents, terrorism fears, Hollywood productions, rap music, and honest-to-goodness technological innovation, made the foreign Glock as legendary in the American mind as Colonel Colt’s American revolvers once were is the story Barrett tells and tells concisely and interestingly.I suspect there will be at least some part of that story new to most readers.While the rabid Glock cultists who hang out at the online forum glocktalk.com may confuse innovation and high reliability with technological perfection, there is no denying that the Glock pistol brought three important innovations to handguns: a frame of Tenifer polymer to reduce weight which also made production cheaper, fewer parts than its competitors which further lowered cost and increased reliability, and putting a safety on a trigger rather than the traditional positioning on the frame of the gun.Now anyone with even a passing acquaintance with modern handguns probably knows this already, knows how Glock benefited from the wake of the infamous Miami Shootout of 1986, and knows of the bogus fears that Glock was a “plastic gun” undetectable by airport security. But Barrett, since he isn’t writing a book for gun enthusiasts per se, tells us anyway, and even those who know the broad details of those stories may learn new details. For instance, while I knew the Miami Shootout (which left two FBI agents dead, three permanently crippled, and two others injured before killing two bank robbers) could be seen as an example of bad training in available weapons and the consequences of not using body armor rather than the need to replace six-shot revolvers with 17-round Glocks, I did not know that the two robbers were unusually skilled in combat having received training served either in the Special Forcers or as a military policeman. Nor was I aware, while certain politicians and U.S. government officials were depicting the Glock as a “hijacker’s special”, the FAA and BATF had already debunked the myth of its undetectability at the airport.What gun enthusiasts might find most interesting here is the history and working of the Glock Company -- or, more accurately, whatever corporate entity actually owns and profits from Glock handguns since Gaston Glock created a nest of shell companies to avoid Austrian and American corporate income tax and protect his business from predatory attorneys looking to cash in on – mostly – questionable liability suits including the idea that gun manufacturers should be liable for the damages caused by criminals wielding their products. The man who helped create that international legal camouflage was, eventually, to be involved in an assassination attempt on Glock’s life using, of all things, a rubber mallet. Another highlight of the book is the selection of a stripper – Glock’s American branch is headquarterd in Smyrna, George and lavish corporate entertainment was held at the local Gold Club strip club – to represent the company at a Vegas trade show. She proved surprisingly adept at the theory and use of Mr. Glock’s products. And, of course, there is the fairly well known practice of Glock using a generous gun trade-in policy – as well as the very real value of its product – to make massive inroads into the hearts, minds, and budgets of America’s police departments.It was this look at the business of Glock firearms – from Glock being a completely novice gun designer (the degree of expertise he gained from Austrians expert in the field is not completely known) – to an international business selling a revered product is what interested me most, and Barrett has long experience covering this as a journalist.However, both those ignorant and also quite knowledgeable of guns will appreciate Barrett’s technical explanations. Practical experience using a Glock during a combat pistol competition came after being tutored by the well-known defensive handgun trainer Massad Ayoob.Given how Glock was often at the center of gun control debates, Barrett doesn’t avoid the politics of guns. While he notes that, however much it was the gun mentioned in rap, the actual guns used in the ‘hood were not Glocks and, apart from some high profile mass shootings, Glock was not disproportionately represented in the criminal use of guns. He also shows how Glock, given its huge government contracts, was not always a stalwart defender of Americans’ Second Amendment rights. I think Barrett is too hard on the NRA, but I concede his suggestion that state mental health records should be more available to screen gun purchasers may be valueable.So, apart from super diehard Glock enthusiasts who have paid attention to all things Glock and Glock related in the last thirty years, this book should appeal to anyone curious about this legendary weapon.