Glock: The Rise of America's Gun

by Paul M Barrett

  No brand of modern firearm commands greater loyalty than Glock. “Glockmeisters” see themselves as rugged, un-romantic, and above all, lethally effective—like the gun they love. The website Glock Talk ( glocktalk.com ) sponsors scores of online forums where Glock “fanboys” (and the occasional interloping “hateboy”) dissect a range of topics connected to the pistol. The obsession and vituperation characteristic of the Internet are often evident. Virtual symposia parse the qualities of the Glock, usually in service of proving its superiority over rival handguns. One rambling group discussion in 2010 addressed the similarities between the Glock and the AK-47 semiautomatic rifle. The two firearms share a reputation for reliability in the field, even in the absence of diligent maintenance. The reason? “Loose tolerances and a simple design with few parts,” noted a participant from Colorado using the screen name Voyager 4520. “More room for dirt before the friction becomes too much for the slide to cycle,” agreed Ambluemax. The AK-47, invented in Russia, does not incorporate polymer, but its lack of delicacy made it a favorite of the militaries of the old Soviet bloc. It can last for decades and rarely jams. Children can be taught to use it, as demonstrated by the youthful ranks of African guerrilla armies. Glock, wrote Vis35 of Alaska, “is the AK-47 of handguns.”

  Glockmeisters who stray even momentarily from slavish devotion risk ostracism. Dean Speir, the Long Island firearm dealer and gunzine writer who helped break the Suffolk County ban on Glock in the late 1980s, made a habit of pointing out that “Glock Perfection” was a marketing device not to be taken literally. He used his own website, The Gun Zone ( thegunzone.com ), to compile instances when substandard ammunition, improper shooting technique, or a factory flaw led to Glock malfunctions. Glock Talk regulars pilloried Speir for his apostasy and effectively banished him from their site. “Speir has very little knowledge about firearms; does not tell the truth; lies; prevaricates,” ranted WalterGA. “I have from a reliable source that his I.Q. is less than that of an unborn rhinoceros.”

  In fact, Speir is a meticulous if prickly gadfly—and a loyal Glock owner. “All critical thinking skills are checked at the gate of the Tenifer Temple,” he told me. “Polymer is the highest power, and Gaston Glock is the combination prophet-and-deity.”

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  Nationally known guardians of the American firearm ethos early on helped define the Glock’s everyman (and every-woman) practicality. Marion Hammer, a legendary NRA figure from Florida, told a story in 1989 about why she switched from carrying a Colt revolver in her purse to a Glock. Several years earlier, she said, she had been cornered in a Tallahassee parking garage late one night by no fewer than six men. She brandished her Colt, and, thank goodness, the assailants fled.

  “The revolver I was carrying had six shots, and there were six men,” Hammer noted. “What if I ran out of shots?” With seventeen rounds in her Glock pistol, she felt more secure. When it comes to ammo, in Hammer’s view, more is better, and more is what you get with the Glock.

  Glock cultivates devotion to its product with the American gun industry’s most diligent customer-loyalty program. The company-underwritten Glock Shooting Sports Foundation sponsors a series of target competitions limited to owners of the Austrian pistol. For a modest $25 annual fee, GSSF members gain access to events held at ranges around the country. “My whole family and I had a great time at the Beaver State Ballistic Challenge last week,” D.W. of Washington State wrote to the GLOCK Report in 2010 (correspondents to the newsletter are identified only by initials). “This year my wife, sister, brother-in-law, and son joined us. At eleven years old, it was my son’s very first match, and now I can’t get him to take his GLOCK cap off.… We experienced the same thing when my daughter started shooting at the same age. Very cool!” The letter was accompanied by a photo of a smiling boy in a Glock hat and sound-reducing earmuffs, pointing at a cardboard target punctured by bullet holes.

  The gun manufacturer and the vendors that feed off its reputation supply all manner of Glock paraphernalia: clocks, key chains, playing cards, lamps, and custom license plates. Curvaceous pinup model Candy Keane grips a Glock in online lingerie photos. GSSF members submit images to the GLOCK Report of Glock-shaped birthday cakes and babies in T-shirts that read FUTURE GLOCK OWNER . A father from Florida submitted a snapshot of his blond daughter at her wedding, raising her gown to reveal a shapely thigh and a Glock 19 tucked snuggly in her silk garter. Her kneeling husband stares at the gun, enraptured. “He enjoyed the surprise,” the proud dad wrote in 2009, “and he promised to love, honor, and shoot GLOCKs with the princess.”

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  I did not grow up with guns, although my father earned a marksmanship award with his M-1 when he served in the army at Fort Dix in the late 1950s. As an adult, I have fired handguns and rifles from time to time as a part of my journalistic work covering the firearm industry. While researching the mechanics and use of the Glock for this book, I took some private lessons and participated in competitions sponsored by the International Defensive Pistol Association. A private organization, the IDPA promotes “combat shooting” skills and has chapters in gun-friendly precincts throughout the United States and abroad. Despite the military-sounding terminology, combat shooting refers to techniques for defending against armed aggressors in a civilian setting. In contrast to stationary target shooting, IDPA teaches its members how to draw and fire in unfolding circumstances of simulated danger.

  IDPA is not officially affiliated with Glock, but it might as well be. During my visits to the First Coast IDPA chapter, which meets at a range outside of Jacksonville, roughly 75 percent of the members competed with Glocks, and most of the rest used American- or Croatian-made Glock knockoffs. A few people shot Berettas or Sigs, and a handful of old-timers brought S&W revolvers.

  In preparation for my maiden IDPA match, I sought individual instruction from self-defense expert and gun writer Massad Ayoob and his girlfriend, Gail Pepin, a champion shooter in her own right. Ayoob and Pepin live in a one-story house on several verdant acres about ninety minutes west of Jacksonville. Step one was learning to draw. “Everyone has to start somewhere,” Gail said charitably.

  In an IDPA match, the gun starts in your holster, often covered by a jacket to replicate the experience of carrying a concealed weapon. Florida requires gun owners who obtain carry permits to keep their weapons hidden in public. Concealment is thought to discourage precipitate gunplay. Gail explained that one of the most dangerous parts of shooting is getting the gun out of the holster and clear of your clothing without accidental discharge. This is especially so when using a Glock, she said, because it lacks an external safety switch. It is always “on” and ready to fire.

  Rookies tend to grab the weapon too abruptly, putting the index finger immediately on the trigger or tangling themselves in their overgarment. First rule: sweep the jacket back with the shooting hand and grasp the gun with index finger extended outside of the trigger guard. “Do not touch that trigger,” Gail said, “until you are prepared to destroy something.”

  Just to be safe, she demonstrated with a hard rubber dummy Glock. She handed the yellow fake to me, and I imitated her deliberate motion, withdrawing the pistol from the plastic holster on my belt and pointing it straight in front of me. We were standing in her kitchen, aiming at an empty Coke can on a couple of telephone books on top of the Formica counter. I held the imitation Glock in the two-handed crush grip, arms locked at eye level. It was amazing how much false muscle memory I had to overcome from decades of television and movies. My instinct was to swing the weapon up at the ceiling as I drew. Actors do that in Hollywood, Gail explained, but it is risky showboating. Point the gun only where you will shoot: directly at the target. The proper movement is economical, almost robotic.

  At that moment, Massad shouted some encouragement from the living room. I turned in his direction, unthinkingly sweeping the dummy Glock ninety degrees to my right. “Whoa, partner,” Mas said. “You do that, and you’ll get kicked off the range before y
ou even start.” Another unbreakable rule: put the gun back in the holster before turning away from the target.

  “Anything that barrel aims at you should be prepared to destroy,” Gail reiterated slowly, as if I were not very bright. “OK, let’s do it again.”

  I drew one hundred times in the cramped kitchen that afternoon. Gail showed me how to draw while backing up toward the refrigerator and stepping sidewise in the direction of the sink. Combining the movements felt like spinning plates on sticks while riding a unicycle. And this was with a harmless imitation weapon.

  “If you can’t get comfortable with it, you just don’t shoot,” Gail said. Like many avid gun owners, she demonstrated an obsessive dedication to safety. We all read in the newspaper about people who accidentally shoot themselves or, worse, their child. But as a result of more safety training, better storage practices, and a decline in hunting, the rate of reported gun accidents has fallen 80 percent since 1930.

  “Practice tonight in your motel room,” Gail told me.

  I had three days to figure out how to draw and shoot before firing nine-millimeter rounds at an imaginary hostage taker while darting through a facsimile of a shopping mall. The next day we would go live on the practice range behind Gail’s and Massad’s house; Friday was the competition in Jacksonville. I was going to have a long night at the motel with the fake yellow Glock.

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  Gail Pepin, at first glance, does not seem particularly threatening, but she would be the wrong five-foot-tall former obstetrical nurse to hassle on a dark street corner. The gun safe she and Ayoob have at home contains more than two dozen weapons. The ammunition shed out back resembles a small military depot. In the supermarket, at Walmart—pretty much everywhere—Pepin carries a handgun concealed in a holster on her hip. She sometimes has another, smaller weapon strapped to her ankle, as a backup. Ayoob also carries, usually a Glock. They see the world as a dangerous place in which it is simply intelligent to be prepared for trouble. Falling crime rates since the mid-1990s do not console them. Like many gun owners who carry, they find last night’s local television news report of an armed robbery at the neighborhood 7-Eleven more compelling than the statistically small chance of being the unlucky customer paying for a Slurpee when a bad guy attacks.

  Ten years ago, Pepin was living outside her native Chicago, working in a hospital not far from O’Hare Airport. She didn’t grow up in a gun family and had never owned one. She thought of herself as fairly liberal. She and a group of friends decided one day on a lark to try shooting handguns. “Let’s see what this is all about,” Pepin thought.

  So they got Illinois gun permits and took a basic NRA safety course. They went shooting at an indoor range. “I got more into it than the rest of the group,” Pepin said. “When I went to go shoot, I could think of nothing else but shooting. I had to focus on where my feet were, where my shoulders were, where my hands were, where the gun was: 100 percent focused on shooting. I had a stressful job in the hospital. You know, labor and delivery is number one for lawsuits.… Shooting was my stress release … like a Zen thing.”

  But not a laid-back Zen thing. “I’ve been a student of one thing or another my whole life,” Pepin explained. “I’m always trying to learn new things.” She’s also highly competitive. Most of the people at the shooting ranges around Chicago were men. “I was the only woman who shot with this group at the time. I had a lot to prove, so I had to just get better and better and better.”

  The perpetual student, Pepin, then in her early forties, heard about Ayoob as a lecturer. “If you ever thought about taking this class, take it, because it’s life-changing,” a friend told Pepin. The friend was a Chicago police officer who seemed to know what he was talking about. “When he said that,” she recalled, “I said I better find out what this is.” Significant eye contact in the classroom led to a date. Pepin came around to carrying a handgun all the time. “It sure was life-changing,” she said, smiling. She and Ayoob had a long-distance romance for several years (his first marriage had ended). For the past five years they have lived together in north-central Florida, where gun ownership is common and the weather is conducive to outdoor target practice.

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  Driving in their Ford SUV, Pepin and Ayoob lead a monthly caravan east along US Route I-10 to Jacksonville for the IDPA shoot. According to the rules, competitors must “use practical handguns and holsters that are suitable for self-defense use. No ‘competition only’ equipment is permitted in IDPA matches.” Glocks fit the bill, and both Ayoob and Pepin frequently use one from their collection.

  On one of the days I attended, five squads of fifteen competitors each faced a series of imaginary life-threatening scenarios. In one, the participant was wandering a shopping mall when shots rang out. Another put us in the shoes of a pizza-delivery person who encountered potentially fatal circumstances. Retreat was not offered as an option. We were armed, and we were going to address the situation. The police play no role in these simulations.

  At the sound of a buzzer, a competitor drew his or her weapon and began shooting at cardboard and metal cutouts representing an army of bad guys. We each ran the drill individually, with a range officer in a red T-shirt and ball cap standing nearby and watching closely for safety violations. The shooting distances varied from three yards to twenty. Most of the targets were stationary, but a few waggled back and forth on springs or moved on wheels along tracks. Innocent bystanders were indicated by targets with open hands stenciled in Day-Glo colors. There are penalties for hitting an innocent.

  Competitors moved in and out of mock buildings and along blind passages constructed from home-insulation material stretched between tall poles. There was a great deal of scampering and ducking for cover. The ammunition was live, and the sound deafening, which is why everyone wore ear protection.

  All the shooting was done in one direction, with the bullets piercing the targets (most of the time) and landing in ten-foot-high earthen hills along the back side of the range. Competitors were measured on the amount of time it took them to place two rounds within a designated kill zone on each target. You could fire as often as you liked, but penalty points were added to a competitor’s score for errant shots.

  Mas Ayoob’s turns drew the most attention. He was a national and regional champion in his younger days. Five-ten and sinewy—his chain-smoking retards his appetite—Ayoob, sixty-one, moved nimbly on the balls of his feet. He fired quickly in short bursts. So swiftly did he eject empty magazines from the grip of his Glock and insert fresh ones, I had trouble seeing what he was doing. His raw times were among the lowest, and he collected few penalty seconds for inaccuracy.

  Gail Pepin shot at a more deliberate pace, her rounds erupting in a steady cadence. She rarely fired more than twice at each target, because her aim was flawless—every shot a kill. At the end of the four-hour match, she had the best score for accuracy in the entire seventy-five-person competition, men and women combined. This was no great surprise. Although she didn’t get serious about shooting until middle age, Pepin was now the IDPA women’s champion in Florida and Georgia. “You can run, but you’ll just die tired,” she likes to say. Fortunately, she has never had the need to shoot a real person.

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  John Davis, who also competed on the Ayoob squad with his wife, Mary, loaned me an old Glock 17 for the morning. I had already trained for hours with Ayoob and Pepin, close friends of the Davises. “This is the best gun for a newbie,” Ayoob said of the Glock.

  During my preparation for the IDPA match, Ayoob had started me slowly, drawing back the slide and letting it snap forward to load the first round into the firing chamber. I stood in his backyard range about seven yards from a cardboard target with the vague shape of a human but no personal features. My left foot was in front of my right; my arms, straight and locked.

  “Keep the wrist firm,” Ayoob said. “Put your finger on the trigger now and squeeze smoothly, slowly. No rush.” I lined up the single spike of the fron
t sight within the U of the rear sight.

  Bam! The Glock fired with a gentle recoil. I lined it up again. Bam, bam! Even less of a jump now that I had adjusted my right hand to hold the gun as high as possible on the grip, as Ayoob suggested.

  “Not bad,” he said. I hit the target on all three initial shots. I emptied the ten-round magazine, and Pepin handed me a fresh one. I racked the slide myself, aimed, placed my finger on the trigger, and squeezed. I fired steadily with no difficulty. The Glock is easy to shoot and does not demand great strength. A .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, by contrast, requires a real tug—and rewards you with a firm kick.

  When I was through practicing, I took my finger off the trigger, lowered the pistol, removed the magazine, checked the chamber to make sure it was empty, and pointed the weapon downrange. I pulled the trigger again, as instructed, to make really sure it was empty.

  I had created a circle of holes about three or four inches in diameter, almost all of them in what would be the upper chest of the headless form. My heart was beating quickly. I wanted to go again.

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  Shooting in competition several days later—with the start buzzer going off, time being kept, and the need to move steadily while firing—was a challenge of a different order. I chose to emulate the tortoise rather than the hare and still missed some of the trickier targets altogether.

  I did better as the relatively stationary besieged pizza delivery guy than as the passerby moving through the mall where a gunman has taken hostages (one of whom I inadvertently hit, hurting my score). Shooting while maintaining cover was difficult. The Glock’s smooth trigger pull and comfortable ergonomics did not compensate much when I felt off balance.

  To my surprise, I did not come in last place. Out of the seventy-five competitors, I finished ahead of two people, one of them a female prison guard. Pepin noted that I was probably the only participant with so little experience. “You did good,” she said, “and you didn’t shoot yourself, which is always a plus.”