Merchants of Death----Fresh Air discusses Glock

Interesting show on Fresh Air with Terry Gross today. A discussion of the history of the Glock pistol. Those Austrian bastards really are merchants of death.

You can listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/24/145640473/how-the-glock-became-americas-weapon-of-choice

The produced the pistol with a plastic frame, with a 17-round magazine, with no external safety and a very light trigger pull.

They were very cheap to produce, but they set a high price on them to make them more desirable to the gun nuts. Because the prices were so inflated, they were able to give huge discounts to police departments who wanted them. The police departments just had to trade in their old guns and they'd give them shiny new Glocks. Or dull new Glocks.

Guns with 17 round magazines were banned for a time. Glock knew this was coming, so their production went into overtime. They were producing guns around the clock so they had a huge stock of them. When the U.S. banned high capacity magazines, they allowed the guns that had already been produced to continued to be sold. So Glock was able to continue selling all these guns they had produced. The fact that they were "banned" made the price go up.

Then...

Glock introduced a larger, .40 cabiler pistol. They offered it to police departments. The deal they offered: They would give the guns to the police department for free--all they had to do was trade in their old 9mm Glocks with 17 round clips! Guns which were now worth a fortune on the used gun market.

Glock dumped these guns on the used gun market and made a fortune. Police found their own old guns now being used against them. When cities tried to sue the gun industry accusing them of dumping guns on the market that would be used for no legal purpose, Glock responded by pointing out that these were the cops' own guns they were talking about.

There was also talk about Glocks in TV and movies. They were used by the New York City police, the police department featured in countless movies.

In that one skyscraper movie with Bruce Willis, he delivers some sort of soliloquy about the Glock.


The gun stuff in movies has been annoying me for years. I remember a time when we never had to hear about what kind of guns people had---they had them. They'd wave them around and shoot each other freely. But the movies didn't function as commercials for any particular brand. What kind of gun did Mannix carry? Or Steve McGarrett ( the REAL Steve McGarrett, not the unshaven slob they have now)?

I recently watched a made-for-French-and-German TV miniseries, Carlos. I'll say more about it later. The movie had more cigarette smoking than in any movie I've ever seen. Cigarettes and guns. The revolutionaries loved guns and cigarettes.

This always seemed ironic to me. Look at the stodgy, right-wing amoral scum running the tobacco industry and the gun industry----how could these be symbols of revolution? You look at the beatniks smoking their cigarettes and these people with their guns. Have they ever looked at a gun magazine? Ever seen an NRA spokesman on TV? Ever seen these tobacco industry vermin? That's what they ought to be showing the kids! Look at these people! Is that what you want to be?