America’s Top Gun

Bloomberg Businessweek has a fascinating article on how, starting from nothing, Glock has come to dominate the American handgun market. You may not be surprised to discover that ill-conceived gun control legislation played a major part in shifting gun owners’ preferences towards ever larger magazine capacities and so on…

When Karl Walter, a firearm salesman based in the U.S., first picked up a Glock during a visit to a Vienna gun shop in the spring of 1984, his reaction was, “Jeez, that’s ugly.” The squared-off pistol lacked the blued-steel frame and polished wooden grips of a classic American revolver. Its black matte finish seemed homely. “But still, I was extremely curious why the Austrian army bought it,” Walter says. “There had to be more to it than what meets the eye initially.”

A native Austrian, Walter sold imported rifles to American police departments, traveling from town to town in a motor home custom-fitted as a rolling gun showroom.