[audio difficulty] .. if race in america. he also lives right around the corner.

[applause] >> thank you were very much for that lovely introduction. i'm extremely pleased to be herf reasons. all these wonderful people, fri, and to be in the neighborhood makes it all the more enjoyable. before i get going roi had yielded a respectable social station and a comfortable life. without elevating him to the higher ranks of austrian

commerce. still, he dreamed big. the son of an austrian and railroad worker managed an inconspicuous car radio factory outside of vienna. in the garage next to his home and suburban he offered a side business with his wife. using a second hand mittal press made in russia they produced a modest volume of grass sittings for doors and windows. the metal shop expanded over time to make steel blades. the dirt ability in the price of which so impressed austria's ministry of defence that he obtained a contract to supply field knives and the next to the austrian army. the military work led to contact at the ministry where glock the occasional visitor. his eyes and ears open for new opportunity. wendi in february, 1980, he overheard a hallway conversation between two kernels that jolted his agitation. the army needed a new sidearm to

replace the antiquated world war ii peace 38. the austrian arms maker since the mid-1800s had offered to sell the military a modern fiscal with the gun fell short of the ministry says stringent specifications. generals were running out of patience. glock interrupted. what is still be possible, he asked, for another company? for his company to build on the contract? the colonel laughed. in his garage, he made engines and curtain rods. now he thought he could design a handgun? reserved manner come glock who was 50 wasn't known for his sense of humor. he was a slender man of average height with a receding hairline to the sloping shoulders and long arms a recreational swimmer he had a swimming physique and unprepossessing looks and spoke only as much as is necessary and dressed conservatively a sweater beneath his dark suit coat. he had graduated from a technical institute and received training and mechanical engineering. he worked his way of the minute

doctrine from an entry-level position with a company that made troll's. designing firearms was something far beyond his experience. glock asked the kernels to describe the hour me requirements for a new handgun. mr. glock and his credulous this city shouldn't be difficult to make such an item according to the leader of shul company account. or, as he himself had put, that i knew nothing was my advantage. asked years later but his familiarity with weapons in 1980, he admitted it was slight. i had very little training. i was just a few days in the camps of the german army. born in 1929 vienna, he was conscripted by the teenagers. i was very young in those days, 15, 16-years-old that would have to undergo some sort of military training, he said. this took place in 1984 and 1945, he explained with a notable lack of precision. how long had he served?

only two, three days. that is all. his attempt to play down his connection was unsurprising and partly admirable. many austrians of his generation and the one that preceded it did the same thing. more relevant to his role as an arms designer was his assertion that his firearms background was exceedingly limited. i saw rifle, pistol, a hand grenade, he said. i was getting acquainted when you pull a trigger it makes a boom. he was essentially a genius general contractor, a brilliant project manager when he saw this opportunity to design a new gun for the austrian military. he gathered together the leading hand gun experts of his day and basically said to them tell me what you want in a perfect handgun starting from scratch. these experts one of whom conveniently was the head of procurement for the austrian

army who later went to work for gaston glock in a pattern that would repeat itself many times over the years told him there were several crucial characteristics for a new pistol in the early 1980's. had to be very light, very durable, and it had to have a very large ammunition capacity. he took these characteristics and applied to manufacturing concept to them and these concepts achieved the goals or the key to his early success. the first one is that he made his pistol out of plastic, not out of wood and a blue steel. the material of handguns had been made of 150 years. he hired engineers from a manufacturer who were skilled in the use of industrial plastics and his idea which he derived from these experts was that a

plastic gun would be more durable and later, and because it would be later, he could make it with a larger ammunition capacity. the second design concept was the absence of a factory. generations and generations new handguns would be designed to fit the tooling that already exists and factories the were already operating. glock designed a gun without a factory and made the fact refit the gun. he used only the most modern computer control tools machines and build a factory that was exceedingly efficient allowing him to have a huge profit margins right from the start. apart from engineering, he was a man who was in the right place at the right time. timing was crucial to his success. there he was in the hallway of the defense ministry the moment people were talking about the ministry's failure to find an adequate design for a new pistol. but second, his timing was

perfect in connection with the united states as well as austria unbeknownst that the time that he started work on the pistol, the police departments all across the united states in the mid-1980s were experiencing sharply rising crime rates, and in particular, increasing the on violence related to the trafficking of crack cocaine. it became almost conventional wisdom in 1985, 1986 in cities like new york, los angeles, chicago, miami that the police were outgunned, the bad guys have more colorful weapons than the good guys. the cops were using smith west in six or five round revolvers that they used for 75 or 80 years and they felt now they needed something new and here came gaston glock with the pistol future.

in jacksonville florida a young officer in 1986 was given the assignment to determine which gun should replace the smith & wesson of the sheriff's office had used for generations. his name was lt. john rutherford and let me tell you a little bit about the process by which he chose this new gun. gun manufacturers from all over will send the sharks office their latest models, a dozen in all. rutherford and fellow officers with firearm experience gathered to examine the candidate guns. we are taking them out and looking at them, he recalled, isn't that pretty cracks you know everybody loves sig. diebold of this black box and tossed the thing open. unlike what the heck is this? i'm talking on the table. it's plastic. what the hell? there's no hammer on this thing. i literally said we don't want any crap like this and this long

it on the couch and didn't even put it back in the mix with the other guns. curiosity, however, got the better of the lieutenant rutherford. within a few days, he said, we were fighting over who was going to get the glock. it's just like shooting a revolver and that is what everybody liked about it. googled, pull the trigger and put it away. that's the beauty of it. rutherford and his colleagues had an affectionate the smith & wesson 38 with the caliber revolver had the heavy trigger, 12 to 14 pounds. shooters who train regularly can achieve accuracy with a heavy trigger but only a small minority of the copps practiced diligently. they told me all police officers to in like crazy and should all the time. in fact many don't take the meantime seriously, and even in high crime cities possessed majorities of the offices go years or maybe an entire career without getting into a gunfight. with a glock because of its

white and a steady trickle, pour marks mendicant adequate. a moderately skilled shooters begin grouping rounds and small benches near the dead center of their target. the gentle five now trigger doesn't require the sort of muscular squeeze that can cause the user to jerk the gun off the target. during a two-hour presentation to the sheriff rutherford stressed the accuracy and safety advantages. he explained that the pistol was much easier to maintain because it had only 34 parts and the it only twice or sometimes three times as many parts. you can take 50 apart and put 50 back together, he told me after mixing of all the parts and they all shoot. smith & wesson allowed its manufacturing quality to slip. the satori was similar to that of the american auto industry. gunmaker's in the united states lost ground to foreign competitors more diligent without engineering and quality control. that is how leota of course sneaked up on general motors. out of a shipment of the

revolvers three or four would malfunction right out of the box. the share of decision can quickly. we are lobbying the glock, he said. the american police market is a tremendous market, hundreds of thousands of officers in this case that eight or ten years more than half of these departments or by eating glocks. and in many of the communities, the civilian gun owning population looked at the police for guidance, will local police use is often thought of as being suitable for the civilian ownership. the civilian market is even larger by the orders of magnitude and much more lucrative because of the profit margins and the civilian side or greater. guns of course -- if you are going to seek to succeed in selling handguns, you want to do in this country. not just because of the size of the country but because the guns are woven into the american

culture. let me read a few words about that topic. in the united states guns are much more than a told law enforcement or an article of commerce. they are embedded in the country's history. by the time the constitution is frame become a tradition of private fire ownership was an aspect of daily life and of american identity. citizens soldiers defeated the british beginning with the shot heard around the world. the second amendment enshrining the principal of an unarmed populace. folklore nurtured the tradition. god may have created all men the same, but sam may be equal. guns have represented freedom and individualism and self-reliance.

the revolvers stand for the world persistence of pulp fiction detectives in the depression. henry allen a pulitzer prize-winning critic has observed. he himself as a marine veteran who shoots guns recreational the continued this election are the letcher bid of the cowboy, the double barrel shotgun is the grandfather taking his with a known elegance through the brush in search of the whale a 22 is the innocence of childhood, that spattered in ways of the rifle range of boy scout camp and afterword the smell of the number nine cleaning salt. the common determination that won world war ii. guns have another darker heritage in american life of course. one related to disorder, crying and murderous violence. depression of gangsterism 1960's urban blood shed each led to the legislation aimed at restricting gun seals anno ownership. sadr dinner specials flooded the streets in the 70's and became

emblems of the rights. in response, clint eastwood's dirty harry had the famous mechem. the glock introduced in the 1980's inherited all aspects of the american firearm heritage to do was seen as an instrument of small and security but also danger and fear. can the hand gun of choice for copps and a favorite of some demented muscular. it's black plastic and metal construction set it apart from everything on the market. suggesting modernism it yet the and efficiency. now that darker side of the american gun tradition in modern times has resulted in the gun-control movement. we have a significant section of the american society that skeptical governorship. efforts to restrict the sale and ownership of handguns were

directed at the block in particular from the moment they arrived in this country, the fact that it had such a large capacity that was made of materials that haven't traditionally been used in making guns made it a target for gun control of tickets. but time and again, beginning in the 1980's and continuing to the present, efforts to restrict the glock have backfired. gun-control initiatives that had been applied had resulted not in fewer glocks being sold and owned but few were being sold and owned. let me explain a couple of these examples. when the gun should of it was great almost immediately by muckraking newspaper columns, congressional hearings and gun control activism claiming that the glock because it was plastic presented a new threat that it would be become the favorite of hijackers because they would be able to get it through airport

screening machines. in fact, at the time, it became common to refer to it as the hijackers special. the headline to that effect all of the media. a new york city, the new york police department controls the regulation of guns in the city's within the five boroughs of new york by name. that company couldn't sell its guns here. the problem with this attack on the glock is that it was factually incorrect. most airport screening machines for x-ray machines not magnetometers, so a large dance piece of plastic shaped like a gun looks like a gun on this machine if anyone bothers to look at. moreover, the slide on busbee tenet you imagine a pistol that has a large rectangular piece on top with a solid steel in any case, and by wasted was mostly

metal. so the whole attack was just completely misconceived. i interviewed gun control advocates who were involved in this and they just conceded to me we just screwed up. but it was a terrible mistake from their point of view because by making the glock meritorious, the improved the image in the eyes of people who like guns and made it a favorite over light of the nra which might have been skeptical of and in part that was challenging the homegrown smith & wesson. in new york this issue came to the head in 1988 after a couple of years of having been banned, there was a really sensational press leak from a broken story and "the new york post" picked it up. it turned out that while no one in the city is allowed to own the glocks the police commissioner of time was in

itself carrying a glock under his coat so the top cop in the city wanted to have it but no one else should have won. "the new york post" with it's unique skill had the headline top cop words of the ban on the super gun. i interviewed the man who was the first salesman and so can you imagine a big city newspaper calling my gun the super gun if you had given me a 50 million-dollar advertising budget, $100 million advertising budget i couldn't have got attention like that to the customs from all over the country so it became known as the super gun and got this kind of free attention from that point out and there are subsequent instances where other laws and initiatives were targeted at the glock and have

counterintuitive results. the glock became a super gun in more ways than one. one of the things that set it apart was that it was embraced so quickly by hollywood. it became the gun of choice on television and in movies and this wasn't something that happened by mistake and it wasn't something that glock had to pay for. the dark and glamour of the appearance and reputation appealed to have the job to which guns going to the actors hand. let me tell you about one of those men who helped popularize the glock by hollywood. from his company headquarters in the downtown soho neighborhood of manhattan, rick supplied movies and television shows with guns, knives, bombs, machetes,

stilettos and any instrument needed for theatrical violence. washburn kept his collection behind doors in a basement vault invisible to those strolling by on greene street. a native of arkansas he came to new york in the 1970's to be an actor. he landed some minor roles a hit man in the cotton club in 1984, an agent in mississippi in 1988 and a hit man again in 1981. as a boy growing up in the country he had learned a lot about guns and offered advice on the directors who didn't know a revolver from a semi-automatic pistol for those who may not know the difference. a revolver is a gun like this smith & wesson 38 but has a cylinder global it's going to and the cylinder turns as you pull the trigger. a pistol is a gun that has a magazine and a spring loaded box that the ammunition goes into the good grip of the gun and that is without getting into the

mechanics, that's the basic difference. we have an expert in the front row. rick began charging for gun consulting and discovered he could make a much better living in the business than for performing. he worked with everyone from martin scorsese to arnold schwarzenegger. carl walter, who i mentioned earlier, the salesman in the u.s., first went to work on persuading washburn the merit in 1986. he ran the hulshof deal on the washburn recalled. he was like did you know that it's passed the parts of the regular ghanian dimond jam when a regular gumwood jim, did you know we drop the assault helicopters and pick them up and shot them? at first, he was skeptical. the 45 caliber 1911 he became deeply considered homely. i was one of those people who believed this is a to be a flash in the pan media will be popular in europe not here fellows deride of the plastic and glock

as a handgun to where. he finally took a glock 17 to a range in the far west side of manhattan the permit can legally fire a gun in the city. their volume just popping the targets like was going out of style. i found it to be handy come easy to shoot, didn't jam. suddenly i realized as a tool come as a military sidearm this would be harder to beat. in arkansas, he explained, we used to have what we call a truck done that old don use rim the back of a truck so if you saw a rabbit or squirrel you had something to shoot. in the back of the trucking got beat up. they were kind of like that to become a truck done. as the nypd officers began carrying them washburn felt it was time to give the gun entertainment industry exposure. he was providing weapons for a

television show that time on cbs called the equalizer which concerned a fictional cia operative to help ordinary people deal often violently with hoodlums, drug dealers and rapists. as the secret agent the equalizer to read the stainless steel pistol. but late in the primetime run, courtesy of washburn the characters began appearing with blocks. once the new york police department started using it, he said, we started putting them on copps and particularly detectives. washburn liked helping the company and realized he could also benefit financially from having an up-and-coming gunmaker favorably describe the pistols on reasonable terms pity he sensed the ground swell. people bodying glocks, checking them out just because they were christoff because of the notoriety. in the united states, washburn observed from the people who are most against firearms usually

end up being the best salesman for firearms. so, glock used hollywood as a way to popularize itself. but glock as a company also had a certain genius in marketing directly to its prime customers. to the police who remain and remain today the core customer base for the company and civilian gun dealers who sell on main street and these days who sell the vehicle by the internet, and glock had a truly unique way of combining the nuts and bolts the marketing with sex. >> coralville turkoman the genius salesmen would bring a couple of dozen police procurement officers and civilian gun dealers to georgia, to suburban mali into where the company has a u.s. facility for

a training course. by thursday evening the group of the top salespeople were ready to unwind. carl hosted dinners hosted by visits to the club, the city's best known venue for exotic dancing and allied entertainment thursday became known as block might. the delegation as many as 25 or 30 men was assigned to its own room on the enormous second floor above the knee and pulled lansing stage. guests could watch the action below from the balcony or retreat to the vip lounge for a lap dance. electronic music pounded come australoids polls, athletes from the nfl and the cocaine could be had. so sex wasn't on the official men you but behind closed doors she knew what transpired. for a lot of guys coming in from

out of town this was the best time they were going to have all year or in their antiyour life. you get leavitt the best strip club and have champagne you are not going to forget the experience when it comes time to choose between the glock and the smith & wesson. in the summer of 1989, he had another marketing brainstorm. he convened a meeting of more than 50 independent regional sales reps and their managers. he gave the group a special assignment. i thought we should pick up the best looking girl from among all 300 club to promote the product at the show, he told me. the shooting and hunting and outdoor trade show is the u.s. gun and ammunition industry's main conference of the year often held in las vegas. in january 1990, he planned to unveil a new model, the larger pistol that fired 10-millimeter rounds. walters on view was that the company said export some of the

sparkle to the shot show hiring a professional stripper's might turn some heads. the audition that evening lasted until midnight. the delegation settle on the performer in the early twenties and the strikingly tall young woman when walter asked if she would be willing to promote it in las vegas she readily agreed. he told the dublin he would have to go through a standard glock training. the stripper attended a program alongside the personal from the defense department and several federal agencies and police departments. the presence on the firing range costs a significant. they came and asked who is this girl? he didn't want to kill federal agents and police specialists they were training with a neurotic dancer, said he didn't. they all thought she was with the cia. [laughter] the heightened anticipation to draw maximum attention to the 10-millimeter pistol walter

created an enormous billboard on the highway from the loss figures airport to downtown strip. the convention attendees were greeted by the dazzling smile and head turning figure with the slogan the hottest hand in town see the new millimeter of the show. at the show retailers and wholesalers bought a peek at dillon. the store posed for pictures and signed eight by tens. by the general acclamation it was the hit of the hot show. a lot of guys from the mom and pop gun stores have their years polled by to a federally licensed firearm from long island. you are talking real excitement. sex and guns they must have taken a thousand workers before the first day. people came up and said i will give you a million dollar or right now if i can go to bed. walter recounted. he discouraged me extracurricular contact the finnegan was less vigorous and

walter didn't tucker in that light. the award ceremony marking the end of the show, dylan was called to the stage and given a plaque honoring her as the best all-around model. shooting the industry magazine reported after seeing them it is easy to see why the dealers were anxious to get glocked. that's all i'm going to read from the book and i will say that next week my lovely wife julie and i are going to the show and we can only hope we had similar success marketing. [applause] questions are in order if there are any and there's a microphone so our friends from c-span can record your thoughts. estimates before. i assume that was your article i saw in the magazine a while

back. >> when this came out in the 80's i remember hearing that there was a ceramic chamber there was available, a ceramics lied to the estimate interesting story behind that that could be smuggled onto airplanes and i was wondering if that was true what was the company's explanation for that. >> well, part of that had to do with this notion the gun was in visible to the airport detection machines which turned out not to be true which didn't stop congress from having hearings on it by the week. was flown over from austria to a big circus that was an extraordinary marketing opportunity. the ceramic part of the story is a whole different mix that was derived from the glock's tebeau in the movie diehard to. in a die-hard ii, bruce willis plays a detective in the movie

is involved in almost hard to describe in the straightforward language they are defending the airport against terrorists and bring to crash planes and the terrorists are in the airport and at one point bruce willis shouts to another, and says did you see that point he just pulled a glock on me. that is a german gun, ceramic machines can't see it. now, every single fact in that speech was wrong. [laughter] the gun wasn't made in germany it was made in austria. there was no model called the glock seven. ceramica was not involved in constructing it and you can't see on the detection machines. this speech, like "the new york post" headline and so many other similar episodes was pure gold. the gun aficionado's had a complete field day making fun of the speech. t-shirts were made up and all of

this was done for free. the glock benefited from all of this. that is the origin from the ceramic gun from germany that i guess you can think bruce willis for that. anybody else? yes, the man the front. >> i know that people's possessions get very cemented about these things on both sides. so i'm wondering if weather in the various contacts you have with the speed and's associates and salesman did they feel the need at any time to address the moral dimensions of profited off of the weapon? >> i'm not sure people work for glock or any other gun manufacturer view the dimension in the sense that you were

suggesting. by and large people who manufacture and market the guns see them as tools and as products that are intended to be deadly and when used properly or potentially dangerous but not necessarily dangerous. certainly people who waited not interview because he refused to talk to me but i know personally because i read every the position he's ever given under oath and talked to practically everyone who worked for him over the years saw it as a masterpiece. he saw it in a morally positive light. is a new tool that protected and armed officers and soldiers. was a something people could have in their homes to protect their families and when asked of situations where there might have been a gunfight or even more horrendous a psychotic mass

shooting and it has been used in a number of such shootings the company's standard response was for better or for worse and i'm not offering my opinion about this, it would have been better if more people had glocked on the scene because they could have shot the bad guy. this is a perspective in some settings i can tell you is taken as being completely logical and matter-of-fact millions and millions of your fellow countrymen. so there's a tremendous divide in the attitudes petraeus too question. how much did it cost? >> if you going to a main street gun store and you are going to pay resale, you will probably end up paying $600 in change.

if you go on line right now on the web, you can find the glock offer for four rendered $99 for taxes. many people buy a used guns. there is a huge market in automobiles and other durable products so if you buy a glock that has been used you can get it for less but it's not an inexpensive gun in this kind of mid to upper range you don't give in to the retail gun store and buy it for $600 you borrow someone's saturday night special of will do the trick. >> have you shot a glock and if so where did it feel like and

how did you do? >> several different questions there. yes, i have fired a glock on many occasions. it is if the experience is as i describe here. it's quite easy to learn how to use to read it works very readily. it's intuitive. you can compare for a sample to another semi-automatic pistol like the beretta which has an external safety device and you have to think much more about it. is the safety off from is the safety on, the glock has none of those features. critics of the gun control of the kids who see the glock in a dark light say that the lack of the features meeks too easy to fire the glock and plame vose features for accidental discharge. there is a debate over that. but i personally found the gun

easy to learn how to use and quite straightforward to read i would say i'm a fairly mediocre shot interestingly though my wife, julie is a crack shot. [laughter] and then people will tell you that is if you take the to neophytes, the man who will have all kinds of bills and ideas of how you should a gun and showing off and so forth will be mediocre and the woman that has no preconception and is listening to the gun instructor will do the right thing and hit the target and that is exactly our experience and i wouldn't mess with julie. [laughter] >> you talk about how the company has been managed over the years and a unique events in history for the audience?

terrie >> brian who asked that question is my former colleague and my great friend for life and worked closely with me on the first article that we did for business week about the glock back in 2009 and knows well when we answer to that question one of the most fascinating things over time as it has been phenomenally successful is the crazy high profit margins diluted to earlier the factory designed to make just what is it to be 70% or just unheard of. the company has increasingly been subject to a kind of gothic

dark overhang in terms of its management with extraordinary rivalries, people accusing each other of terrible crimes, and in 1999, glock's mean financial advisor who was a luxembourg based finance year hired a hitman to kill gaston glock because he had discovered the financier had been stealing from him, so the finance year high your a former french legionnaires and former professional to kill glock. strangely he didn't bring a gun. the plot was to make it seem as if he was 7-years-old at the time had fallen on a flight of stairs. the wood of him on the hit a

couple of times and pushing down a flight of stairs and an underground parking garages where this transpired. he was an ornery old cuss and in very good shape. when he arrived shortly after, the former french legionnaires and professional rustler is unconscious, knocked out and lobby and on top of gaston glock, who had apparently rendered him useless through his bear hands. no one would believe it and get we've looked at it from every angle and it seems in plausible and that is what would happen and the former finance years serving the balance of a 20 year sentence in the maximum security in luxembourg interestingly the hit man got out after seven years and no one knows where he

is. just adding more mystery but that's the way things worked in the realm of glock. >> the >> they want to hear you. >> where does he stand in terms of the rating of billionaires'? >> interesting question. >> i have another question. >> all right. the short answer is we don't know. glock, the glock companies are privately-owned in austria and there's very little public date as we all know exactly how much cash he has. he wouldn't rank high on the fortune list the forbes list and that is the normal period that

we have just been through with our own financial world where incomes have gotten crazily out of whack so this is a man who makes tangible products as opposed to conjures things up on wall street, so his fortune is best but we don't know how much. >> in terms of his fortune, does he know where any good philanthropic deeds for example? >> no. [laughter] the gentleman that. my question is this, given the dominance is an issue within to the police departments over the two plus decades what sort of performance record has accumulated in the realm of

factual cameras they've gotten into? >> it's an interesting question. there is no national database that describes the performance of one firearm with another. cingular inevitably in the realm of anecdote talking to the veteran police officers and asking them to compare and having to judge their credibility based on the way the we judge anyone's credibility. there have been police departments that have had problems adjusting in the first place. there's been cities like washington that have had very pronounced problems, but in the end those problems turned out to be much more a function of training than they did with the actual tool itself. i have an episode that i described in the washington metropolitan police department where they had a large number of accidental discharges after the switch. but the police department itself in time basically admitted that

this is we hired a bunch of recruits, stock the clock in their hands, didn't send it to the range, send them on the street and guess what if you don't tell someone to keep their finger of the trigger until they want to shoot they are going to shoot themselves in the foot. in those bad experiences, but overall, you see the large sophisticated police departments like the nypd, which adopted the glock and stuck with it for 20 years and they are so big they can choose any product they want and they choose the glock along with, you know, the saving smith & wesson comparable weapons in the city police officers can choose from that list and i told that about two-thirds of the officers in the city choose the glock. >> i can't wait to read the book. how does it relate to the nra,

does it help to fund it? and what happens after these mass shootings like the glock used with gabbie giffords and the tucson shooting. and the cover of the guns to mexico. >> several very good questions. first of all, the nra. the answer to that question forces me to slightly amend my answer about whether gaston glock is involved in any philanthropy. the companies in fact are extremely philanthropic when it comes to nonprofits like the nra, and also to the support of wounded soldiers, the families of the law enforcement officers who lost their lives and so forth. so in all seriousness i want to amend that earlier, he had millions of dollars to these organizations, and obviously

when you give money to the nra is used mainly to support the wives of copps, but it is used to support the nra political activity directly or indirectly as well. so glock is a huge player in the gun industry and is a part of the constituency that the nra serves even though if you ask them head-on what is your business ac is to defend the rights of the gun owners and they like to play down their links to the industry. now, mass shootings, one of the things that is distinctive is that it has turned up in a disproportionate number of shootings beginning in 1991 on the few years after it showed up in the country with the horrendous shooting ensure some of you will remember in texas and a cafeteria where more than 20 people were killed and another handgun and when the

mass shooting took place, and resembled in many ways the shooting of the virginia tech as you mentioned and the more recent terrible tragedy in tucson involving the representative. you have severely demented people, but not so demented that they haven't chosen their weapons rationally and they've chosen the glock because of that large magazine. the shooter in tucson had a standard glock with an unusual magazine, a 33 round magazine so large that approach to doubt about this far below the gun. no ordinary law-abiding gun owner would really bother with an awkward apartment like that. you wouldn't go to the range and sticky 33 around, you might but there would be no reason for it. what happens after feasting

squawks what happens is what happens in the counterintuitive world of guns in general. at bloomberg, which is my sister operation or the parent operation of the magazine i work for had a terrific story a day or two after the tucson shooting and which one of my colleagues tracked down statistics showing that they have sold out all of the across arizona the day after the shooting. well, the quick answer is because people might think it's so effective it wanted to have it themselves. but people who enjoy owning guns fear if a gun is used in a notorious crime it will then become subject to restrictions so they want to buy it before it goes away. that's what happened and it's happened repeatedly over time.

again, for better or for worse that is the story. fast and furious, which is the scandal involving the atf, also come incidentally in arizona, where by undercover atf guys were allowing mexican bad guys to buy thousands of weapons without any means to keep track of them in the weapons ended up in mexico and the whole thing came to light when the border patrol agent was killed on the border and a couple of these weapons were found at the scene of the crime. that whole scandal which is a fascinating episode in and of itself is mostly about military-style rifles using more weapons that they had even larger magazines. it's not so much about handguns. so it does not play a central role in that particular fiasco that we are referring to.

>> how have the american competitors reacted to the great success? has inspired innovation, consolidation? >> of first smith & wesson which is the main incumbent, smith & wesson is the gm of the gun industry reacted just like gm did. so will toyota and honda, no one will look for one to buy those, and got caught with his pants down and lost a huge amount of business to glock. then the next step was they tried to knock it off and they produced a pistol but looked a lot like the glock that wasn't as good and they sued them for the patent and settled out of court and they had to adjust the gun. today smith & wesson produces

guns to the naked eye of them on expert quite similar to the glock and far more comparable to the quality. people who are devotees tell you they are better. smith & wesson police called the m&p for the military and police. like the glock is a good and reliable firearm, so basically the rivals have caught up and they've caught up by imitating it and then make a slight improvement and the question going out into the future from a corporate point of view is whether the ring to figure out how to come up with something new and something different. and if it doesn't, when in the old man meets his reward, he's 82 now, my guess is that another company collectively by the glock because it is still a very valuable brand and enfranchise, but its weakness is that it hasn't innovative as much in the

recent years. glock isn't well in case anyone here is hoping to buy a gun company isn't out of the action altogether. just this summer he got remarried to a 31-year-old woman yes, ma'am. >> i'm wondering if you could talk more about the glock as the object of fantasy, and particularly with civilian purchasers whether you think that they buy it for its design or for its aura. >> aura is certainly a big part of the glock story. one element that i haven't done it mentioned is of course the glock is the semi-official done of all pop users.

there are literally scores of hip-hop songs that refer to it by name. there are six or eight prominent rap performers who have incorporated it into their station in, which doesn't seem to me like a big competitive idea since i think they get confused with each other. but anyway, so aura is very important. when it comes to somebody who's going to spend 550 or $600 on a gun i think aura plays a role, and certainly the glock's reputation for efficiency and sort of every man common sense get the job done nothing fancy just the fact that really the aura that appeals to the

hundreds of thousands if not millions of law-abiding owners with purchasing which is not to say they enjoy the bruce willis by hard business. there is no denying that part of the appeal of guns is the power and the fact they are lethal and if you pick one up and fire one, you know what i'm talking about. it is a memorable experience, and it's also fun. it's fun to shoot guns which is something begun skeptics don't absorb enough and in failing to observe that they don't understand part of the appeal of firearms for those people who owned them and enjoy using them. >> i was wondering how you got

interested in glock initially, and reporting of the book you change your views about guns and gun control. >> i started reporting on and writing about the gun industry in the late 1990's with my former colleague and friend, vanessa who is named in the back here at "the wall street journal". and i started in on those stories and then vanessa joined me soon after we started because there was a lot of mass litigation against the gun industry at that time following on the mass litigation of the tobacco industry. many of the same lawyers in the company's once the lawsuits were settled the turned and put self-conscious returned the gun industry as their next target. they engaged municipalities and

counties as their clients, and for interesting reasons, those lawsuits didn't work and didn't get any kind traction the tobacco lawsuits did and vanessa and i sort of chronicle that and got interested in the industry itself. and for my dollar there is no -- br on a business journalist in large part, there is no business industry that is more fascinating than the gun industry. the gun industry has its own amendment to the constitution. it has a place in american history that is unrivaled by the maker of any of their productive. you can see cars are very american and fast food is very american, but, you know, they're has been minuteman and the symbol of the american revolution and guns are right there and there's the cowboy in the 19th century and there's the selma detective and then bruce willis and on and on and on.

so the marketing fascinating. guns are one of these symbols that divide american society and politics in fascinating ways and it's right up there with issues like abortion or homosexuality. people have passionate and intuitive viewers and in the case of guns, that has played very much into how the guns are sold and how they are marketed, and so forth. to me it is an almost irresistible story. to put it another way you don't need anybody in the gun industry who is more, everybody's interesting, they have an interesting story. and the product is interesting and i enjoy learning about it and i enjoy doing at. i don't run away from that fact. it's fun to go to the range, and i get a kick out of it the way a lot of people would get a kick out of it.

>> okay. the microphone man -- >> is there any significant black market or major theft of guns where the price point is preventing that? >> there's a huge black market for guns and there are millions of guns were owned. the glock is not distinctive as a crime done as best we can tell from the statistics that are available. the statistics are sparse because the nra and its allies in congress have found the hands of the atf and made a very difficult to collect with gun trace data and to disseminate the data. so it's actually the number of years since the data has been