The Austrian was 94 years old: arms billionaire Gaston Glock is dead

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The famous Austrian pistol developer Gaston Glock (†81) has passed away. The entrepreneur and billionaire died on Wednesday, his company announced in the evening.

The Austrian made a name for himself worldwide as the developer of the Glock pistol. The rather discreet Glock founded his arms company in Lower Austria in 1963, and the arms company now has branches all over the world.

The plastics engineer Glock, born in 1929, initially produced consumer goods made of plastic and metal, as well as knives at his headquarters in Deutsch-Wagram, northeast of Vienna. When the Austrian army needed a new pistol in 1980, Glock offered to develop the pistol – and invented the legendary Glock 17.

Survived assassination attempt

The company, with around 2,000 employees and a profit of more than 146 million euros last year alone, now supplies the Austrian armed forces to the armies of France and Great Britain, among others. In the US, about 80 percent of police officers now carry Glock pistols.

In Hollywood films, heroes and villains are often equipped with this weapon. Bruce Willis in “Die Hard 2” and Tommy Lee Jones in “On the Hunt,” among others, carried a Glock.

Glock himself rarely appeared in public. In 1999 he survived an assassination attempt in an underground parking garage in Luxembourg. A former business partner of Glock’s who ordered the hammer attack was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison. The War of the Roses also made headlines following Glock’s divorce from his first wife Helga, who unsuccessfully sued him for $500 million in 2014. (AFP)

Source: Blick