Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun (10 page)

Colt’s guns became known as powerful, reliable, and durable, a reputation much like the Glock’s later on. After several years of difficulty getting his business off the ground, Colt had a series of breakthroughs winning endorsements from prominent lawmen and military officers, foreshadowing the path Karl Walter followed with the Glock. One of Colt’s earliest champions was Captain Samuel Walker of the Texas Rangers. In 1844, newspapers reported that Walker and fifteen of his mounted men, armed with Colts, fought off some eighty Comanche Indians. “People throughout Texas are anxious to procure your pistols,” Walker wrote to the gun maker in the sort of testimonial that Colt reproduced in illustrated pamphlets. (In the 1800s, “pistol” and “revolver” were used interchangeably.) Two years later, Walker, by then an officer in the Army, collaborated with Colt to develop a .41-caliber model. The US government ordered one thousand of the “Walker Colts” for use in the Mexican-American War, allowing Sam Colt to get his company aloft. Colt built one of the most advanced factories of the era, a facility in Hartford that was the first in the firearm field to take full advantage of mass-production techniques, such as the manufacture of interchangeable parts.

It was only in the 1850s that urban police departments in
the United States began to allow officers to carry handguns, especially following the riots that accompanied the economic panic of 1857. Eager to serve this new market, Colt came out with the New Model Police Revolver, one of the last new products his factory made before its founder’s death in 1862. The Police Revolver was an inexpensive, lightweight six-shooter with a three-and-a-half-inch barrel, making it easy to conceal. “What speaks most of Colt’s character is his hyperactive brand of opportunism,” biographer William Hosley observed.

A pioneer of mass advertising, Colt used high-quality brochure art to promote his products as symbols of frontier adventure and technological advancement. Seeking credibility, he wrangled celebrity endorsements from the likes of General Sam Houston, the former president of the Republic of Texas. Colt relentlessly pursued public contracts, regardless of the profit margin. “Government patronage,” he once said, “is an advertisement, if nothing else.” Colt spent lavishly to entertain celebrated military officers and politicians, buying cigars by the thousands and running up enormous bills for liquor and entertainment.

While rivals invoked tradition, Colt made his easy-to-remember single-syllable name (not unlike “Glock”) a synonym for “new.” In 1854, he said: “A musket is an old established thing; it is a thing that has been the rule for ages, but this pistol is newly created.” He stirred consumer interest by continually introducing slightly altered models with patriotic-sounding names. One of his most successful revolvers was the six-shot .36-caliber Navy, so called not because it was made for the US Navy, but because it had naval scenery engraved on its barrel. And, of course, the name “Navy” sounded valiant. As with several other designs, Colt also produced a smaller, more easily concealed Pocket Navy Revolver. Eleven years after he
died, the factory in Hartford introduced the .44 Colt Army Model, which was sold to the military and spawned several popular civilian variants. This was the legendary single-action sidearm—still made in replica today—that became known as the “Peacemaker.”

In many ways, Gaston Glock became the Sam Colt of the twentieth century. It is an assertion that might offend some American handgun historians and revolver loyalists. But it is no exaggeration to say that a pair of Austrians—a reticent engineer and his ambitious salesman—set about to remake the handgun business in the United States.

F
rom his company headquarters in the downtown SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, Rick Washburn supplied movies and television shows with guns, knives, bombs, machetes, stilettos, ninja throwing discs—any instrument needed for theatrical violence. His company, Weapons Specialists Ltd., also stocked swords, daggers, spears, and shields for the opera and ballet. Washburn kept his collection behind triple-locked doors in a basement vault invisible to the boutique shoppers strolling by on Greene Street.

A native of Arkansas, Washburn came to New York in the 1970s to be an actor. He landed some minor roles: a hit man in
The Cotton Club
in 1984, an FBI agent in
Mississippi Burning
in 1988, and a hit man, again, in
Billy Bathgate
in 1991. As a boy growing up in the country, he had learned a lot about guns. He offered advice on the set to directors who didn’t know a revolver from a semiautomatic pistol. Sometimes his kibitzing was resented; often it was appreciated. He began charging for gun consulting and discovered he could make a much better living in the prop business than from performing. Washburn trained actors, as well, on how to handle firearms realistically. He worked with everyone from Martin Scorsese to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Karl Walter first went to work on persuading Washburn of the Glock’s merits in 1986. “He ran the Glock spiel on me,” Washburn recalled with a laugh. “He was like, ‘Did you know that it has half the parts of a regular gun? Did you know it won’t jam when a regular gun will jam? Did you know we’ve dropped these things out of helicopters and then picked them up and shot them?’ ”

At first, like many handgun aficionados, Washburn was skeptical. A devotee of the .45-caliber Colt 1911, he considered the Glock homely. “I was one of those people who believed, you know what, this thing is going to be a flash in the pan.… Maybe it’ll be popular in Europe, not here.” Fellow Colt chauvinists derided the plastic Glock as “handgun Tupperware.” At Walter’s insistence, Washburn finally took a Glock 17 to an indoor shooting range on the far West Side of Manhattan, one of the few places a civilian with a permit can fire a gun legally in the city. “There I am—
bang! bang! bang!
—just popping those targets like it was going out of style,” he recalled. “I found it to be handy, easy to shoot, didn’t jam. I was hitting targets on a regular basis with it. Suddenly I realized, as a tool, as a carry gun, as a military sidearm, this thing would be hard to beat.” In Arkansas, he explained, “we used to have what we called our ‘truck gun’—that old gun that you threw in the back of the truck, so if you saw a rabbit or a squirrel, you had something to shoot. It stayed in the back of the truck, and it got beat up. It shot OK, but it looked like hell. It wasn’t the gun you hung up on the wall or showed to your friends. Glocks were kind of like that to me: a truck gun.”

Until there were more Glocks in circulation, Washburn hesitated putting one in an actor’s hand. But as a proponent of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, he resented that New York banned the Glock by name. “It was
a typical elitist attitude,” he explained. “You know, you can’t trust the regular people.” In 1988, he had an opportunity to strike back. A friend of his ran a firm that helped New Yorkers navigate the procedures for obtaining handgun permits from the NYPD. Curious about which public officials had permits, Washburn’s pal requested the records under the state freedom-of-information law. To his surprise, the city supplied the names and the types of weapons each official was licensed to own. Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward was on the list, and his permit noted the Glock 17. Washburn and his buddy decided the rest of the world should know about Ward’s secret Glock. The prop man picked up the phone and called the Associated Press—and that is how word got out about the “super gun.”

As NYPD officers began carrying Glocks, Washburn felt it was time to give the Austrian gun entertainment-industry exposure. He was providing prop weapons for a television show on CBS called
The Equalizer
, which concerned a fictional former CIA operative who helped ordinary people deal (often violently) with hoodlums, drug dealers, rapists, and other unsavory sorts. The vigilante character made his services available via a cryptic newspaper ad: “Got a problem? Odds against you? Call the Equalizer.” As befit a suave secret agent, the Equalizer carried a small Walther PPK stainless steel pistol. But late in the series’ prime-time run, courtesy of Rick Washburn, walk-on characters began appearing with Glocks. “Once the [New York] Police Department started using them,” he said, “we started putting them on cops, and particularly detectives.”

Washburn liked helping the Austrian company; he realized
he also could benefit financially from having an up-and-coming gun maker favorably inclined to supply him with pistols on reasonable terms. Washburn sensed a groundswell of interest in Gaston Glock’s invention: “You had people buying Glocks, using Glocks, checking Glocks out just because they were pissed off, just because of the notoriety.” In the United States, he observed, “the people who are most against firearms usually end up being the best salesmen for firearms.”

Only the automobile rivals the gun as a Hollywood prop. Wheels and firepower—representing adventurousness and machismo—are seen by many shapers of popular culture as essential American characteristics. Karl Walter wasn’t a deep-thinking media analyst, but he knew that “people buy what they see on television and in the movie theater.”

Colt revolvers had a surge of popularity among American gun owners in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of being featured in cowboy movies and TV shows. The elegant Walther PPK gained cachet as James Bond’s favorite pistol. Smith & Wesson received a huge marketing boost when Clint Eastwood appeared as Inspector Harold “Dirty Harry” Callahan in 1971 carrying his signature S&W Model 29 .44 Magnum. The movie “had a major impact on the sale of our .44 Magnums and our products,” said former S&W company historian Roy Jinks. Pointing the enormous revolver at one criminal suspect, the Callahan character uttered one of the classic tough-guy speeches in cinema history: “I know what you’re thinking: ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ But to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being this
is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”

Walter wanted the Glock to have its Dirty Harry moment.

“Product placement” first became a common marketing technique in the 1980s, as manufacturers paid to have their brand of soda, clothing, or car written into scripts. But the gun industry never had to pay for this kind of recognition. Screenwriters and directors needed no financial incentive to weave firearms into their plots. Gun companies, though, can make it easier or more difficult to cast their weapons. From its inception, Glock gave every consideration to prop men who could influence the process. Walter provided pistols to Washburn at huge discounts and, when Washburn ordered guns for rush delivery, let him cut in line ahead of other customers.

Colt and Smith & Wesson, by contrast, insisted that Washburn pay full price for their wares. Sometimes there were long delays in shipping from the American companies. The US marketing people at the German manufacturer Heckler & Koch, the Swiss Sig Sauer, and the Italian Beretta were even more recalcitrant, to the point that they seemed to Washburn almost indifferent as to whether their brands received theatrical exposure. Most gun makers tried to negotiate approval of how their products would be used. Cops and good guys were OK; criminals, not. Walter expressed a preference for Glocks being on the side of the law, but he didn’t enforce the rule strictly. Dirty Harry, after all, was no Boy Scout, and he sold a ton of .44 Magnums. According to Washburn, “People don’t care if a bad guy or a good guy uses your gun.” The key, he said, is to get noticed.

In the late 1980s, Michael Papac, an up-and-coming weapons master in the Los Angeles area who specialized in action
movies, worked on the
Lethal Weapon
films with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover and
Predator
with Arnold Schwarzenegger. “You were starting to hear about Glock, this plastic gun,” Papac recalled. “There were stories about how you couldn’t see it on an X-ray. People didn’t know what they were talking about, but they were talking. Eventually you knew it would end up in a movie.” Then Papac landed the assignment to provide weaponry for the sequel to Bruce Willis’s slam-bang hit
Die Hard
. In
Die Hard 2: Die Harder
, which was released July 4, 1990, Willis reprised his role as John McClane, a hard-bitten and resourceful Los Angeles police lieutenant. This time, McClane faced off against a band of mercenaries involved with Latin American drug trafficking, who take over a major US airport. The villains threaten to cause the crash of incoming planes, including one containing McClane’s wife.