Glock’s story starts in a place nobody expected.
The host of Firearms of America reminds viewers that Gaston Glock wasn’t a gun designer, or even in the firearms business. He was a curtain rod manufacturer and polymer guy in Austria, who only started making knives for the Austrian army in the 1970s.
By the time he designed his first handgun, he was 52 years old.
Today, that same brand is not just a giant in the handgun world.
It’s also at the center of modern gun-control politics, lawsuits, and redesigns aimed at stopping criminals from turning semi-auto pistols into illegal machine guns.
John Correia from Active Self Protection Extra now describes Glock as facing “interesting developments” and a “major announcement” – with talk of discontinuations, new models, and lawmakers blaming the design itself for crime.
It’s a long way from curtain rods to courtrooms.
From Curtain Rods To Combat Sidearm
According to Firearms of America, Glock history really begins in 1980, when the Austrian Armed Forces decided it was finally time to replace their World War II–era Walther P38.
The Austrian Federal Ministry of Defense wrote up a list of 17 strict criteria for the new service handgun. It had to be self-loading, chambered in NATO-standard 9mm Parabellum, safe from accidental discharge if dropped or struck, and tough enough to handle heavy use.
To prove that toughness, the contenders were run through 15,000 rounds of standard ammo.
Then they were hammered with extremely over-pressured ammunition — about double the normal operating pressure of a 9mm round, as the Firearms of America host explains.
Into that brutal competition walks Gaston Glock.
No handgun designs. No factory full of pistols. Just a 52-year-old engineer who understood polymers and manufacturing.
When he heard the Austrian Army’s call for a new sidearm, he decided to take a shot at it anyway.
In 1982, Firearms of America says, Glock assembled a mixed team of experts — military personnel, police officers, civilian sport shooters — and went to work.
In about three months, the team produced a working prototype: the Glock 17.
The Glock 17 Takes Over The World
The first pistol, the Glock 17 in 9mm, wasn’t named after its magazine capacity.
The Firearms of America host notes it was actually Glock’s 17th patent.
That pistol went straight into the Austrian trials and, according to the video, “passed all of the exhaustive tests with flying colors,” beating legendary manufacturers like Heckler & Koch, Sig Sauer, Beretta, and FN.
Practically right away, the Austrian military and police adopted it as the P80 – Pistole 80 – with an initial order of 25,000 guns.
From there, things snowballed.
The host points out that in trials between 1983 and 1985, the Glock 17 was chosen as the sidearm for both Norwegian and Swedish armed forces. It even surpassed NATO’s durability standards and became a NATO-classified sidearm.
All of this from a pistol developed in three months by a man who had never built a gun before.
By 1992, Firearms of America reports that some 350,000 Glock handguns had been sold worldwide, including about 250,000 in the United States alone.
Glock’s simple design, polymer frame, and reliability made it a favorite not just for militaries and police, but also for civilians.
And it didn’t stand still.
Generations Of Success
The Firearms of America video walks through Glock’s evolution in tidy steps.
Generation 1 Glock 17s – the P80 pistols – were followed by Generation 2 in 1988. To meet American ATF standards, Glock embedded a steel plate into the receiver that displayed the serial number.
Generation 3 arrived around 1998, now with an accessory rail, finger grooves, and, finally, color options beyond basic black.
Most shooters today recognize the Gen 4 pistols introduced in 2010, which included a revised recoil spring assembly and other refinements.
Then, in 2017, Glock rolled out Generation 5, starting with the Glock 19 and the updated Glock 17.
As the host explains, the lineup has exploded into multiple sizes and calibers — 9mm, .40 S&W, .380 Auto, 10mm, .45 ACP, .357 SIG, .22 LR, and more.
There’s also an entire cottage industry of modifications.
The Firearms of America host calls Glock “probably one of the most modified, customized pistols,” and still one of the most reliable, easy-to-operate handguns.
Despite all the tweaks, if you look at a Gen 1 Glock 17 and a Gen 5 Glock 17, he says, you can still see the same “good old Glock.”
From that perspective, Glock is a classic success story.
A small Austrian shop that became a global standard.
But that same simplicity and popularity are now being used as arguments against the company.
When Engineering Meets “Giggle Switch” Politics
On Active Self Protection Extra, John Correia picks up the story decades later, where Glock’s design is no longer just a selling point, but a legal target.
John explains that on October 10, California’s governor signed a law that effectively bans the sale of Glock handguns and similar designs in that state going forward, based on how easily some models can be converted into full-auto with illegal parts.
The key issue, as John describes it, is the Glock “cruciform” trigger bar and the removable back plate.
Because that back plate has a small opening, criminals and “enterprising folks,” as he puts it, started using illegal “giggle switches” – small conversion devices, now often 3D-printed – that replace the plate and press on the internal parts to allow full-auto fire.
John stresses that even owning one of these conversion devices is a federal felony, since it’s considered an unregistered machine-gun part under existing law.
He also notes that federal agencies have seen a big increase in these converted guns on the street, especially as 3D printing has become cheaper and more accessible.
California’s new law doesn’t criminalize owning existing Glocks, according to John.
Instead, it bans the sale of pistols that use that easily converted trigger bar design after a certain date.
In other words, Glock’s core design – the same simple internal mechanics that helped it win military contracts – is now being treated as a liability in one of the biggest gun markets in America.
Discontinuations, “V” Models, And Damage Control
That political and legal pressure led to the most shocking part of John Correia’s report.
He says major retailers, including Glock Store, told customers that they’d been notified all Glock models will be discontinued as of November 30 – except the slimline 43, 43X, and 48.
According to the message John reads, every other model is supposed to be replaced by new “Glock V” models.
These new V versions, he explains, are designed so they cannot be easily converted with those illegal switches. At launch, they’re expected to be non-MOS (not optics-ready), with similar pricing.
John sees this as Glock getting ahead of the problem.
While California is banning the sale of guns with the cruciform-based, easily converted internals, Glock is quietly updating the design and rolling out a version that regulators can’t attack on that specific point.
He also reminds viewers how big the California market is.
Despite its strict laws, John says California is the number three state in annual firearm sales, behind only Florida and Texas. For a company like Glock, simply walking away from that market is not realistic.
From a business perspective, he calls Glock’s move “a smart decision,” even while he personally thinks the law itself is “stupid” and unfairly blames the manufacturer for criminals using illegal parts.
From Top Brand To Legal Lightning Rod
The pressure isn’t just coming from Sacramento.
John Correia also points out that states like New Jersey, Minnesota, and Maryland, as well as cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and Portland, have filed lawsuits against Glock.
Their argument, as John paraphrases it, is that Glock has “allowed for the proliferation of machine guns” by selling guns that are easily converted.
In other words, the claim is that design choices – not just criminal choices – are partly to blame.
John pushes back on that idea.
He argues that illegal parts, made and installed by law-breakers, shouldn’t be treated as the manufacturer’s fault. From his point of view, it’s like blaming a car company because someone illegally modifies a vehicle to street-race or use it as a getaway car.
At the same time, he contrasts Glock’s strategy with Sig Sauer’s handling of the P320 lawsuits.
John says Sig has largely denied problems and fought in court, while Glock is preemptively redesigning its lineup to blunt future legal and regulatory attacks.
He even suggests – just as his personal opinion – that Sig’s approach could hurt them badly, possibly even “bankrupting the company,” while Glock’s approach is more likely to protect their long-term position.
That’s where Glock’s rise turns into a cautionary tale.
The more dominant and recognizable your product becomes, the more it becomes a target, both politically and legally.
What It All Means For The Future Of Glock
Taken together, the two sources paint a full arc.
The Firearms of America host tells the story of an unlikely genius who built a nearly indestructible pistol in three months, beat the giants of the industry, and sold hundreds of thousands of handguns worldwide.
He describes Glock as an “absolute inspiration,” praising Gaston Glock’s legacy and calling him a legend who “made the world of firearms a better place.”
Decades later, John Correia picks up the thread at the point where that same legendary design is being blamed for the misuse of illegal conversion parts and dragged into lawsuits by states and cities.
Glock is still one of the most popular defensive handguns in America – but it’s also now a legal lightning rod.
From my perspective, the interesting piece is how design has become the battlefield.
Glock’s internals are simple, robust, and easy to manufacture – that’s part of why militaries, police, and civilians adopted them so quickly. The downside is that the same simplicity made it easy for bad actors to create cheap illegal parts that exploit the design.
Instead of targeting the people who make, sell, and use those illegal parts, lawmakers and some plaintiffs are now trying to drag the original design into court.
Glock’s answer is not to abandon the market, but to evolve.
The original Glock 17 beat the world in the early 1980s by being different. The upcoming Glock “V” models that John Correia talks about are another kind of difference – a redesign meant to keep the brand alive in hostile legal territory.
If anything, it proves that Glock is still doing what made it famous in the first place.
Watching where the world is heading.
Then building something new fast enough to survive it.
Raised in a small Arizona town, Kevin grew up surrounded by rugged desert landscapes and a family of hunters. His background in competitive shooting and firearms training has made him an authority on self-defense and gun safety. A certified firearms instructor, Kevin teaches others how to properly handle and maintain their weapons, whether for hunting, home defense, or survival situations. His writing focuses on responsible gun ownership, marksmanship, and the role of firearms in personal preparedness.
