Gaston Glock, the inventor of the pistol bearing his name, died on Wednesday aged 94.
Glock’s cause of death was not immediately clear.
The Glock Company announced its founder’s death on its website, where it lauded Glock for revolutionizing the world of small arms, especially in the 1980s, when the ubiquitous pistol first hit the market.
The semi-automatic handgun has since become the weapon of choice for armed forces, law enforcement officials, criminals, and gun enthusiasts worldwide, with more than 50 Glock pistols in a variety of sizes, calibers, and styles now on offer.
Glock, an Austrian engineer, founded his weapons manufacturing company in 1963 with little experience with guns at the time aside from his time as a conscript in Hitler’s Wehrmacht at the end of World War II, according to The New York Times.
He invented the Glock pistol in a metalworking shop in his garage, where he had been manufacturing knives and curtain rods.
The original Glock was reportedly made of a nylon-based polymer frame instead of traditional steel, with the capacity to carry up to 17 rounds of ammunition.
Today, a Glock’s makeup is quite similar, with a combination of steel and that same polymer mixture — known as Polymer 2, also invented by Glock.
A Glock’s standard capacity also now ranges from nine to 15 rounds, with a controversial “Safe Action System” consisting of three mechanical safeties that make the gun ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
“His life’s work will continue in his spirit,” Glock company wrote on its website.
Throughout the years, gun safety advocates have criticized the firing-pin system, including an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that said “police shouldn’t use Glocks” because “the truth is that Glocks are accident-prone.”
Despite harsh critics, Glock’s revenue peaked in 2017, at more than $500 million, making its creator a billionaire, Forbes reported at the time. In 2022, the company brought in $66.1 million.
In 2021, Forbes pegged Glock’s net worth at $1.1 billion, though his counsel strongly objected to the valuation as well as the reclusive billionaire’s inclusion in the list.
Glock dropped off the coveted list in 2022.
His appearance in Forbes marked one of only a handful of times that Glock made headlines, though his blockbuster gun was praised in song lyrics by rappers, on flyers in airports, and at the center of gun-control debates, according to The Times.
Glock lived a private life on a lakefront estate in Austria with a team of guards, servants, and lawyers, only making headlines in 1999, when a business associate tried to have him killed — but failed after Glock knocked the attacker unconscious — and in 2011, when then-82-year-old Glock divorced his wife of 49 years, Helga Glock, and married 31-year-old Kathrin Tschikof.
Glock is survived by his wife, daughter Bridget, and two sons, Gaston Jr. and Robert.
One of the last times Glock found himself in the limelight was in 2012 when Paul M. Barrett published “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun,” which boasted that the weapon was “filled with corporate intrigue, political maneuvering, Hollywood glitz [and] bloody shoot-outs.”
Representatives for Glock Company did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.