Weapon of Choice

Iraq. October 2014.

The first rainstorm

since ISIS fighters captured large areas of Syria and Iraq.

There's fighting 30 km from my hotel.

The Americans are bombing again.

An Austrian invention has brought me here.

The object is prized worldwide,

even revered as a cult object.

Here in Iraq, too.

In Austria, however, little is known about it.

The death trade takes place behind closed doors.

Yeah, for those who never used Glocks, it's just a pistol.

For me, it's something very unique. It's special.

Those who use Glocks, they know what Glock means.

One of the favorites. They never stop, they never get rusty.

They never stop, they never... you know, fail you down.

Yeah, on a daily basis, you deal with this piece,

you become a friend that you cannot give up.

Like me and you now. We just met today. Maybe if we,

you know, meet again, like, a few more times, we become friends.

This is what it is with me and this Glock here.

Yeah. It's been about an hour since we met today.

It's the same thing with this.

The longer you use it, the longer you stay with it,

the more attracted you will be with this piece.

The weapon of choice was

that favorite gun of drug traffickers and others bent on mass violence...

...he's a gangster.

In my true honest words, karma is a bitch.

It will cost you your life, eventually.

It's like the mafia. You can join, but it's a capital offense to leave.

I felt compelled to call you all together here now.

Number one, our right of speech and religion,

then, number two, our right to bear arms.

A nine-millimeter Glock semi-automatic pistol.

Whatever you do when trying to establish a gun connection,

never be too direct.

Stop violence!

Stop violence!

Increase peace!

Stop violence!

There's power in the name of Jesus.

It swept the military and law enforcement worlds in 1984,

after it was first introduced by an Austrian firm

previously known for cutlery.

The factory and the gun are both called Glock.

Then, when we'll reassemble it,

we'll put the barrel back in,

make sure it's flat in there.

You gotta take the spring, you're gonna push the spring in a little bit,

make sure it's parallel with the slide.

Then, you're gonna take the slide and put it on the lower frame,

starting at the front, all the way to the back,

pull straight back.

And that is your reassembly of the Glock firearm.

We're a small store in... located in Pennsylvania.

And Glock happens to be one of our major sellers.

Why is that so?

'Cause of their ease of disassembly and how reliable they are.

They're one of the most reliable, easiest to use, firearms in the world.

Next to the AK-47. They're one of the best.

We have the subcompact, the compact,

the full-size, and then the competition models.

And also, the .45 models.

We... We have…

-Show him the single-stack. -We offer…

different sizes

of each in the .45s, which are…

even a different... frame size.

That's a single stack, which is a narrower frame.

That's a Glock 36.

It's a .45 caliber.

And what makes the Glock so popular in the United States?

Law enforcement use Glock. They carry… Most law enforcement departments...

Our Pennsylvania State Police carry the Glock.

That is their duty weapon.

It's a dependable weapon. When you pull the trigger, gun is gonna go off.

And you two...

-went to Austria? -Yes.

We were one of three people that were invited.

Us being a dealer.

One being a wholesaler that would sell us the weapons.

And also a customer that we would sell weapons to.

We are from all different parts of the country.

And we were each allowed to take one person with us to Austria

to go visit the Glock factory.

It was amazing how fast

that they could make the barrel and the slide, and...

The machine, they put them in, and the machine

made 'em and then it just took 'em out and it cooled them…

Everything was all mechanical, but there was a lot of workers there.

Glock employed a lot of people in their factory.

And everybody that we talked to there seemed to like working there.

Which was really nice.

And I love the mountains up there. The mountains were really neat.

Ferlach, Kärnten.

Home to Austrian largest weapon factory.

This is Glock's second plant,

beside the first one in Deutsch-Wagram.

A call for tenders by the Austrian armed forces

prompted the engineer Gaston Glock, in the early 1980s,

to develop the perfect pistol.

Despite little experience in manufacturing firearms,

Glock ended up revolutionizing gun technology.

His pistol turned a small family business into a global player in the arms industry,

and its inventor into one of Austria's richest men.

But the company would have never become a global brand without the USA

and its gun culture.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!

This is the world-famous Hood Life & Hip Hop Tour

that takes you down through South Central, Compton, Watts,

all the wonderful areas that you might have seen in videos,

seen in movies such as Menace II Society, Boyz n the Hood,

Training Day, Baby Boy.

We take you there, because some of these places are known

for being extremely dangerous and extremely volatile.

And if all the good people from around the world,

if they make it down there, they might not fucking make it out.

Glock, Glock, Glock All get shot

Glock, Glock, Glock All get shot

Man, I'm fucking starving. Goddamn.

I don't think anything has had as big an impact

on the brand name awareness of Glock

in popular culture like hip hop. Like rap music.

The brands change...

a lot in hip hop. It's a very brand-conscious culture.

Clothing brands change over time.

Car companies stay the same.

So, Mercedes has always been popular in hip hop.

Glock's always been popular in hip hop.

Over the last 25 years,

the references to the product, to the name Glock,

are in the thousands.

And there are songs named directly after the Glock.

There're dozens of those songs and...

Every day... I'm a hip hop fan.

I listen to new rap music, new hip hop.

And every day, there is a song

that comes out where the Glock gets profiled.

And that's a reflection of the fact that the artists live

a certain type of life style coming up,

where...

it's necessary, or they believe it's necessary

to arm themselves, to pack.

So, they end up packing Glock.

Never leave home Without it

Good thing We brought the Glock

Cuz I put away a shotgun Borrow me a Glock

It's a form of art,

which... is based on rhyming.

So, Glock rhymes with a lot of cool words:

"lock," "pop," "drop," "cock"...

You know, all that stuff

works in ta... in combination with the name Glock.

And there's just something powerful about that name.

There's certainly one functional reason why Glocks are very, very popular.

Because I've been in shootouts. I've had the unfortunate incident

where I had a weapon that jammed.

It is known by every gang member,

every bank robber...

anybody that's hustlin' down here in the hood that your Glock

will never fuckin' jam on you. And that may save your life.

Keep my shit cocked Cause the cops got a Glock, too

What the fuck would you do? Drop them or let them drop you?

I chose droppin' the cop

I got me a Glock And a Glock for the niggas on my block

The Glock is a gun of choice in my community.

Like I said, it's like lookin' at a diamond.

You got all these other stones, of course you're gonna pick that pretty diamond.

And it just out... It outviews the rest of the guns.

You can put a Glock and you put the rest of the guns, I guarantee...

And...

people give up a Desert Eagle and that's a big old, long, steel gun.

But they gonna pick that Glock.

I had an extended clip to mine, so my Glock shot...

I think 30 plus times.

Like, here the clip.

This was a regular 9 mm with a clip this long. And...

Man, I'm tellin' you, I was crazy.

There's people all across this country and in other countries

that listen to this music, that love this music,

that are influenced by this music in a very real way.

Gun manufacturers are getting this all for free.

And the reason they can't acknowledge this free marketing

is because they know

that it's being marketed in the context of violence.

Ain't no Glock Like the one I got

Glock didn't want their name mentioned in rap music,

because the references were so common

that people were starting to think that Glock was just another name for gun.

And that is their worst nightmare.

They want to ensure that people know

that that name and the look of the gun are protected.

They're distinct. 'Cause Glock is something special.

It's all black, it's solid,

stripped down to a purely utilitarian tool.

Cool, rugged. You see what I got. You know what it does.

I ain't afraid to use it.

Don't test me when I got my Glock.

Back and forward. let's go.