In my attempt to make a meme from each day’s show this week, I made this image with today’s headline: How The Glock Became America’s Weapon Of Choice. (The image has no known copyright restrictions, is obviously not a Glock, and came from the Library of Congress Flickr stream.)

Glock had seen this bill coming for years and had been running the factory non-stop – three shifts a day, seven days a week – building up the large capacity firearms and the large capacity magazines. When the law was enacted, it allowed for a loophole that grandfathered in pre-existing equipment before the ban went into effect. [And] Glock had this huge stockpile of the very equipment that many gun owners wanted to get because it was banned – and the value of that equipment skyrocketed.

— Paul Barrett, on how Glock made money on the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

Paul Barrett: “[Glock] was smart enough to hire a genius salesman … This man Karl Walter was really a guru in figuring out how to appeal to the police – whether that meant offering them extremely attractive financial terms or hosting police procurement officers at [a famous strip club] in Atlanta. This was a guy who could make a deal with anybody and figure out how to sell the Glock.”

Glock gun cake (by WhoWantsCake?)

I think it’s very fair to say that the gun control debate has really been won for the moment by the NRA and by the industry that it cooperates with, and by those people who are in favor of widespread civilian ownership of guns.

— On today’s show, a conversation with writer Paul Barrett about the Glock and gun culture in America.

How the Glock Became America’s Weapon Of Choice

Tomorrow: how the Glock became the gun of choice for criminals and law enforcement and found its way into Hollywood films and rap lyrics. We’ll talk with Paul Barrett, author of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun.

Also on Fresh Air: The History and Evolution of the NRA

The AK-47: The Gun That Changed The Battlefield