A new Vanity Fair investigation into Kathrin Glock and the succession battle inside Glock’s Austrian empire paints a picture of infighting, lawsuits, and estrangement before and after the death of the company’s founder, Gaston Glock, in December 2023. But beneath the interpersonal drama is a more consequential shift: the consolidation of power — over a company whose products are deeply embedded in American gun violence — under Gaston’s widow, Kathrin.
Here are five key takeaways from the report.
1. KATHRIN GLOCK ROSE TO POWER AMID FAMILY DRAMA
According to Vanity Fair, as Gaston Glock grew his gun manufacturing company in the 1980s and 1990s, he discouraged his children from going to college and instead expected them to “work for the family business” along with his first wife, Helga.
“Gaston had a history of girlfriends, often much younger,” Vanity Fair noted, and he first met Kathrin Tschikof, who was born in 1980, in a doctor’s office in 2004. When Gaston suffered a stroke in 2008, it was Kathrin who looked after him in the hospital, beginning “her ascent of the Glock enterprise.” Shortly thereafter, “the gunmaker began to freeze his wife and children out of the company.” He then divorced Helga and married Kathrin.
Vanity Fair noted that Gaston’s “divorce from Helga and the ejection of the children from the company prompted rounds of litigation,” including a lawsuit alleging that “Gaston had carried out a racketeering scheme to conceal Glock proceeds from her and her children.” That case was ultimately dismissed. Helga eventually received an Austrian settlement that she shared with the children, but it was Kathrin who “took control” of the company, particularly after Gaston’s death at the age of 94. His children, who learned of his death through media reports and did not attend his memorial service, “are still not certain where and how Gaston was buried.”
As for Kathrin’s professional experience, Vanity Fair said that “[a]fter she dropped out of high school, she failed to complete Austrian gendarmerie training, and never finished college.”
2. GLOCK IS THE TOP MANUFACTURER OF U.S. CRIME GUNS
Kathrin Glock inherited more than just a brand. The Vanity Fair report described the Glock pistol design as “both one of the most common police weapons in the U.S. and the most popular firearm for doing bad things,” noting that between 2017 and 2021, “nearly 20 percent of all traced pistol-type guns used in crimes in the U.S. — more than 250,000 individual weapons — were Glocks, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That’s more than any other manufacturer; the next most common was Smith & Wesson, with 14 percent of the total and 183,000 individual recovered weapons.”
The article also draws on data collected by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund from police departments in 52 cities showing that Glock was the top manufacturer of recovered crime guns in 2024, accounting for over 24 percent of all recovered firearms.
3. GLOCK IS FACING PRESSURE OVER ITS CONVERTIBLE PISTOLS
The Vanity Fair article also revisits a longstanding issue that has increasingly drawn legal and regulatory scrutiny: the ease in which Glock pistols can be illegally converted into fully automatic machine guns using small, third-party devices known as “Glock switches.” Once installed, these small, easy-to-3D-print devices allow Glocks to fire at a rate of up to 1,200 rounds per minute.
Police have seen a surge in switch recoveries in recent years, and pistols modified with switches have been used in over 20 mass shootings.
But lawmakers are taking action. As Vanity Fair noted, “last October, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a law that made his state the first in the country to prohibit gun dealers from selling pistols that can be easily converted into fully automatic weapons via aftermarket switches.”
4. KATHRIN RUBS ELBOWS WITH CELEBRITIES AND HAS CAREFULLY CRAFTED GLOCK’S PUBLIC IMAGE
As Vanity Fair put it, “Glocks have been the killing machine of choice in some of America’s most horrifying massacres,” but Kathrin Glock has helped frame the company as charitable and civic-minded in Europe.
The company also owned the Glock Horse Performance Center, which Kathrin used to host high-profile events featuring celebrities like Naomi Campbell, John Travolta, Mariah Carey, Hugh Grant, and Leona Lewis. Some of those celebrities, including Grant and Lewis, have also spoken out against gun violence.
5. GLOCK HAS USED LITIGATION TO QUIET CRITICS
According to Vanity Fair, Glock has quietly sued advocacy groups, politicians, and media figures in Austria over statements related to its products. In one instance, it brought legal action against Amnesty International’s Austrian chapter after the organization had identified a Glock pistol in Sudan, a weapon-embargoed conflict zone. “Over time,” Vanity Fair wrote, “some Austrian publications shied away from covering the firm for fear of legal action.”
The company also sued a local politician who posted a newspaper story about Glock on her Facebook page, alleging “that she had not moved quickly enough to delete third-party comments under the post that were insulting and defamatory to Glock.”
These cases have led to “pervasive fear of the company and its potential reach” in Austria, and sources were afraid to go on the record with Vanity Fair. One former executive talked to the report’s author for hours, but “insisted on anonymity” and later sent an email apologizing for not having been able to meet. When the reporter approached other Glock insiders, some told him that they suspected him of “acting as a spy for Kathrin,” and one even “attempted, somewhat unconvincingly, to pretend that he was not himself but rather a friend [returning a call] on his behalf.”
AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE FOR GLOCK
Where do things stand for Glock today? According to Vanity Fair, “Glock sales are down. In 2024 the company reported significantly lower revenue and profit compared to the year before and cut 130 jobs. Revenue shrank by 89 million euros to 380.3 million euros, and profit nearly halved, falling from 72 million euros to 39 million euros.” The company is also facing pressure from President Trump’s tariffs, and the horse operation has shuttered.
Yet in a statement, Kathrin insisted that Glock “is continuously working on the development of new products and technologies.”
“I think they’ll be bought up,” a source close to Gaston’s children told Vanity Fair. “And the lower the value gets now, the more interesting it becomes for the market, of course.”