Gaston Glock, the engineer and tycoon who developed one of the world’s best-selling pistols, died on Wednesday at the age of 94, Austria’s APA news agency reported, citing Reuters and News.ro.

The Austrian has gained many followers among the police and military around the world who use the weapon that bears his name. In 2021, Forbes estimated his and his family’s fortune at $1.1 billion.

Its rise began in the 1980s, when the Austrian army was looking for new and innovative weapons. Until then, the Glock company produced military knives and consumer goods, including curtain rods. But the company assembled a team of firearms experts and developed the Glock 17, a lightweight semi-automatic pistol made mostly of plastic. The revolutionary design, with a nylon-based high-strength polymer frame and only metal slides, outperformed the plans of many other companies and secured the contract. Soon this easy-to-assemble weapon became a worldwide success.

“Get the Glock, drop that bastard.”

“Get a Glock and shoot that nickel-plated scumbag,” said Tommy Lee Jones in the 1998 film US Marshals. Many US police officers used them, and American rappers incorporated them into their lyrics, including Snoop Dogg’s “Protocol” and Wu’s “Da Glock” of the Tang Clan.

In 2003, American soldiers found Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hiding a Glock in a hole in the ground. Later, they presented weapons to US President George W. Bush, The New York Times reports.

Gun control advocates have criticized Glock for promoting high-powered pistols that they say are easy to conceal and can hold more ammunition than other guns.

In November 2018, a former U.S. Marine veteran armed with what police described as a .45-caliber Glock with a high-capacity magazine killed 12 people at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California.

Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, used a Glock pistol to kill nine African-Americans during a Bible study meeting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015.

Glock refused to sign a voluntary arms control agreement with the US government

Glock himself rarely responded to activist criticism, avoided public debate, and in 2000 refused to join other gun manufacturers in signing a voluntary arms control agreement with the US government.

He has made few comments of any kind to the media, but the public has had glimpses of his sometimes turbulent private life through the courts.

At the age of 70, in July 1999, Gaston Glock survived an attempt on his life when the investment broker who managed his assets hired an ex-fighter to attack him with a rubber mallet. Glock became suspicious of the broker who ran his business and flew to Luxembourg to prosecute him. The tycoon received seven blows to the head, but managed to repel the attack. Broker Charles Evert and attacker Jacques Pescher were imprisoned.

His marriage to 49-year-old Helga Glock ended in divorce in 2011, and the couple began a lengthy legal battle over alimony. Soon after, he married his second wife, Catherine, who was 50 years his junior.

Glock owned a lakeside mansion and a state-of-the-art equestrian center in the province of Carinthia where celebrities held parties.

Has a daughter and two sons.