Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Gaston Glock, the inventor of the firearm that bears his last name, has died at the age of 94, according to his company.
The Glock company announced on its website that its founder died Wednesday .
"Gaston Glock charted the strategic direction of the GLOCK Group throughout his life and prepared it for the future," it said. "His life's work will continue in his spirit."
Glock, an Austrian engineer, founded his company in Deutsch-Wagram near Vienna in 1963 to make consumer goods out of wood, polymers and metal, according to its website.
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Then during the 1970s, it started to build products for the Austrian military, such as field knives and training grenades, before inventing the semi-automatic Glock pistol it would become known for in the early 1980s.
In 1985, the company opened its U.S. headquarters in Smyrna, Ga. The firearm is now used by more than 65% of federal, state and local agencies in the United States, according to the company's website.
The weapon has also become a staple of American culture, being included in rap songs by the Wu-Tang Clan, Tupac and others, and seen in films and television shows wielded by actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It has also been present in the United States gun crisis, being used in mass shootings, with the Violence Policy Center stating in a 2022 report that the weapon has been in the arsenals of "some of the most infamous mass shooters in the United States."
Cho Seung-hui was armed with a Glock when he killed 32 people and injured more than a dozen others when he went on a shooting spree at Virginia Tech in 2007. Jared Lee Loughner used a Glock to shoot 18 people, six fatally, in 2011 as he attempted to assassinate Rep. Gabby Giffords. And Dylann Roof used a Glock in his fatal shooting of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.
