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Glock 7

"Glock 7" (first generation Glock 17)

"Luggage? That punk pulled a Glock 7 on me. You know what that is? It's a porcelain gun made in Germany. It doesn't show up on your airport X-ray machines here and it costs more than what you make in a month!"
John McClane on the Glock 7. [src]

The Glock 7 is a fictional 9mm pistol supposedly made entirely out of porcelain that apparently appears in Die Hard 2. Rather than constructing custom guns to portray the pistol, first generation Glock 17s were used as a stand-in. Since then the scene has gained notoriety among fans of the film, who often use the scene as an inside joke because of the string of Glock inaccuracies Bruce Willis said about it. Despite this, this was one of Glock's first film appearances and the blatant fallacies about Glocks contributed to a rise in popularity and sales for the company.

Die Hard 2[]

600px-DH2 Glock-3

Colonel Stuart holds his Glock 7 to Miller's forehead.

John McClane gets into an intense gunfight with two of the mercenaries in the luggage room, where he kills one and the other escapes. When he is speaking with the head of airport security, Carmine Lorenzo, he tries to convince him that the crooks were not just stealing luggage, but rather heavily funded mercenaries who kill for a living, using their gun as an example. He claims that the gun they used was the "Glock 7" a rare porcelain pistol made in Germany. He claims that the gun cannot be picked up on airport metal detectors and costs more than he makes in a month.

It was later revealed that the criminals that used it were Colonel Stuart's mercenaries Miller and Oswald Cochrane, but the Glock 7 was the main weapon of all the mercenaries, alongside the MP5.

Inaccuracies and Interpretations[]

  • Glocks are made in Austria, not Germany, so even if the gun was not supposed to be taken seriously, this was still a glaring error.
  • Glock pistols can very easily be picked up in a metal detector because 83.7% by weight is steel and the "plastic" parts are a dense polymer known as "Polymer 2", which is radio-opaque and is therefore visible to security equipment, even though it won't set off a metal detector. Also, the ammunition would be visible as well.
  • Porcelain is brittle, and consequently a poor material for a firearm. Such a weapon would destroy itself and possibly injure the shooter by the violent disintegration of sharp fragments of porcelain.
  • Glocks are not expensive pistols, a basic one usually only costs around $400 to $600.

It is unknown if the writers made a mistake, and had meant to describe a Glock 17. Alternatively, John had no idea what he was talking about. Either way, a Glock could not evade X-ray machines because of the cartridges, barrel, slide, trigger mechanism, magazine, and the spring. Even if it isn't meant to be serious, it would be a dangerous gun to shoot. Fans have different interpretations on what the Glock 7 is exactly supposed to be. Whether the gun is meant to be a Glock 17 that was confused by the writers or the gun is meant to be a fictional model that isn't supposed to be taken literally, people still find something ridiculous about the fictional model.

When Glock pistols were first introduced to the market, they promoted their extensive use of non-metallic components. This generated controversy, fearing that this would make them easier to conceal from metal detectors - hence the scene in the movie. However, as described, the scenario shown in the film is pure Hollywood fiction. Armorer Mike Papac, whose company Cinema Weaponry supplied all of the firearms used in Die Hard 2, has commented, "I remember when we did that scene, I tried to talk them out of it. There's no such thing as a gun invisible to metal detectors, and there shouldn't be, but they wouldn't budge. They had it written into the script and that was that."

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