I really appreciate tacky guns. There’s a velvet Elvis-like exuberance to firearms that take ornamental ostentation to the next level—and beyond! Guns with excessive engraving and filigree—and I’m not excluding 100K shotguns with tiny but life-like depictions of eternally faithful hunting dogs—show a thrilling disregard for the normal boundaries of taste. This golden Glock embodies that unabashed joie de vivre. Second, and better yet, it’s an oxymoron . . .
Gaston Glock is a Bauhausian minimalist. His ballistic brainchild embodies the “form follows function” aesthetic. Nothing more than what’s needed, nothing less. To add gold to Gaston’s design is to piss on it from a great height. And why not? It’s funny. The fact that Glock is Austrian—a nation known for its sense of humor in the same way that the Brits are known for their culinary skills—adds punch to the punchline.
And here’s the kicker: “. . . each gun was hand-engraved by Glocks only master engraver and Gold inlaid.” WHAT? Glock has a master engraver? It just doesn’t get any better than that. The guy in charge of “engraving” of nondescript block letters on Glocks kicked out the jams and then inlaid his otherwise eternally suppressed artistic efforts with gold?
If that’s true, if the provenance is pellucid, then these guns are incredibly collectible. How great is that?