Glock pistols, long identified as a favorite weapon among gangs, are being used more frequently in murders and attempted murders in Sweden. A loophole in Austrian legislation is said to be decisive.
A young man who had just gotten into a car in the Dalhem district of Helsingborg is shot dead with multiple shots early on the morning of August 22, 2023. Shortly afterwards, a 16-year-old boy is arrested nearby with the murder weapon.
The gun is of the Austrian brand Glock – a pistol used by both Swedish police and military, but also sought after in gang circles and repeatedly described in texts by rappers linked to criminal networks.
It turns out that only the barrel of the 16-year-old's pistol is an authentic Glock. The pipe and casing have been manufactured elsewhere and then assembled onto the gun to create a complete weapon.
These pistols have been appearing more frequently in Swedish crime investigations in recent years.
The number of seized Glocks has nearly doubled over the past five years, from around 40 to 80. Even murders, attempted murders, and murder preparations with "traces" of Glock have increased significantly, from 20 in 2019 to around 55 in the past two years.
It's not mainly about weapons leaking from the legal market. The analysis shows that over half of the Glocks, possibly as many as 70 percent, can be traced back to a peculiarity in Austrian legislation.
As the only EU country, Austria allows the sale of pistol barrels without a license, which may contravene EU's firearms directive. The legislation means that anyone who can complete the barrel with a pipe and casing, for example through illegal manufacturing, can produce fully functional pistols.
Since production is believed to take place within the union, it is relatively easy to smuggle them to countries like Sweden.
Not even when Austrian police cracked down on a massive illegal weapons factory last year, where hundreds of barrel sets for pistols and machine guns and around 150 complete weapons were found, was there debate about the legislation.
So it's important to show how the weapons are used, for example in Sweden, says Liedholm and points to examples such as the Helsingborg murder.
Seized Glock pistols in Sweden over the past five years:
2019: 41. 2020: 50. 2021: 19. 2022: 80. 2023: 76
Total number of shootings leaving Glock traces, for example on the cartridge:
2019: 30. 2020: 22. 2021: 54. 2022: 91. 2023: 76
Source: National Forensic Centre, NFC
