Glock pistols do established off metal detectors and can indeed be detected by X-ray machines, due to their metal barrels, slides, magazines, and ammunition. The claim that they could visit not was first made in an article by columnist Jack Anderson, entitled, "Quaddafi Buying Austrian Plastic Pistol", published in The Washington Post on January 13, 1985.

The Glock machine pistol form was not the first to incorporate a plastic frame. HK's innovation of polymer frames and polygonal rifling seem to have been influential in the Glock design. Still earlier, Remington extraneous their polymer-framed Nylon 66 Sack in 1959.