I wouldn't be so harsh on the GSSF matches. They're intended largely to get new gun owners into something more than just the normal shooting at a paper target in your lane at an indoor range. The GSSF match is 3 stages and 90 rounds, always the same COF. One's a plate rack and the other two are just stages, one with some pepper poppers.
If you're the #1 shooter in your class, you do win a Glock. They give away a lot of random drawing prizes, too. My club hosts a GSSF match once a year (I recall we were up to something like 600+ shooters over the weekend, using 10 bays with 3 copies of each stage) and it's just a fun thing to do. We give our members who work as SOs or as admin help "club hours" (kind of like store credit, applied to their membership dues) and it's just a good thing. Glock gives away free stuff too just for working the match (like factory Glock magazines, knives, swag, GSSF memberships) and the volunteers get entered into drawings just for the volunteers. At a match the size of the one we host, that means about 6 or more Glocks given away just to the volunteers who help out, in addition to the drawings for the match participants. Glock also has a couple of their factory guys at the match who will go over your pistol and replace worn parts and springs etc. Sure you're high speed gun guy and can do that yourself, but that's pretty useful for the vast majority of Glock owners who buy one and it hardly ever goes out to the range.
I have Glocks and like them ok, and I also have a bunch of other ones too. I tip my hat to Glock for having the marketing savvy to do something like this to get more people to the range and doing something different. A great many people don't know there's anything out there besides the stand in your lane at the indoor range and shoot at your one target, and this helps expose them to it.
If you're a competitive shooter, give it a spin. If you're not, check it out.
And if Glocks aren't your thing, that's fine too. I don't see any other gun companies stepping up to do something like this, so kudos to Glock even if they are pumping up the Glock brand.
Re the Glock purchase program: as of last year which was the last time I checked it, it worked like this. Each year you're a GSSF member (you have to join GSSF to shoot the match) you get one coupon that lets you buy a stock Glock at LEO price, e.g. a G17, 19, 22, 23, etc but not the G34 or G35, for instance) Buying an LEO (blue label on the box rather than pink) Glock means it comes with 3 magazines not 2. The price for a "stock" standard Glock is $398. So, you pay $35 for the GSSF membership but you get a coupon that saves you about $150 from what most stores around here charge, and you get an extra magazine which more or less offsets the cost of the GSSF membership.
If you join GSSF for one year, they send you the coupon (which is valid for a 1 year period) at the end of the year. If you join for 2+ years, then they send your first coupon right away.
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