GUN OF THE WEEK 18

By Bob Walsh

​The Gun of the Week this time around is the Glock Model 20 10mm semi-automatic pistol.
 
I confess my first foray into “Tupperware” guns was not awe-inspiring.  Many years ago a student brought a bunch of them to a police armorer’s class I took up in Susanville.  They were fairly new at the time.  One of the things we did was test the firing pin safety on them.  We did this by putting a primed case in the chamber on an assembled slide and then pulled and released the striker.  They all “fired.”  That should not have happened.  I do not much like firing pin safeties.  That being said, if they are there they should work.  I have personally seen two of them fail, tying up the gun.  In all honesty it should be noted that Glock became aware of this problem and solved in in fairly short order.
 
This particular gun is an early first generation.  The overall length is about 8.25 inches and overall height is about 5.5 inches.  The width is just a tad over 1.25 inches and the barrel is 4.6 inches.  It weighs just a tad under 31 ounces with an empty magazine inserted.  The factory standard magazine holds 15 rounds.  They are equipped with the polygon rifling which does NOT like lead bullets. 
 
I had to have a “butt job” done on this gun in order to make it fit my hand reasonably well.  I promptly got rid of the stock plastic sights and installed a set of HiVis sights on it.  I also put in a slightly stronger than stock firing pin spring as I was getting misfires with reloaded ammo.  As it turns out the factory spring for both the small frame and large frame pistols is identical, even though the large frame pistol has a firing pin (striker) that is almost 10% more massive than that of the small frame pistol.  No more misfires, though it never did misfire with factory ammo.  In addition I bought a conventionally rifled barrel for it so I could shoot lead thru it if I felt the need.  I also put in a slide-release slide lock lever, which was not a factory part at the time, though it is now. 
 
I took this gun thru Massad Ayoob’s LFI I course back in the day when Mass ran the thing.  Turns out that he believed at the time that the Glock Model 20 was pretty much the ideal police uniform duty weapon.  It ran beautifully thru the class for me.   
 
Glock is now up to Gen 5 on these pistols.  People like them.  If you are interested in a full size, high power semi-auto and your hands will fit around the thing I can highly recommend it.

---