Glock 20 Rescue: Breathing New Life Into a 10mm G20 Gen 4

I’m not much of a gambler. I work too hard for my money to risk frittering it away on stupid stuff. However, I do know guns. If it looks like I might be able to land some epic firearms deal, I’ll go all in on a bluff. However, sometimes those good deals come with some assembly required. Such is the case of a Glock 20 Gen 4 rescue operation I recently took on.

To the Rescue of a 10mm Glock 20

Law enforcement-seized gun auctions are my crack cocaine. I claim that I can stop anytime I want, but the evidence does not necessarily bear that out. One particularly memorable auction sported several hundred law enforcement-seized firearms.

Most of these guns were high-mileage Jennings .380s or SCCY CPXs inexplicably missing their barrels. However, nestled among the battered Hi-Points and the classic 1930s-era .32ACP automatics rusted to scrap were some truly tantalizing specimens.

As I got this gun from a Law Enforcement seizure auction, it even came with this cool cop evidence box.

One that caught my eye was a 10mm Glock 20. The description simply said, “GUN IS BROKEN. UNABLE TO REASSEMBLE.”

I Love a Good Challenge

Now I’m fairly handy with tools, and the only Glock handgun I ever saw that was truly irretrievably broken had been run over by a bush hog.

Spare parts are ubiquitous and cheap, and I didn’t own a 10mm Glock. So, this seemed like a great opportunity to flesh out the collection at substantially less than market value.

This gun had, at one time in its career, obviously been owned by a criminal. How it came to be in this sordid state is anybody’s guess. This example also came with a garish, super high-capacity extended thug magazine to boot.

My salvaged 10mm pistol came with this ludicrous extended magazine.

It’s not like I needed a 10mm Glock. The G20 is big, bulky, and heavy. It fires a round with spunkier numbers than a .357 Magnum. So, why even bother?

Semper Paratus—Always Prepared

Greenland is the largest non-continental island on Planet Earth. Its land area is larger than that of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom combined. Despite all that space, only 56,600 people actually live there. Greenland has one of the lowest population densities in the world.

The name Greenland is a bad joke. In 982 AD, the Icelandic Viking Erik Thorvaldsson, or “Erik The Red,” fled northwest. He had been found guilty of murder and needed to get out of Iceland for a while. Once he discovered Greenland, Erik established a colony on a sort of ice-free part of the coast.

When his exile was complete, he returned to Iceland and began spreading lies about the delightful new land he had discovered. He called it “Greenland” in the vain hope that the name would attract further settlers.

Denmark eventually got the deed to the desolate place. Then, during WWII, the Germans ruined everything for everybody everywhere. What started as a dog sled unit intended to disrupt a handful of remote Nazi weather stations eventually took on Cold War significance.

A fully grown male polar bear will reach 1,700 pounds. Polar bears are also one of the few animal species that will actively hunt humans. — (Photo by iStock Photo)

The Danish Sirius Dog Sled Patrol continues the tedious work of patrolling this massive icy chunk of desolate nothing. However, one of the things that spices up that otherwise mundane duty is polar bears.

Big males top out at 1,700 pounds. Polar bears represent the largest bear species extant. They will eat most anything they can catch. That includes members of the Danish Sirius Dog Sled Patrol. As a result, members of Sirius are issued two weapons.

Arming the Danish Sirius Dog Sled Patrol

The first is a WWI-vintage Enfield bolt-action rifle in .30-06. These large-bore military rifles are as reliable as the tides and offer sufficient penetration to take care of business on a 1,700-pound hungry arctic carnivore. The second is a 10mm Glock 20 handgun.

In 2006, a member of the Sirius team was supposedly forced to unlimber their Glock 20 in the face of a charging polar bear. The bear took six 10mm rounds in quick succession at a range of between 2 and 3 meters. The gun did the deed, and the Sirius trooper lived to see another day.

We have surprisingly few polar bears in rural Mississippi, where I live. However, while an admittedly hard sell to the wife, you never can tell when there might be an escape from some zoo someplace. Tragically, I’ve bought guns for dumber reasons.

Like all Glock pistols everywhere, my Glock 20 rescue shoots quite well. The striker-fired trigger is both comfortable and effective, while recoil is not awful.

This inexplicably busted piece went for $240. That was $276 with the buyer’s premium. Cracking open that box was just a bit like Christmas.

Glocktastic

The gun was a Gen 4 in shockingly good shape. The barrel, slide, and sundry metal bits were great—almost unfired. Likewise, the frame. All of the entrails seemed to be right where Gaston had put them in the first place.

The gun arrived partially-disassembled along with a little baggie that included the extractor. I fished around the slide and retrieved the firing pin assembly as well as the safety plunger. The backplate, plunger rod, spring, and retaining thingy that holds the extractor in place were MIA.

The is how the gun arrived from the auction folks.

The basic Gen 4 Glock pistol has only 34 parts. There are many companies that build these guns from scratch without using a single original Austrian component. I landed the stuff I needed for fifteen bucks online.

Minor Surgery

The Glock pistol is the AR-15 of the handgun world. Building one up from parts really isn’t hard. If you can change the oil in your car, you are lyrically overqualified.

The first time I detail-stripped a Glock frame took me maybe half an hour and a YouTube tutorial. Now I can do it while I’m enjoying a 1980’s-vintage action movie…and eating a pizza. Shimmying the magazine catch spring in place takes a little body English, but everything else is pretty stupid-proof. The slide is even easier.

I came into this cool new 10mm Glock 20 rescue as the result of my little online gambling habit.

A few Glock parts are unique to either large or small calibers, so you have to take care when ordering. This stuff was a painless drop-in fit, as expected. The end result was a factory gun at a fraction of the price.

Shooting the Glock 20 Gen 4 Rescue Pistol

Henry Ford once famously opined that you could have his Model T car in any color you wanted so long as it was black. All Glock triggers are, likewise, monotonously identical. This one was no exception.

The G20 is indeed slightly bigger than my trusty G17. Recoil is vigorous without being cruel. The gun shoots plenty straight, grouping about two inches high at 12 meters.

At 12 meters, my Glock 20 rescue shoots plenty straight.

It wouldn’t be my first choice to kill a lazy recreational afternoon at the range. However, if there were indeed polar bears afoot, then I can think of little more reassurance than my new Glock 20 rescue gun stoked with sixteen high-tech social bullets.

Ruminations

In this case I rolled the dice and came up hot. I could have just as easily peeked in that box and found a bulged barrel and a cracked slide. Just like Vegas, you pays your money, and you takes your chances.

However, if you have a little spare cash and are willing to embrace the risk, taking a chance on an injured handgun from a sketchy source can sometimes pay off. All of these guns, by definition, started out in the hands of criminals.

In addition to being lazy turds, criminals are not exactly renowned for performing proper firearms maintenance. Regardless, every now and then, you can still hit the jackpot.