British Raid Safe Deposit Boxes

The Daily Mail has more.
Honestly, the only good thing I see coming out of that raid is the picture where the cops are displaying good trigger discipline. Everything else seems completely outrageous.
They also show a picture of a “gun” found during the raid:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that looks completely different from any Glock pistol I’ve ever seen. The finger grooves suggest that it’s a third-generation Glock (previous generations didn’t have the grooves), but everything else seems suspicious: there’s no metal rails on the receiver for the slide to run on, the barrel’s “breech block” is grossly oversized and looks to be made out of plastic, there’s no ejector, the spring and guide rod in the baggie don’t look anything like the type of spring (real Glocks have a flat, coiled spring instead of the round, coiled spring displayed here) or guide rod (real Glocks have a plastic guide rod that holds the spring captive), the texture on the grip looks wrong, and the flat “label” at the bottom of the grip doesn’t exist on the left side of Glock pistols. Additionally, there’s no “GLOCK” emblem on the grip.
I’d show a picture of my Glock 19, but it has a Hogue sleeve on the grip, and so conceals the left side of the grip. As such, I’ll present this image of a third-generation Glock 17 that I found from Google Image Search:

Note the differences?
If the police and newspapers can’t identify a fake pistol (probably an airsoft knockoff), dare I ask how accurate the rest of the claims made by the police are?
While I have no doubt that some of the boxes raided belonged to criminals, I’d suspect that many of the boxes belonged to ordinary, law-abiding people. Hopefully they can get their stuff back. Good luck getting anyone to keep stuff in safe deposit boxes in the future.

15 thoughts on “British Raid Safe Deposit Boxes”

  1. I’m not a expert on Glocks, but the British cops do have a history of confiscating any vaguely gun-like: They seized a deadly full auto assault thingamiggy earlier this year that turned out to be an airsoft gun (no link ’cause I’m on my way to work, but it’s out there in the internets).
    This is what happens when you make the item the crime and not the activity.

  2. Could be a Glock 25. 9×17/.380/9mm Kurtz version of the 19. One of those things that the ATF won’t let us have here in the US.

  3. Matt, Sebastian, are you sure? All the Glock 25s I found via Google Image Search clearly has the Glock logo on the lower-left side of the grip, a different thumbrest, and a different textured pattern on the grip.
    I maintain that the pistol displayed is not a real Glock.

  4. The firewalls at work are blocking most of Google image search right now. I just think it could be b/c I know that the .380 Glocks are blowback operated which should mean fixed barrel. I’ve been wrong before, and I know I will be wrong again so if I’m wrong this time it won’t come as much of a surprise. Now if we could just find someone who has a .380 Glock to weigh in on the subject.

  5. Indeed. Silly import points rules. I find it amusing that other foreign-made .380s (e.g. the Bersa Thunder .380) can be imported, but not a Glock. Go figure.
    As for the being wrong, I’m wrong all the time. Don’t worry about it. 🙂

  6. That’s the stupid ATF point system Sebastian. The only way of that I know of to get one of those is to get a friendly LEO to request one via department letterhead, pay for with personal funds, then “decide they don’t like it” and sell it to someone else. And I’m not even sure if that would count as a straw purchase or not. (I’m kind of a stickler for those)

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