Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Massad Ayoob
Read between
December 22, 2023 - February 21, 2024
Berettas simply aren’t designed for suppressors.
Rumor: Berettas jammed epidemically in the sandy environment of the Gulf War. Inside story: By all accounts from military armorers and instructors, the Berettas stood up as well as any small arms to the Gulf environments, and better than most. Think about it: This is the pistol that the Israelis, the acknowledged masters of modern desert warfare, use extensively themselves.
A rumor spread in part by COL (Ret.) David Hackworth (God rest his soul).
There is simply no other combat auto that comes from the factory with as smooth running a slide as the Beretta 92 style. It’s the envy of the industry in this regard.
Its double-action trigger pull is, if not the best, right up there among the top two or three. Its single-action pull is also quite manageable.
In service mode, it easily outshoots not only the 1911 but virtually all of the contemporary 9mms. Only the SIG can equal or barely exceed it in accuracy on a level playing field. Vince O’Neill, the famous police trainer from Oklahoma, notes that local cops who shoot on pistol teams with duty weapons tend to choose the Beretta for its superior accuracy.
Bazinga! As one of my own fellow IDPA competitors told me in 2005, “You’re deadly accurate with that thing!” And I was recognized as “Most Accurate” using it at an IDPA Match in 2011!
The Brigadier, a resurrected name from Beretta’s mid-20th century progenitor of the Model 92, now designates a heavy-duty reinforced slide.
The Beretta 9mm in either “F” or “D” configuration is the one auto pistol I’m most likely to issue a student who doesn’t have his own autoloader. I’ve found them easy and safe to handle, and forgiving of the lack of maintenance that can occur in an intensive shooting class environment.
Even more so than the Glock 17?’
I can put any firearm I want next to my bed to protect my family and myself. The gun I do put there is a Beretta 92F stainless worked over by Bill Jarvis with one of his 6-inch match barrels, Mag-Na-Ported at the outer end, and with a SureFire flashlight mounted to the frame.
Going down to a 10-shot magazine from the 15 the 9mm Beretta was designed for hurts, even though Bill Clinton doesn’t really feel our pain, but going down from an 11-shot .40 mag to a 10-rounder is a lot easier. A 10 percent bite doesn’t hurt as much as a 33 percent bite.
Haha, Slick Willie can suck it!
That, in the end, is the story. The people who own Berettas like them so much they keep them. The people who bad-mouth Berettas generally usually turn out to never have owned one ... and they don’t know what they’ve missed.
Bingo!
there were recurrent complaints about the failure of the Beretta to put the bad guys down. The problem, obviously, was the long-standing impotence of 9mm ball ammunition, and not the fault of the Berettas that launched the bullets.
guns were working fine with Beretta magazines in the hostile overseas environments. The problem, they said, lay in aftermarket Checkmate brand magazines bought by the government on bid.
The inherent practical accuracy of the Beretta comes from its good barrel-to-slide fit, which can be achieved without compromise of reliability thanks to the open-slide design.
British gun experts Richard Law and Peter Brookesmith wrote, “The Beretta we tested notched up mileage quite quickly and passed the 50,000 round mark after about 18 months’ service.
The controversial locking blocks have been modified three times for a total of four subtly different designs. Explains Beretta expert Ernest Langdon, “The first locking block design had square shoulders. The second version had radiused corners on the ears of the block. The third version was nearly identical, but not radiused as radically, on the theory that the first fix took away too much material. Finally, the current version was re-engineered significantly. It will work with the original barrel design, but the way it contacts the barrel and the way the stress is placed on the locking block
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Continues Langdon, “I still, proactively, replace my locking blocks at 20,000 rounds.
Yeah, I know, people “saw it happen” in one of the “Lethal Weapon” movies.
Jet Li!
The short-lived order to military armorers to change Beretta slides every 3,000 rounds was rarely observed, and quickly passed away, but people talk of it as if it was still in effect.
(1) Wilson, R.L., “The World of Beretta: An International Legend,” New York City: Random House, 2000, P. 234.
No relation to Brooks Wilbur Wilson, retired LT of Anaheim PD! (sorry, inside joke)
By 1987, the United States Army had adopted the combat shooting system I had previously developed, StressFire™, and incorporated it into their combat pistolcraft doctrine.
If it had been a puppy, it would have wagged its tail, licked my hand, and silently begged me to take it home. “How much is that doggie in the window?”
Aw shucks.
In 1996, while preparing for the National Tactical Invitational, my daughter Cat discovered that she shot faster and straighter with a Beretta than with any other combat handgun, including the custom Colt .45s and 9mm Brownings she had been shooting up to then.
While the little one felt better in my hands than the full-size, I shot them equally well.
The Beretta 92 series has earned an enviable reputation for reliability. From the U.S. military to such private sector gun experts as Ken Hackathorn and Bill Wilson, the 9mm Beretta 92 has been acclaimed the single most reliable service pistol of its kind.
Again, that’s high praise! But wow, even more reliable than the Glock 17? Just askin’.
Federal 9BP and Winchester subsonic hollow-points, perhaps the two most consistently accurate rounds in the kingdom of the 9mm Parabellum,
Note that 90 percent of the “best 3” measurements were 2 inches or less at 25 yards. This is more in keeping with what I’ve learned to expect from Beretta 92s with good ammo over the years, whether full size or compact like this one.
The rounds that Evan Marshall and Ed Sanow found in studies of gunfights to be in the 90 percent range for likelihood of stopping the fight quickly tended to be 115-grainers in the 1,300 feet per second range. During the test period, when this was my main carry gun, I kept it loaded with the famed Illinois State Police load; Winchester’s 115-grain +P+ at 1,300 fps. From frigid Chicago in winter to sultry Cairo in summer, the Illinois troopers found it to open up and work from their 4-inch S&W service pistols for almost 20 years, no matter how much heavy clothing the opponent might be wearing.
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The classic Beretta Model 92 9mm, known as the M9 to our military and as the Model 96 when chambered for the .40 Smith & Wesson round, is an endearing pistol. People like master gunsmith Bill Wilson and master instructor Ken Hackathorn have proclaimed it the most reliable of service pistols. It is match-winning accurate, as Ernest Langdon proved winning overall top score at the IDPA National Championships multiple times with his 92G.
“Endearing,” perfect choice of adjective!
Design credit on the Vertec concept goes to Len Lucas, Todd Green, Gabriele DePlano, and Drew Ursin.
The barrel was different, though: blackened stainless. Explains Todd Green, “Bruniton is so lubricious that with stainless, you can’t get it to stick.
The barrel, by the way, is 4.7 inches instead of the usual 4.9. In addition to making the gun a little shorter, it makes for a better-looking pistol. Some thought that the muzzle protruding from the slide on the familiar M9 looked a little, well, ungainly. Notes Green, “The only reason for the extended barrel in the first place was to have room to cut threading so you could add a sound suppressor.”
Hey, c’mon, the standard Beretta 92 with the protruding muzzle looks plenty beautiful IMHO!
The Beretta 92 is an accurate, mild-kicking pistol, and that continues in the Vertec variation. My gun had the traditional big Beretta sights, so beloved by geezers like me because our aging eyes can still see them.
At age 48, I suppose I can be counted in that geezer category now as well!
I was delighted with the Speer RHT (Reduced Hazard Training) ammo. We don’t expect great accuracy from frangible projectiles, nor yet from lead-free primers like CCI/Speer’s Cleanfire. They tend to be less consistent than conventional primers with lead styphnate, and less consistent primers generally result in altered ignition patterns that in turn cause vertical stringing at the target. This is my second test of a 9mm pistol in which the Speer RHT has won the accuracy sweepstakes. This is proof that CCI/Speer is doing a difficult job right. With frangible and lead-free rounds more and more
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Since take-home guns for practice aren’t in U.S. military protocol, these brave Americans have to buy their own. Often, concerned parents buy the guns for them.
Some buy commemoratives, killing two birds with one stone as it were.
Like I did with my OEF USAF Commemorative M9!
There is no better endorsement of the Vertec than the fact that Ernest Langdon, the world’s top Beretta shooter in practical handgun competition, has gone that route. He shoots a black 9mm Vertec 92G these days, after a year and a half shooting SIG .45s in competition.
In 1990, Beretta U.S.A. had reason to worry. They had once achieved market dominance in the police “wonder-nine” field with their Model 92 9mm, but SIG-Sauer’s P226 was neck and neck with them and perhaps gaining in the race, and their margin of lead had been a slim one in any case. Glock’s new “plastic pistol” had risen up out of nowhere like Godzilla coming up out of Tokyo harbor, and if trends continued it would soon be the dominant police 9mm in the USA.
CSP when it became only the second State Police department in the United States to adopt a semiautomatic pistol, actually standardizing on the 92F before the U.S. military did.
Troopers found this new 9mm to be more accurate and far quicker to reload than the issued revolver.
After heavy testing, the City of San Francisco Police Department chose the 96G as its first standard-issue semiautomatic service pistol.
In similar fashion, the state police of Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island also adopted Model 96 pistols, but double-action-only, D series.
An extraordinarily exhaustive test led the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which encompasses the gunfight-heavy Border Patrol, to adopt the Beretta 96D pistol.
Ray Chapman was famous for saying, “Pistols work best with the cartridge for which they were originally chambered.”
In the latter half of the 20th Century, Smith & Wesson discovered that their K-frame revolver, originally built around the low-pressure black powder .38 cartridge, would overheat, lock up, and jam when fired extensively with .357 Magnum ammunition. This was particularly true in the stainless steel version.
it is no secret even so that today’s Glock .40 caliber pistols show more wear with the same number of rounds than their otherwise identical 9mm pistols.
excellent experiences the Washington State Patrol had enjoyed with the Beretta 92.
The 135-grain bullet, the lightest practical load available in terms of bullet weight, seemed to cause feeding problems in a number of Model 96 specimens.
The 135s worked reliably in the HK P2000 I was issued as a CBP Officer.
The Beretta 9mm is very tolerant of a shooter with an unlocked wrist. The Beretta .40 just isn’t quite so tolerant.”
Trooper Angela Watson, who killed the man who shot her with a .44 Magnum. As she returned fire, she found her pistol inoperable, proceeded with the jam-clearing technique she had been taught, reloaded and kept shooting. She told me she is not certain whether, as the Beretta people surmise, she might have simply failed to return her double action trigger all the way forward.
didn’t feel that much difference in the SIG P226 9mm, for example, with or without the mercury-filled Harrt’s Recoil Reducer installed, but there was a palpable improvement when one of these units was installed in the .45 caliber P220.
