Beretta M9 9mm pistol (courtesy ammoland.com)
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Beretta failed to win the U.S. Army’s modular pistol contract with their TTAG five-star APX. Beretta designed that gun from the ground-up to replace the Army’s current pistol, the M9. As SIG SAUER gears-up to equip our fighting forces with drop-safe P320‘s, Beretta has begun M9 production at their Tennessee facility. The presser below trumpets M9 reliability test results as “almost 10 times better than the rate of reliability required by the U.S. Army.” Yes, well, what about the trigger?

Gallatin, TN –-(Ammoland.com)- Beretta Defense Technologies (BDT) is pleased to announce that new M9 pistols tested at the Company’s manufacturing facility in Gallatin, Tennessee have continued the world-record reliability pace for the product. Beretta U.S.A. completed the fourteenth consecutive M9 Lot Acceptance Test (LAT) this month with an average of only one malfunction every 19,090 rounds.

During this testing period 42 M9 pistols were fired 210,000 rounds, with resultant reliability almost 10 times better than the rate of reliability required by the U.S. Army in its current Modular Handgun System program.

Beretta U.S.A. has now delivered thousands of new M9 pistols to both U.S. military and Foreign Military customers from the Company’s Gallatin facility. New U.S. and Foreign Military Sales M9 orders were issued to the Company in August, extending production of M9 pistols from that facility into the year 2020.

Beretta U.S.A. completed the fourteenth consecutive M9 Lot Acceptance Test (LAT) this month with an average of only one malfunction every 19,090 rounds.

Beretta U.S.A. completed the fourteenth consecutive M9 Lot Acceptance Test (LAT) this month with an average of only one malfunction every 19,090 rounds.

“These pistols have successfully undergone 100% complete individual component interchangeability testing with no issues. These same pistols then passed all of the individual pistol tests after the Interchange Test, including Headspace Verification, Firing Pin Indent, Trigger Pull, Function, and Targeting & Accuracy. The pistols also each passed the function and other individual pistol tests 100%”, stated Gabriele de Plano, Vice- President of Military Marketing and Operations for Beretta Defense Technologies.

“The incredible reliability of the M9 pistol is being continuously confirmed,” Mr. de Plano added. “Half of the LAT Reliability tests resulted in “perfect” reliability scores with zero malfunctions in 15,000 rounds!”

“The most important characteristic of a military firearm is that it function as intended when needed in a crisis,” stated Franco Gussalli Beretta, Executive Vice-President of Beretta U.S.A. “The M9 has always proven itself to be the most reliable combat pistol in its 30 years of service with the US Armed Services and new M9 pistols being delivered today continue to show that reliability and performance.”

About Beretta 

Beretta, established in 1526, is the oldest industrial dynasty in the world tracing its roots through 16 generations of continuous family ownership. Firearms bearing the Beretta name have been sold for almost 500 years. Beretta USA Corp. was founded in 1977 in Accokeek, MD and supplies the standard sidearm to the U.S. Armed Forces. Today, Beretta manufactures, distributes and markets a complete line of firearms, accessories, and apparel. Beretta also owns and operates six retail Beretta Gallery stores worldwide. Beretta-owned companies employ nearly 600 individuals within the United States with locations in Tennessee, Colorado, Maryland, New York, Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Virginia. For additional information visit www.Beretta.com.

SHOOTING 100 ROUNDS PER MINUTE OUT OF A BERETTA 92

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56 COMMENTS

  1. What about the trigger? If you can’t shoot a.M9 well stay away from SIGs, CZs, and fine Revolvers. I’d be guessing single actions are way out of your league. Your loss. Wow.

    • Most revolvers have better DA triggers than the 92 or any other DA/SA semi-auto. Better SA tri ggers as well. However, the 92 is perfectly capable of putting shots on tar get at 10 yards reliably with little or no practice. And once the hammer’s back it’s a much better trig ger than any striker pist ol.

      I put about 5000 rou nds through mine before I sold it without a single malfunction of any sort. Hard to top that IMHO. The 92 is on a very short list of weapons I’ve had and sold that I’d like to buy again.

      • If you wear comfortable shoulders then you can easily fire the rounds without any problem. it will keep you support align gun on target and take less pressure to press the trigger

    • If you wear a very comfortable nylon shoulder (and everyone will one day IMHO) drawing the weapon from the shoulder holster can (repeatedly an purposefully) be made to switch the safety up.

      • Is it unsafe to carry an M9 on a loaded chamber with the hammer down? If not I’d only use that safety as a decocker and set it right back to fire.

        • The M9 is probably one of the safest to carry with a loaded chamber hammer down. With the safety engaged it disables the trigger. If you carry it with the hammer down, safety off, it basically turns it into a Sig p226. 10lbs double action trigger pull for trigger pull for the first shot.

        • Completely safe and that’s how it should be carried. I prefer the G model and I wish that is the model that the military had chosen.

    • Get a factory G model, or one of those new kits that turn an F safety to a G decocker without major permanent modification .

  2. Very simple fix, new D spring.
    I don’t think the military would opt for that as they probably want a heavier trigger pull, I don’t know.
    Like George said, your loss.

    • I’ve dry fired a new M9A3 next to a standard 92FS and a custom shop CZ 75 compact and I swear the M9A3 feels* like it already has a D spring installed. The double action is lighter and smoother than my slicked up D spring Px4 trigger, and it reminded me of a Smith and Wesson Performance Center revolver. Not quite as light as the Custom CZ, but noticeably and definitively lighter pull than the normal 92FS.

  3. One of the worst days of my life was turning in my M9 service pistol before leaving Kuwait (a few days out of Iraq).

    Clean it three times, 3 inspections, armorer checks it in, throws it onto a pile (literally a pile) of M9’s going to depot maintenance. Carried that pistol every day (slept with it as my pillow [in my Safariland drop-leg holster rig] even took it into the shower with me) for that long just to see it go like that. Left me halfway naked until I turned in my M203 two days later, leaving me fully naked.

    Makes me sick thinking about it.

    Beretta makes a great pistol, couldn’t wait to get one when I got home (just to have my pillow back). Couldn’t find an M9 / 92 anywhere. Found a police remand Beretta 96 for $312, it is holster worn, and shot a bit, but it is still a tack driver. I never noticed the idiosyncrasies of the trigger until mentioned here. I like the long several-pound pull, it’s a safe gun, and if you train with it the manual of arms will work for you.

    Thank you Beretta for the fine pistol our Uncle let me borrow for awhile.

    • Absolutely! I’ve had a bunch of them. Every one has been stone reliable and more accurate than needed for a handgun. I can’t recall a single malfunction with any of them that wasn’t the ammo’s fault, or a broken part.
      For those who can’t figure out how to work a simple safety lever or a double-action trigger… learn! You might just find its a worthwhile skill, like shifting a manual transmission vehicle is.

    • Hey, Joe – thanx for that story.
      I love hearing a vet getting wistful over little favorites from their days serving: my father still to this day keeps a box of dry milk in his pantry because he drank it every day while aboard the USS Intrepid and the USA Wasp. I worked with another vet who kept a bakelite coffee cup on his desk and refused to drink from anything else.
      I still remember hearing the news back in the ’80s that the Beretta would be replacing the 1911 and watching three generations of vets getting nostalgic for their trusted service pistols. Now we have a new generation to get emotional over what replaced the old GI .45.
      I really need to get a 92 or M9 of my own… 🤠

      • Take a look at the M9. There are subtle differences between that and the 92FS that I preferred. I liked the sights better as they were easier for me to line up on target. And I liked the slim, strait dust cover under the barrel, it’s the classic 92 profile from back in the ’80s. The current get 92FSs had some extra material and a slight taper added here to beef up the frame so it could also be used in the .40 cal 96FS. Beretta never went back to the old style frames when they discontinued the 96s. So current 92s look a little chubby, like they have a bit of a double chin.

    • Joe, I never thought I’d say this but I concur.

      Before I joined the Army I believed all the tripe about how awful the M9 was, despite never having seen or fired one. Now, I never had to HALO jump into a Taliban bunker and single handedly waste a hundred dudes in the middle of the night but my experience with it as a duty weapon was not disagreable. Although they aren’t well suited to concealed carry, I found the ergonomics and shootability to be very good.

  4. First few range trips with the M9 I couldn’t hit the bullseye for the life of me. Wanted to blame the pistol. After spending some time drying firing, it’s one of the most accurate pistols I’ve used. A bit clunky but excellent none the less.

  5. Beretta 92A1 in the key of G, suppressed with Griffin Rev 9 in “M” configuration, Trijicon tubes and Streamlight TLR1H in the bedside safe with 40 rounds of 147 grain HST’s in 2 Mec Gar mags. Very quiet. Runs like a top. Literally never malfunctioned. Threaded barrel from Jarvis Custom. Love love love that pistol.

  6. I have a 96, it’s a great gun. I think the only reason people don’t choose it as often as other handguns is it’s size. It’s a full size iron in the truest sense. I think berretta would score some points to re-release it in 10mm. I’d buy one in a heart beat. Personally I think a 10mm berretta would be a great option for the military, too late for that. I get militaries these days are under the misguided notion that soldiers are too weak these days to handle anything above a 9, so, you know.

    • Although it’s not said publicly, in private conversations, our department is switching to 9 mm b/c the female officers are having tremendous difficulty qualifying with the 0.40 cal.

      • Just plain sad. I get the arguments for 9, achieve a smaller gun with higher capacity, for the general public it makes total sense. But for police and military size of the gun isn’t an issue. If you’re a cop or a soldier and you can’t handle the recoil of a .45 or 10mm in a full size gun, then you maybe you shouldn’t be a cop or soldier. The recoil of the big boy rounds really isn’t bad out of full size guns.

        • The same twits insisting we need chicks as soldiers (combat arms or other) have yet to insist that the Nondiverse Football League recruit 50% gals.

          Which is the more important physical “activity” – Infantry or kiddie game?

  7. Yep. The 90 series Berettas are just great guns.

    Not trying to slam any other guns.

    But the 92 is what it is…. a great pistol….and accurate.

  8. I’ve said it before but the two upgrades that I recommend to anyone with an M9/92 pistol is a D spring and a set of VZ G10 grips. I wish all Beretta M9/92 pistols came standard with the D spring now but it is an easy and inexpensive upgrade that is worth every penny and the G10s will take what feels like a comfortable pistol and make it darn near perfect.

  9. The main problem with the 92 is that it suffers from the same drawbacks as all other pre-polymer guns. It’s a boat anchor. This may not be a major issue if you’re a MP standing post stateside, but when you have 100lbs of other stuff to carry, every ounce starts to matter. Quite frankly, the primary reason that I carry a Glock 34 is not the alleged Glock “perfection”, it’s the fact that even with a X300 light mounted on it, it’s still significantly lighter than my P229.

  10. Ok, I’ll be the devils advocate on this post and bite.

    The M9 f@cking sucks. It’s a great weapon for police/stateside duty but a terrible combat firearm. The open shroud barrel design allowed all sorts of dirt into the weapon while patrolling Afghan deserts. If any dirt got into the magazine, forget about it and welcome to a single shot pistol. The rounds would bind in the magazine and you’d be lucky to get two shots off. I literally ejected a mag once, turned it upside down and had half the magazine just dump out because the bottom half was bound with dirt so bad half the magazine was stuck in it. And it didn’t matter which magazines either. Army issue or the expensive ones (I brought 4 of my own expensive factory magazines with me) and it still occurred.

    Don’t get me wrong, I owned one for years. Great gun to teach new shooters. I loved both the DA and SA trigger. Shot a lot of IPSC with it. Attended one of the most grueling Army CQB schools with one and it held up. But I stand by my contention that it is not a serviceable combat firearm, at least not in the environments we’ve been fighting in for the last 1.5 decades. Serving in roles where a secondary weapon was a must, I was pretty pissed to have to be toting around an M9.

    • I had exactly the opposite experience with the reliability of the M9 during my two tours in Afghanistan. I found it to be supremely reliable. It was my first tour in Southern Afghanistan that changed my mind about the M9 and now, even though I have many other guns, my M9 is the the pistol that I would face combat again any day, anywhere, with.
      It is also the only gun that I can consistently score into the Master Class with and certainly my fastest shooting pistol.

      • + I own a few pistols (kept at the bottom of a body of water after that terrible fire). My 96 is the only one I’d grab heading out the door if it was a run-whatcha-brung trip to Iraq. I think Iraq had Afghanistan beat on dust (if not, GOD help ya) and, as unit armorer the biggest difficulty I ever encountered was the trigger bar return spring (go at a 92 chamber / upper-mag well with the ‘toothbrush’ from your cleaning kit and you may knock it loose), and the mags. The mag issue seemed like an easy enough fix, if you went with the MagPul no-tilt followers (lose one round capacity but more consistent and reliable operation.) and kept your mags ~ loaded.

        As an aside, once in country, we left the wire and went out into the desert and made a range for ourselves. People were complaining about the M9’s ‘diminutive’ caliber. Gunny pulls his M9 from his holster and (looking straight down the firing line but shooting out single-handedly downrange to his right [and without looking]) empties his mag in the ‘head’ of a green dog target (about 25 yds. away). He said “It’s all about shot placement, it doesn’t matter what we give you if you can’t hit the target”. We all were silent for a few seconds, then nearly broke into the Ewok chant. The M9’s can shoot better than all of us.

    • I had always heard the reliability issue was aftermarket magazines (Checkmate?) which the army insisted be parkerized and once they changed magazines it fared much better. I’d think if you’re dealing with that much fine dust you’d have problems with any weapon. Perhaps a different holster might help. That or maybe just clean your mags a lot.

      Anyway, that open slide pretty much eliminates stovepipes, so maybe there’s just not one perfect weapon for every environment. It’s definitely not the best weapons for people with small hands either.

  11. I love double/single Berettas. The 92FS is still my favorite Beretta ever, even among the later models. The only real advantage the 92A1 or 92A3 have over it is the ability to replace the sights. I could care less about an accessory rail. Putting attachments on makes it much harder to conceal.

  12. I like the 92, it certainly is a good gun, The concern for me is the unshrouded barrel. I carried a 1911 in the army, (OK, yes I am old). S&W 586 wheel gun for about 6 years in 80’s. Then a Sig P229 for about 10 years, finished off my last 9 years with Glocks, 17 & 35. Now retired, I carry a P7m8, probably the best shooting pistol I have ever owned. My point, carry the revolver or pistol that you are most comfortable and accurate with, no matter who makes it, The #1 thing I look for in a firearm is reliability, even more than accuracy. Yea, I know, opinions are like………… everybody has one.

  13. Anyone have extended use experience with the Beretta 8040 Mini Cougar (.40 SW)? Smaller more concealable, closed top, but reliability and safety off hammer on loaded chamber characteristics the same?

  14. I carried an M9 during the Bosnia support mission and in Iraq in 2009-10. Never had an issue nor did any of my soldiers (military police unit). It was a good choice for a service handgun at the time.

    I am a fan of Glocks now and would have supported a switch to that family of weapons for the US military. I have no experience with SIGs. My only concern is the serialized firing mechanism. Pulling that out and swapping frames and slides seems inherently risky for accountability of weapons in unit.

  15. Thanks for sharing this important information. I come to know a lot about Beretta pistol history. It has a long history of manufacturing firearms almost 5-years.

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