What about Beretta 92?

Im a fan.





If its an older production gun, it would be a good idea to install the latest generation locking block. Newer guns have polymer and polymer-coated wire small parts such as the guide rod, mag release, trigger, mainspring plug and sometimes the LH safety lever. Beretta sells a steel parts upgrade kit for about $70 which is easy to install and makes a huge difference to the overall smooth operation of the gun.

Some magazines have fragile polymer baseplates, with very old examples using aluminum plates and the newest ones have polymer-coated sheet steel plates. NZ Performance makes very nice billet alloy replacement pads.

I cant honestly remember a single malfunction personally shooting a 92- though my buddy did manage to crack the barrel lug on his, which of course jammed the gun solid. It was a very high-mileage retired police gun and this was something of a fluke.

Mine are all acceptably accurate or better. Try it, I bet you'll like it.

They have a reputation for being very reliable.

Here is an Ernest Langdon (essentially Mr. Beretta M9/92FS) video where he covers some of the features of the M9/92FS

Love mine.

Just put a hundred rounds through my FS this morning.

Mine have been good, reliable, soft, and accurate shooters. They feel good in the hand and point naturally.

I wasnt always a fan. Always thought they looked big and clunky, right up until I got around to shooting one. Now I have three.

Buy it, you wont be disappointed.

Ask veterans what they think about the M9

Many hate them for being unreliable in sandy conditions, big awkward and heavy.

Others do not.

JCooperfan1911 said:

Ask veterans what they think about the M9

Many hate them for being unreliable in sandy conditions, big awkward and heavy.

Others do not.

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I am one that never did like them for several reasons.

When we first got to Saudi for Desert Shield in 90, the M9 was untested in that type of environment. I wasn't going to be a test dummy so I scrounged an old "battle rattle" 1911A1 instead. The other reason I don't care for the M9 is that the thing just doesn't fit my hands well and I never could shoot it as good as the 1911A1.

JCooperfan1911 said:

Ask veterans what they think about the M9

Many hate them for being unreliable in sandy conditions, big awkward and heavy.

Others do not.

Click to expand...

They may "look" big and awkward, but they really arent. They arent heavy either, at least compared to guns of similar size.

Ive seen a lot of thirty second hand complaints on the sand thing. Ive also heard that the military had a bunch of bad contract mags about the same time, and that was actually the source of a lot of the complaints.

Over the years, Ive seen and encountered similar problems with runs of USGI 1911 contract mags too, so its not something thats just a Beretta problem.

I'm pretty fond of mine, M9A3, which is basically just a dressed up Fs. It shoots as good or better than my Glock or Springfield with less recoil.

I have two. They probably aren't good if you have small hands. Other than that they're fine.

They're good, solid service pistols. Mine have been reliable, and I shoot them as well as most full-sized service pistols.

If it's a good deal and it fits your hands well, then there's no reason not to, IMHO.

Big, feels clunky. But, everyone can shoot a 92 / M9. I mean small for their age 14 year old girls shoot it X ring on their first centerfire trigger presses. No problem. Soft shooting, decent trigger, decent sights, very reliable.

Know lots of folks who had to use them and had budgets to shoot a LOT. Poor maintenance practices, and most of all the Checkmate magazines did not go well. The mags were parked inside. Rough. Talked to a couple who just sanded down the inside and oiled it and had no problems but the replacement program fixed the rest. Sure the desert didn't help, but these magazines were a nightmare in all environments.

Plenty hate it because of the cult of the 1911. The safety goes "the wrong way," it's not "a caliber that starts with a 4" and so on.

The locking blocks did experience cracks. These were relatively rare and mostly very high round count guns (either dedicated training guns or tier 1 units who shoot 1,000 rounds a week), and tend to crack a bit at a time, so any inspection cycle at all showed future danger, well in time. If by some miracle you find a 30 year old gun that hasn't gotten the updated block, I am pretty sure it's still a warranty / recall replacement even for civilians. Not sure if they do the big-pin thing to avoid slides coming off if you forgot to check for locking block failures, but I bet they do.

Due to mil service, and plenty of police back in the 90s also, lots of holster options. You can get snazzy Safariland ones for a song, instead of the couple hundred they are new. Plenty of aftermarket stocks, sights, other updated parts. Use some caution with holster compatibility re Brigadier, Vertec and the various railed ones. Dust cover and slide changes can mess with holster fit at least, but otherwise most things are interchangeable.

Langdon makes hilariously nice updated 92s, and sells almost all their parts, many of which can be dropped in.


I somehow don't have one now but need to again, so if anyone sees a deal for surplus 9 mms of most any type, but especially old school no rails, post or DM me and nag me to buy one this time!

I have two, no plans to let them go.

As a suppressor host, they are quiet and supremely reliable, owing to the hammer fired design and the linear barrel travel.

I like traditional double actions. I have plastic fantastic striker fired guns, but the S&W 3rd gens, CZ-75 pattern guns and Beretta 92s are my preference by a huge margin.

I've owned a couple. I have a ton of respect for them. One of the most rugged reliable guns ever made and accurate too. If I were issued one, I'd use it in complete confidence. But if I'm buying, I'd choose something else.

They are bigger than they need to be, the grip is a bit large and I'm not crazy about the backwards safety/decoker design. I can live with DA/SA, but I just like the Sig 226 version better. Not that I think the Sig is a more reliable, accurate pistol. I just like how it fits me and how the controls work better.

And now that the Beretta has been replaced with the Sig M17 and M18 I like that design even better.

If the price is right, you should give it a try.

They can be quite nice to shoot.

Variants of the Beretta 92 have been the mainstay handguns of the world's oldest firearms company for nearly half a century (as was the 92's immediate predecessor, the M1951, for another quarter century before that). The 92 would not have endured so long if it was not exceptionally reliable and accurate.

I know that many people with them understand their origin and design characteristics, but the OP indicated they did not know much about them except that they are 9mm and the US military adopted them 1986.

So the Beretta 92 originated with the Walther P-38. It is practically a copy of the design with some minor refinements. The P-38 was a breakthrough design in innovation because it was Double-Action/Single-Action and thereby dispensed with the need for a manual safety. While the PPK preceded it as a Double-Action, the P-38 also had a locked breech whereas the PPK was only blow-back operated. Manual safeties on single-action automatics like the 1911 and most pistols prior to the P-38 are problematic for large organizations of indentured users (armies, police agencies, governments, etc.). Inadequate training and/or failure to absorb training or follow instructions inevitably results in the safety not being on when it needs to be on, and/or being on when it needs to be off. Walther designed and produced a solution in the P-38 that combined the safety inherent in the long, deliberate, heavy double-action pull of the trigger for the initial shot like a revolver, and the subsequent short, crisp single action trigger for successive shots. It isn't a perfection solution conceptually or in execution, but it was nonetheless an important innovation. The Germans lost the war and the P-38 became part of the spoils so to speak.

By 1954, Smith & Wesson had copied the P38 and entered their "Model 39" in the US service pistol trials that year. The '54 trials were one of the several attempts by the US Army to find a replacement for the M1911. A bunch of brass came to realize the Germans had invented a better mousetrap and thought they could make things better by adopting it, but obviously not everyone agreed. They did apparently agree that the MG42 was worth copying and adopting (chambered in .308) as the M60.

It was in '79 that the US started on yet another quest to replace the M1911, this time with a determination renewed by the perceived need to adopt the 9x19mm NATO standard cartridge. They would go through three iterations of trials before they picked the Beretta that became known as the M9. The S&W Model 39 had now evolved into the Model 59 and then then Model 459. It was still an evolution of the P38. Beretta had made its own evolutionary adaption of the P38 called the 92FBS. It proved to be more reliable with a greater MRBF. I won't summarize all the handgun testing the US government did in the early 1980's. It suffices that the 92 was adopted as the M9 and that it was and remains an evolution of the Walther P38. Walther did enter its own P88 into the trials, but it failed drop tests and proved to have poor durability.

The action type introduced with the P38 was adopted by SIG, H&K, CZ, and subsequently all the copies of those. That isn't to say that those did not continue to innovate and introduce new design breakthroughs. The DA/SA design remained dominant until Glock made the striker-fired action the most popular today. The striker-fired action was introduced in a handgun first by Heckler & Koch, and a pistol, the P7, with this design was entered in the 80's US handgun trials. It featured the unique squeeze-cocker. H&K also entered another pistol which featured a polymer frame and was striker-fired but was DAO (no partially pre-cocked striker). For whatever reason, these innovations didn't really catch on until the Glock began to gain acceptance about a decade later.

The 92 is almost certainly one of the best mass-produced iterations of the DA/SA automatic pistol, along with the CZ and Sig. It's most distinguishing feature is the open slide design. It's popularity waned almost certainly because of the heavy weight incurred from the metal frame along with the additional cost of machining that in comparison to substantially lighter weight polymer frames that are also much less costly to produce. In addition to the weight and cost, the DA/SA pistols fell out of favor due to the inconsistency between the first and subsequent trigger pulls. A consensus seemed to form around the idea that so long as the trigger pull was long enough, it was sufficient to prevent unintentional discharges without a manual safety or a heavy-weight double-action. The pull weight to discharge the gun and the trigger reset distance that's favored among buyers seem to have been creeping down over the years. If a person prefers to learn the DA trigger and even wants a manual safety in addition to that, the 92 delivers both.

I've had 3 of them over the years and regretted selling all of them. I have a Taurus PT-92, close enough, right now. Soft shooter, I like the grip a lot and I would take even the Taurus, which in no way is a bad gun at all, over any 1911.

westernrover said:

{snip}
The striker-fired action was introduced in a handgun first by Heckler & Koch, and a pistol, the P7, with this design was entered in the 80's US handgun trials.
{snip}

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Both Borchardt C93 (the first mass-produced semi-automatic pistol) and Luger pistols were striker-fired designs that originated before 1900.

Some people like them, some don't. I don't. Of the 5 different types of handguns I was issued during my time with the mil, the M9 was my least liked. When my old command replaced them across the board with the Glock, there was much rejoicing. YMMV.

I still need to get one someday. The 92x and Vertec models have a smaller grip that might be more comfortable for some people

The 92 is one of most proven and iconic 9mm's ever made.

It was something I thought was missing in my collection until I finally bought one and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s one of those guns that are fun to shoot, reliable and accurate. Not something I’d carry though.