To those who dis the 9mm

Strange...The SAS and SBS built their reputation with stens and Browning HiPowers, mostly using 9mm FMJ. It worked for them...Of course, they aim to kill, and hit what they aim at.

Close range assassination-type work? .22LR has done a good deal of that, too. Same goes for .32 and .380.

Different context, I think.

i got to shoot my first 9mm, at 2lbs 1oz the gun recoiled alot more than expected and nearly got cut on the slide, least it felt like the thing wanted to do it.

Strange...The SAS and SBS built their reputation with stens and Browning HiPowers, mostly using 9mm FMJ. It worked for them...Of course, they aim to kill, and hit what they aim at.

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Ever wonder what they'd carry if they weren't locked into those weapons by regulations? I don't know for certain that they are but knowing the Brits I think the odds are that they are.

A good friend of mine was a British soldier in WW2. He did a lot of dispatch riding and was offered a .38 S&W revolver to carry. He refused to take it because cartridges were so scarce that firing even a single round required filling out paperwork to justify it. Instead he drew a Thompson SMG and then horse traded with an American GI for a 1911A1. The .45ACP cartridge was plentiful and he could draw as many as he cared to without having to account for them. When I knew him in the mid-1980's, he still had the 1911A1 and I was able to fire it several times at our pistol club. My friend was also an excellent rifle shot.

its probably just a case of
abs(U(lack of stopping power)) < U(money saved by sticking to same system and calibre)

I love my M9. It's aesthetically pleasing, I love the CAGE codes on it, and I love all the USGI mags I bought to go with it (the new Airtronic ones, not CMI). It's just too damn big for me to shoot comfortably.

sarduy said:

people say that 9mm is weak and 1 round may not stop a thread...

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It can if it's the mod's

Personaly I don't care what they use. Clinton made it clear it will never go to civilians as they intentionaly destroyed thousands and thousands of 1911 pistols rather than sell them to civilians, as well as insuring the CMP can never transfer them to civilians.

The pistol is a secondary firearm or non existant for most of the military.
The MPs get to use hollowpoints because they are shooting Americans, so the 9mm sidearms work fine in that case.
If thier military target is wearing body armor of any type it is likely setup to provide protection against rifles, so a slightly more powerful pistol round wouldn't help much anyways.


What really matters is the firearm can run thousands of rounds without breaking, leaving it reliable and low maintenance while using a NATO round. If it can be dropped, rolled over, banged against hard objects, and is not cracked like some polymer marvel it is even better.
Performance is a distant concern.

Any caliber or cartridge adopted as standard will simply be the new minimum standard all pistol rated soft body armor must defeat worldwide.
So any percieved improvements in that sector will just become obsolete quickly.


Most fighting soldiers use rifles or heavy equipment. The pistol has less stopping power, less penetration, is less accurate, is more effected by recoil, has lower capacity, and is tougher to teach to a grunt to shoot.
Now if crawling into tunnels, or you need a one handed firearm while swimming, or something small and silenced for assassination or...

There is some military uses for a pistol, but they are few and far between.
The most common need for a service pistol is shooting enlisted servicemen in a law enforcement role.
They can use the reliable 9mm Beretta for that and keep NATO happy at the same time.

What really matters is the firearm can run thousands of rounds without breaking, leaving it realiable and low maintanence while using a NATO round. If it can be dropped, rolled over, banged against hard objects, and is not cracked like some polymer marvel it is even better.

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This is true. And while it is also true that better mousetraps are aplenty, only two were able to complete the trials...

The slide failures which are often sited were also tested and found to be only after an average of about 30,000 rounds were fired though them...

It's a good gun. It's tough, it's accurate, it's hard hitting, and it carries twice the rounds. It seems to me to be the favorite in a situation such as Iraq or any modern confrontation where shots are deflected due to obstructions (buildings, cars, and other urban objects). Those extra 8 rounds or so will surely find a target.

You can still count me as a fan of the old Browning design, but it's hard to argue with the test results and the new battlefield situations. While I'd be happy to have either if my rifle either had a terminal jam or was out of ammo altogether, I'd feel better about holding the Beretta with its 15 rounds.
-Bill

War fighting is about injuring a guy...you have an injured person and you need one or two to take them back to medics. Takes more manpower than just killing them outright. FMJ 9mm does that well.

If you think that the U.S. military choose a 9x19mm because it is a great man-stopper, then you might be delusional. They choose it for the same reason they choose it back in the late 80's... To play nice with our NATO partners. The U.S. was the only NATO country using the .45acp and every other member was using the weaker 9mm. The U.S. caved to pressure from our allies and finally brought the Beretta M9 into service in 1990, to the dismay of every soldier who was forced to give up their more powerful .45 M1911.

I don't dis the 9mm for anyone who chooses to carry one. I do dis the politicians who would put the safety of our soldiers behind playing nice with our allies.

If you think that the U.S. military choose a 9x19mm because it is a great man-stopper, then you might be delusional. They choose it for the same reason they choose it back in the late 80's... To play nice with our NATO partners. The U.S. was the only NATO country using the .45acp and every other member was using the weaker 9mm. The U.S. caved to pressure from our allies and finally brought the Beretta M9 into service in 1990, to the dismay of every soldier who was forced to give up their more powerful .45 M1911.

I don't dis the 9mm for anyone who chooses to carry one. I do dis the politicians who would put the safety of our soldiers behind playing nice with our allies.

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If you want to talk about taking a more powerful round from our troops then lets talk about the 5.56. Traded in the more powerful 30.06 didnt we? Warfare now is about wounding the enemy and tieing up other soldiers attending to the wounded.

Well, the 9mm FMJ is not the right cartridge for anyone in the service. The reason why they picked this combo is probably because 9mm is cheap and the gun probably won the bid. However if they allowed good HP ammo it would be a whole nother story. I have a close friend who is in the Army and he said that the pistol that they gave him was not enough and he has seen it used but lets just say it took 7 shots at about 15 feet, he also said that his gun was junk and the finish was almost non existant when he received the gun. The 9mm is fine with good ammo and in the +P variety but certainly not in the FMJ variety.

OK, but if then you rationalize that it must then be because we care what the rest of the world thinks, then you've missed the boat. Saying that we just want to be "buddies" with the rest of the world is just another "let's blame the government because" sentiment and is based solely on speculation. Sure, it makes it easy to "fit in" with other NATO troops, should we be in a position to share digs with them. It might even save someone's butt, but that isn't what it's about.

The reason to "standardize" isn't a bad idea, it makes sense. But you might look further at why the standard chosen was the 9mm rather than the .45ACP. Both are good rounds. I contend that the reason the rest of the world (and the US dragging up the rear) adopted the 9mm is because of the higher capacity of the associated guns, and the reduced weight or higher capacity of the ammo cans, should they be of equal weight. It simply delivers more rounds in the same amount of space. Either round would ruin your weekend. Let's also remember that if any other nation should decide to not "play nice" with us, we'll have twice as many rounds to throw back at them. Not that a handgun makes or breaks the battle, but ask any WWII vet who saw action against the Waffen and faced being outgunned by the MG42 or the P35 how comfortable they felt. Sometimes it isn't just about politics or conspiracy theories, it's just a practical matter. Assuming both weapons are equally reliable, I just can't see any other factors being more important than rate of fire and capacity, which really are tied together in any well designed system. Color me blind then...
-Bill

Now you may be wondering what model it is? What is the caliber? It has to be a .45, right? Actually it's the model 92FS, that's right, 9mm, so much for the 9mm being ineffective for self defense!

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Ya but! They're also still using 5.56; and it's just barely big enough to kill a small coyote. So, I'm wondering when the government is going to sanction .32 for handguns and .17 HMR for assalt rifles.

These threads are so dumb.

Well, if the government picked the 9mm as the round of choice it must be correct.

Was it not Sigmund Freud that deduced the definition of insanity was the act of performing the same action over and over again, each time expecting a different result? Did he know of the American government at the time I wonder quietly to myself
:banghead: <---- This.......has.....got......to.....work......this......TIME!

This bothers me. Just because the gov't orders another slew of Berettas doesnt mean that they are an effective self defense weapon.
If you have ever been issued a beretta in a combat environment while serving with the US armed forces, you will know that it is issued with 9mm NATO FMJ. I can go ahead and tell you that the 9mm FMJ is not effective, unless you thread something important. Now, if you load it with some +P+ hollow points, you will have an effective self defense weapon. I have been in the military, and I have been in a combat environment with a beretta 92FS. My experience in working with the Gov't is that they do not always make the very best of decisions. The OP's original statement is not accurate.
I have seen people shot by the 9mm FMJ. One guy took one through his kidney, he then walked three miles to the hospital and was release 5 hours after routine surgery.

Another guy took a 9mm FMJ point blank to his thigh. It was clean through. I talked to him while he was sitting on the hospital bed. He said that it didnt hurt very much and he could walk around without any assistance from the hospital staff.

I know the critics out there are saying that those were not "sweet spot" hits, I am just running off of the OP's statement.

1-Gov't orders 450,000 Beretta 92FS'(more than likely for the Military).
2- Military uses 9mm NATO FMJ.
3- 9mm FMJ is NOT an effective defence round.

Just my two cents , sugar coated with my experience.

"9mm, so much for the 9mm being ineffective for self defense!"

The two have zero relationship to each other. I'm sorry to hear they kept a rnd many complained was lacking fired from a gun almost no one liked and had problems. I suspect cost savings was the number one consideration at this time. Oh well...

In any sort of combat situation, if I am firing my weapon at an enemy, I am going to fire at least twice at said enemy. It doesn't matter what weapon or round I am using. It could be an ASV mounted .50cal, I'm still firing more than one shot. So that being said, I would much rather have a weapon where I can engage 8 targets as opposed to 4. And there is the issue of misses. The .45 might be a better caliber in a range environment when you're firing at ballistic gel and you're assured a hit. But what about when you're in some middle eastern village and you just dropped your defective M4 and you've got jihadists running towards you? You're likelihood of being able to form a good shooting stance and fire off your 7 .45 rounds decreases significantly. Double the shots per target doubles the chance of a hit. 1 out of 2 hits with a 9mm is better than 0 out of 1 hits with the .45acp. 9mm may be a poor performing round in the lab, but a higher chance of actually hitting the terrorist with a bullet, any bullet, is all the convincing I need.

This is the reason why I agree with 5.56 as well. At the end of the patrol, the ability to throw a lot more bullets at the enemy is of much higher concern to me than ballistic gel tests.

If you want to talk about taking a more powerful round from our troops then lets talk about the 5.56. Traded in the more powerful 30.06 didnt we?

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First off, no. It was the 7.62x51 or .308, not the .30-06 at that point.

Second, there's also the platform to consider. The Garand and the M14 are heavy beasts, still owing much of their basic design to the musket/bayonet platform of the 1700s, like the Brown Bess.

There's a real argument for the lighter, quicker, smaller M16 and its even more compact CQB-oriented offspring in modern war. There's also an argument for carrying a lot of rounds, and being able to fire burst or full-auto suppressive fire.

Right or wrong, there are all these points.

The M9, however, offers no savings in weight. And while it does offer higher capacity than a single-stack 1911, its capacity is ho-hum in 2009. We now have off-the-shelf .45s that hold almost as many rounds as the "hi-cap" 9mm Beretta.

WRT durability: in military contract quantities, polymer frames are dirt cheap. While a heavy gun like an M9 might just shoot itself loose over time, a polymer frame could crack. Sure. But it could also be tossed in the trash can and swapped for a new one.

I'm no military arms tester, so I don't know what longevity a plastic gun would really have when used by the military. OTOH the M16 is mostly aluminum and plastic, and it seems to hold up well enough to pass the things off to cops when the military is done beating on them.

Or it could be it is the cheapest round to purchase and Berretta was the lowest bidder.

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Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

I'm not a 9 mm detractor. I carry 9 mm a lot, depending on what I'm wearing. It's certainly a good all around caliber for most purposes. It's not optimal, and there are several semi-auto centerfire rounds that outperform it , but it's fine for civilians.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that the U.S. gov't knows what it's doing. (If anything, the fact that they chose the M9 should raise a few red flags about it, LOL ) We're in a recession, and we just spent $2.5 trillion in Obama's first month. Remember the outrage at the first $780 billion bailout bill? Well that's starting to look like chump change to Obama. His next spending bill will probably be $1 quadrillion.

The gov't decides things based on cost (most important) and minimum efficacy. It doesn't mean the M9 outperformed every other handgun, necessarily. It just means it was "good enough" and the cheapest contract.

Location: San Frann Arbor, Michigan

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LOL, so true...