The Mighty Beagle
Member
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2002
- Messages
- 218
Well, the wife bought me the .40 Mini Firestorm, made by BERSA, as a birthday present today. I did some checking, and fairly cheap reloading components are out there for the .40, so I’m not too disappointed it’s not a 9mm.
Before taking it to the indoor range, I shot the gun about 30-40 times outside to check safety/functioning. Here are my impressions.
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
This is a very nice cheap little gun. The gun feels fabulous in the hand, and points even better for me today than it did. I close my eyes, point it, and the sights are dead on when I open them. This gun is almost like an overgrown Sig 232 or Bersa .380.
One thing I LOVE is that the top of the slide is rounded, no boxy-ness about the gun. This makes it much easier on my ribs for IWB carry, and to my eye is just my prettier, as well as being unusual these days.
The grips are highly checkered plastic, and the front of the frame contains moderate finger grooves, which usually would bother me but don’t at all on this gun. I can’t tell if they fit me, or are so moderate that I just don’t notice them being in the wrong place for me.
The front sides of the frame are grooved as an “accessory railâ€. What fits on them though, I don’t know.
Balance is excellent, despite having an alloy frame. That usually makes guns top-heavy for me, but I guess the boreline is low enough and the frame heavy enough that it doesn’t feel that way. At only 25 oz. or so, it hefts like a much bigger, heavier, more substantial gun, which I like for recoil control.
The gun is surprisingly thin in the slide, and has a sleek, compact comportment. I think of it as an alternative for the Officers ACP/ 1911 compact I always wanted, except with the safer double-action. I like it much better than the Kahr K9 I once had, as it’s not much bigger, looks better, and has a much more normal “grip angle†to it. It almost looks too compact to fire .40’s comfortably, especially since the sides of the tang are sharpish. However, surprisingly they didn’t bother my hand during firing.
Sights are painted white and are highly visible, but when blacked out are cramped. The front sight is very wide. The rear sight has a relatively small notch for it though, despite having all kinds of room to be “hogged out†before getting into the white outline. A file is definitely in order, as there aren’t any “light bars†to be had on either side of the front sight. If the white paint is your guide though, this isn’t really a problem.
FIT/FINISH
Finish was pretty good for what you’d expect. Fit was pretty good, with tight slide-frame fit and tight barrel-slide fit. One oddity is at the rear of the frame where on the right side of the hammer, the slide overhangs a silly millimeter. Strangely, on the left side, the frame overhangs the slide.
Biggest problem was that the muzzle hole in the slide looks slightly off-center to me. Might just be the way I’m looking at it though, as my wife couldn’t see it.
Some vertical brush marks on the rear of the slide were evident as well as a few marks on the side of the slide from being handled on the pawn shop counter.
Internally, things looked worse, which I’ve come to expect these days from most makers, Latin American makers in particular. The frame was mostly well-formed but contained some tiny malformed places/uneven edges, some being slightly sharp. Nothing that would affect function though. Some wavy-looking places inside the slide and brush wheel marks not totally polished out. The closer you looked, the more cosmetic flaws you could find.
SHOOTING IMPRESSIONS
This is the softest shooting .40 I’ve ever fired, maybe due to the stiff dual recoil springs. I thought it was a 9mm on Steroids. I generally hate the .40’s recoil, so that says a lot really.
Two 180 gr. FMJ loads were used, as that’s all that Wal-Mart had, and recoil was surprisingly manageable, although I had to be attentive about squeezing the trigger to avoid the occasional flinch. Reset seemed adequate, but then I didn’t really try any fast shooting. Muzzle flip was not really that bad, not nearly as bad as .45’s I’ve had, and would allow for fast follow up shots were I skilled enough to make them. I was very impressed with the controllability of this .40 compared to others I’ve owned.
This is probably the only .40 I could ever be happy with.
SAFETY
The gun has an ambidextrous decocker lever on the frame that is easily reachable. Snick it up and you decock the gun. Leave it up and the gun is on “safeâ€. Snick it down and you are returned to functional DA. I liked it as it’s huge and easy to hit, yet is almost hard to snick into decock/safe. Snicking it down off-safe is quite easy though. Seems like this difference would minimize chances of accidentally putting it on safe.
The gun also came with a key lock that can disable the trigger via a lock in the frame ahead of the trigger.
TRIGGER
DA is heavy, long, and smooth, with some stacking right near the breaking point. I found I could stage it like a DA revolver, to my delight. SA is way too heavy in a Browning-HiPower-type-of-way but is very crisp. With some dry-firing, they can be dealt with. I really don’t mind heavy triggers on a self-defense gun.
RELIABILITY
Slick operation; this is obviously a good design (P88). No FTE’s or FTF’s, but out of 30 - 40 rounds fired, 3 failed to ignite, 2 UMC’s and 1 Win. USA. On the second strike, all went off. In all fairness to the pistol, I lubed the heck out of it with Break Free and wonder if that could be relevant. Fired casings were beautiful, with a moderately-deep primer indent but the indent was shaped a little funny. I’m hoping the gun will sort itself out with more breaking in.
ACCURACY
The gun wanted to shoot more accurately than I could do it. Shooting was offhand at 10-12 yds. I would like to black out the sights for further accuracy testing, as the “white ball in the square†setup on them was imprecise. Still, groups were 2.5 - 3.5 inches, which actually pleased me given the heavy trigger on an unfamilar gun with a short barrel. I felt like it could potentially do this well at 20 yds. if it were benched.
A terrible point-of-impact problem was evident, groups being 4†to the left and 4†- 6†low. I sometimes do this with a new gun but not THIS much, so I’m thinking this gun will be going back to a repair center for correction eventually, which is no prob. as it has a Lifetime Warranty.
At any rate, they were off enough to make plinking at a coffee can un-satisfying; I just couldn’t seem to compensate for them enough.
CONCLUSION
I hate fooling with getting a gun to work just right; I feel that’s the factory’s job. However, the little glitches in this one somehow don’t bother me because I really, really like this gun and want to make it work for me, especially for the inexpensive price paid.
Things I’ll tell the factory to fix:
Point-of-impact problem, possibly slide needs replaced.
Heavy SA trigger
Firing pin problems should they not go away
It’s a nice enough gun to defend yourself with, but if it were confiscated you’d have no personal feelings invested in it. In fact, you could afford to just go out and buy another.
More shooting impressions are to come as soon as I can make it to the range and buy some better ammo.
ADDITIONAL NOTE ON .40 “STOPPING POWERâ€
I’ve studied what I’ve read on here and what Marshall et.al. say in gun mags, but frankly am more impressed with what my wife was told by a WV State Trooper who was also looking at my Firestorm. Apparently he is trying to get approved to carry one (as an off duty piece I assume).
He mentioned he had actually shot two people in the line of duty, both high on drugs. In the first incident, not even 7 9mm Hydra-Shoks to the chest/upper torso would put the badguy down. In fact, he said that he would have kept on shooting the guy if only he had some more ammo.
The second incident involved a single .40 FMJ to the chest, putting the badguy down immediately. Sure there are many variables in the two incidents. I just personally feel that ineffectiveness of the 9mm was likely one factor. And unlike the other factors in a shooting, we DO have a measure of control over caliber used, and to me usage of a bigger, more powerful round makes sense.
I think un-scientific, anecdotal incidents like these have profoundly affected L.E. weapon choice lately, and I can’t help but feel they know something we don’t from being in shootouts. They seem to me to be abandoning the 9 in droves, as shall I for self-defense.
Before taking it to the indoor range, I shot the gun about 30-40 times outside to check safety/functioning. Here are my impressions.
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
This is a very nice cheap little gun. The gun feels fabulous in the hand, and points even better for me today than it did. I close my eyes, point it, and the sights are dead on when I open them. This gun is almost like an overgrown Sig 232 or Bersa .380.
One thing I LOVE is that the top of the slide is rounded, no boxy-ness about the gun. This makes it much easier on my ribs for IWB carry, and to my eye is just my prettier, as well as being unusual these days.
The grips are highly checkered plastic, and the front of the frame contains moderate finger grooves, which usually would bother me but don’t at all on this gun. I can’t tell if they fit me, or are so moderate that I just don’t notice them being in the wrong place for me.
The front sides of the frame are grooved as an “accessory railâ€. What fits on them though, I don’t know.
Balance is excellent, despite having an alloy frame. That usually makes guns top-heavy for me, but I guess the boreline is low enough and the frame heavy enough that it doesn’t feel that way. At only 25 oz. or so, it hefts like a much bigger, heavier, more substantial gun, which I like for recoil control.
The gun is surprisingly thin in the slide, and has a sleek, compact comportment. I think of it as an alternative for the Officers ACP/ 1911 compact I always wanted, except with the safer double-action. I like it much better than the Kahr K9 I once had, as it’s not much bigger, looks better, and has a much more normal “grip angle†to it. It almost looks too compact to fire .40’s comfortably, especially since the sides of the tang are sharpish. However, surprisingly they didn’t bother my hand during firing.
Sights are painted white and are highly visible, but when blacked out are cramped. The front sight is very wide. The rear sight has a relatively small notch for it though, despite having all kinds of room to be “hogged out†before getting into the white outline. A file is definitely in order, as there aren’t any “light bars†to be had on either side of the front sight. If the white paint is your guide though, this isn’t really a problem.
FIT/FINISH
Finish was pretty good for what you’d expect. Fit was pretty good, with tight slide-frame fit and tight barrel-slide fit. One oddity is at the rear of the frame where on the right side of the hammer, the slide overhangs a silly millimeter. Strangely, on the left side, the frame overhangs the slide.
Biggest problem was that the muzzle hole in the slide looks slightly off-center to me. Might just be the way I’m looking at it though, as my wife couldn’t see it.
Some vertical brush marks on the rear of the slide were evident as well as a few marks on the side of the slide from being handled on the pawn shop counter.
Internally, things looked worse, which I’ve come to expect these days from most makers, Latin American makers in particular. The frame was mostly well-formed but contained some tiny malformed places/uneven edges, some being slightly sharp. Nothing that would affect function though. Some wavy-looking places inside the slide and brush wheel marks not totally polished out. The closer you looked, the more cosmetic flaws you could find.
SHOOTING IMPRESSIONS
This is the softest shooting .40 I’ve ever fired, maybe due to the stiff dual recoil springs. I thought it was a 9mm on Steroids. I generally hate the .40’s recoil, so that says a lot really.
Two 180 gr. FMJ loads were used, as that’s all that Wal-Mart had, and recoil was surprisingly manageable, although I had to be attentive about squeezing the trigger to avoid the occasional flinch. Reset seemed adequate, but then I didn’t really try any fast shooting. Muzzle flip was not really that bad, not nearly as bad as .45’s I’ve had, and would allow for fast follow up shots were I skilled enough to make them. I was very impressed with the controllability of this .40 compared to others I’ve owned.
This is probably the only .40 I could ever be happy with.
SAFETY
The gun has an ambidextrous decocker lever on the frame that is easily reachable. Snick it up and you decock the gun. Leave it up and the gun is on “safeâ€. Snick it down and you are returned to functional DA. I liked it as it’s huge and easy to hit, yet is almost hard to snick into decock/safe. Snicking it down off-safe is quite easy though. Seems like this difference would minimize chances of accidentally putting it on safe.
The gun also came with a key lock that can disable the trigger via a lock in the frame ahead of the trigger.
TRIGGER
DA is heavy, long, and smooth, with some stacking right near the breaking point. I found I could stage it like a DA revolver, to my delight. SA is way too heavy in a Browning-HiPower-type-of-way but is very crisp. With some dry-firing, they can be dealt with. I really don’t mind heavy triggers on a self-defense gun.
RELIABILITY
Slick operation; this is obviously a good design (P88). No FTE’s or FTF’s, but out of 30 - 40 rounds fired, 3 failed to ignite, 2 UMC’s and 1 Win. USA. On the second strike, all went off. In all fairness to the pistol, I lubed the heck out of it with Break Free and wonder if that could be relevant. Fired casings were beautiful, with a moderately-deep primer indent but the indent was shaped a little funny. I’m hoping the gun will sort itself out with more breaking in.
ACCURACY
The gun wanted to shoot more accurately than I could do it. Shooting was offhand at 10-12 yds. I would like to black out the sights for further accuracy testing, as the “white ball in the square†setup on them was imprecise. Still, groups were 2.5 - 3.5 inches, which actually pleased me given the heavy trigger on an unfamilar gun with a short barrel. I felt like it could potentially do this well at 20 yds. if it were benched.
A terrible point-of-impact problem was evident, groups being 4†to the left and 4†- 6†low. I sometimes do this with a new gun but not THIS much, so I’m thinking this gun will be going back to a repair center for correction eventually, which is no prob. as it has a Lifetime Warranty.
At any rate, they were off enough to make plinking at a coffee can un-satisfying; I just couldn’t seem to compensate for them enough.
CONCLUSION
I hate fooling with getting a gun to work just right; I feel that’s the factory’s job. However, the little glitches in this one somehow don’t bother me because I really, really like this gun and want to make it work for me, especially for the inexpensive price paid.
Things I’ll tell the factory to fix:
Point-of-impact problem, possibly slide needs replaced.
Heavy SA trigger
Firing pin problems should they not go away
It’s a nice enough gun to defend yourself with, but if it were confiscated you’d have no personal feelings invested in it. In fact, you could afford to just go out and buy another.
More shooting impressions are to come as soon as I can make it to the range and buy some better ammo.
ADDITIONAL NOTE ON .40 “STOPPING POWERâ€
I’ve studied what I’ve read on here and what Marshall et.al. say in gun mags, but frankly am more impressed with what my wife was told by a WV State Trooper who was also looking at my Firestorm. Apparently he is trying to get approved to carry one (as an off duty piece I assume).
He mentioned he had actually shot two people in the line of duty, both high on drugs. In the first incident, not even 7 9mm Hydra-Shoks to the chest/upper torso would put the badguy down. In fact, he said that he would have kept on shooting the guy if only he had some more ammo.
The second incident involved a single .40 FMJ to the chest, putting the badguy down immediately. Sure there are many variables in the two incidents. I just personally feel that ineffectiveness of the 9mm was likely one factor. And unlike the other factors in a shooting, we DO have a measure of control over caliber used, and to me usage of a bigger, more powerful round makes sense.
I think un-scientific, anecdotal incidents like these have profoundly affected L.E. weapon choice lately, and I can’t help but feel they know something we don’t from being in shootouts. They seem to me to be abandoning the 9 in droves, as shall I for self-defense.
