I've been thinking about getting a desk gun or something along the line of sub-compact carry pistol when I get a CCW and ran across a the 9mm Beratta Nano. So I checked Beretta Forum and there was endless threads about it's lack of reliability. Some of the posters concluded as a pistol gets smaller and lighter you pay a penalty in reliabilty. I prefer something in 9mm or larger and not really looking for a .380.
Not to single out the Nano but should I expect the same reliabity as a larger frame pistol? What have you found to be reliable?
This is a much-talked-about issue. The crux of the matter has to do with the combination of small pistols and ammo.
CCW guns are (by design) guns that need to handle the work of a full-size frame but in a tiny package. This means that tolerances (already incredibly small in full-size guns) play an even bigger role. Beretta guns are manufactured to exacting tolerances, though within the natural tolerance that machining parts inherently causes. One of the things we've managed to develop in the last century of industrial manufacturing is, in fact, the ability to produce guns with a level of consistency that is unmatched in the industry. This allows us to make the M9 in a manner that passes the grueling "shuffle test" (I can tell you what this is in another post, if you are interested.) This is also the reason why the Nano actually outperforms any other brand of CCW, when it comes to failure rates, based on recent tests.
Ammunition is affected by a swing in tolerances, just like the firearms that fire it. Good quality ammo has a very small spectrum of variances between any two rounds in a box: the pressure created and the design of each round is very consistent (give or take small-tolerance variations.) Cheap ammo, on the other hand, has larger swings in variations. When the tiny tolerance variation between two pistols meets tiny tolerance variations between two good-quality rounds, nothing happens. When the same variation meets large tolerance swings between any two rounds in a box of cheap ammo, you have a domino effect that might cause (in one every so-many rounds) a failure.
This is why, at the end of the day, you have CCW shooters whose gun digests anything (the majority, in the scheme of things) and those whose tolerances are "just-so" that the combination of cheap ammo and CCW gun makes them fail, at large intervals. This is also why forums are littered with people complaining that their CCW is experiencing FTEs (just Google a random CCW brand and name and the word "FTE" and you will see the results)
Currently, we have 14 guns in our gunsmiths area experiencing some type of problem (this is out of thousands and thousands of guns made) - I say that's not too shabby (which is not to say that the 14 owners whose gun is here should not expect us to take care of them!)
