I, too, have been deciding between the Ruger and the Firestorm. Here are the conclusions of my research:
1) I grew up shooting the Ruger Mk.2, and assumed purchasing the 22/45 (or even the Mk 3) would be easy decisions. But the 22/45 is a different animal from the Mk 2. E.g., I thought the different grip configuration wouldn't be a big deal. But upon handling the gun, I HATED it. While small, the Firestorm's grips fit like a glove in my big hands. The Ruger felt like some random inanimate block-like object. (The Mark 3 felt a bit better, but I still did not like the grip, nor the higher price.)
2) The 22/45 is a polymer gun, in contrast with the Firestorm being alloy. This is a huge negative for me.
3) The concept of "lots of accessories" sounds great. But really the only ones that matter to me are extra mags, aftermarket grips, and possibly holsters. The Firestorm comes with excellent grips, additional grips are dirt cheap, and holsters shouldn't be a problem since its PPK design has been carried for ~60 years. I don't believe the 22/45 can take a replacement grip (because it is molded plastic), and could only take an overgrip such as Hogue. Other than that, I personally have a hard time justifying "ninjifying" a perfectly good .22--but maybe I am just old school.
4) I don't think the "high-velocity" ammo issue is a real issue. In contrast to the Sig Mosquito that needs very high quality ammo, the requirement is that you simply cannot put the cheapest bargain basement ammo in the Firestorm. There are lots of threads on
www.bersatalk.com about compatible .22 ammo, and there is a lot of relatively cheap stuff that will still work.
5) Unless you are some sort of statistical anomaly-level marksman, the Firestorm's accuracy is likely beyond your capabilities. So the rest of us would not be likely to notice a difference in accuracy.
6) Firestorm is a brand name created by Bersa, and imported by the same US distributor. It is materially the same gun, with a few cosmetic differences from the regular .380 Bersa Thunder. It is NOT lower quality. And on those lines, Bersa has gained a huge following due to its combination of price/performance/quality. Once again, I don't think there is a material difference in product quality between Ruger and Bersa. I can't speak for customer service though, but they seem to be at the same levels from what I can tell. There certainly seem to be a lot of Ruger fans here, but there are quite a few die hard Bersa devotees out there also (once again, check out Bersatalk). Don't confuse allegiance to a brand with being fully informed about the merits of competing brands.
7) DA operation is appealing to me. As is the fact that the gun would be a perfect training companion to the nearly identical .380 Bersa Thunder.
If you can't tell, I am sold on the Firestorm/Bersa. But many of the reasons that I switched from die-hard Ruger may apply to you also. The good thing is that you really can't go wrong either way.