Military Beretta pistols

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Glockgreat23

New member
Now that sig has won the battle as the US new pistol, what happens to the tens of thousands currently issued Berettas as the sigs are phased in?
 
Well I know some of them will still be in use for a long time probably. It's not like every branch and unit is dumping them overnight, not hardly.

Hopefully they'll go to the CMP, or better yet, on the open market where people don't have to meet the unnecessary and exclusionary CMP requirements.

I'm not sure if they'll be considered collector's items like the M1911s, though, if they are in fact introduced onto the civillian market. The Beretta doesn't have nearly as much love and fanfare as Old Slabsides. In fact its reputation both in and out of military circles isn't that great, really. People often sight durability issues and poor ergonomics, as well as things like bad contract magazines. I've used the M9 in service, only qualifying with it a few times. I like them personally, they fit me well and shoot pretty smooth. The ones I've qualified with seemed reliable enough and I made "expert marksman" with them.

If they do become available for a reasonable cost, I'd like to own one. I already own a commercial Beretta M9 and like it. Truth be known in recent years the military has been buying M9s as "COTS" off the shelf guns... basically the exact same guns Beretta sells to civillians with the exception of the markings (I think).
 
If past U.S. military weapons system retirements are any indication, many of them will be parceled out to less wealthy non-NATO allies such as Mexico and Jordan.
 
From what I hear from those still in, the M9s in service currently don't typically get the maintenance or care that would be recommended. Many of them are likely closing in on the end of their expected lifetimes. I'd personally rather take my chances with a used one on the civilian market, and heck a few weeks ago I saw 92FS pistols for $430 shipped brand new, Italian manufacture.
 
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Agree, given away to our Foreign Friends or scrapped. I think there is a law against returning post WWII firearms to the taxpayers who paid for them in the first place.
 
TunnelRat said:
From what I hear from those still in, the M9s in service currently don't typically get the maintenance or care that would be recommended. Many of them are likely closing in on the end of their expected lifetimes. I'd personally rather take my chances with a used one on the civilian market, and heck a few weeks ago I saw 92FS pistols for $430 shipped brand new, Italian manufacture.
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Agreed on all counts. I've never shot an M9 with that kinda wear and tear, but I would assume any batch of pistols that had been through that kinda regimen would look, feel and shoot pretty loosely. I suspect had the SIG P226 won back in 1985 that those things would be rattle-traps by now too.

This past summer I bought a brand-new M9 for $552 including shipping, transfer and background check, and make no mistake, it is a precision piece. Right now I see the 92FS listed for about $449 before shipping and fees. These are great guns and excellent values when brand new; I don't see much point in a high-mileage beater, but that's just me.
 
Most likely they will have a rendezvous with "Captain Crunch" or sent off to arm our future enemies. Really though with the years I've had replacing broken and cracked locking blocks, hammer tripping levers cracked slides and even cracked frames (although that one I suspect was a bad batch since it was at only one duty station and all were out of the same shipment) I'm not sure I'd really want one. I have my old 92FS I bought when I first got out of the Marines in 1992 that works just fine. Actually, civilian models that I have ran across haven't had near the parts breakage issue of the military versions. Also, the locking block on my 92FS doesn't just fall out when you look at it harshly. Military M9 locking blocks, yeah, different story completely.
 
TunnelRat said:
From what I hear from those still in, the M9s in service currently don't typically get the maintenance or care that would be recommended. Many of them are likely closing in on the end of their expected lifetimes.
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Not surprising.

Another history lesson from military weapons system retirements is that when an item is being phased out, commanders tend to seriously pare down the budgets allocated to maintenance, sometimes to the point that armorers have to cannibalize barely serviceable examples for parts to keep the minimum required number of "good" units in service.

The frequent result is that many of the units being retired are borderline junk and may have parts missing.
 
Well the M9 went into service in 1985 (Wikipedia) replacing the venerable and iconic 1911 and ANY DAY now the CMP will start shipping those old 1911 pistols to qualified CMP buyers...lets see, 2017-1985=32 years?

But as Jim Watson says there may be different laws in effect now that totally would prevent anything like this from happening.

Myself...I'd take a look at the Taurus (yeah, hold your gasps) 92 because I just really, really dislike the Beretta slide mounted safety and I could use the extra money the Taurus would save me to buy ammo.
 
I would point that Beretta is selling decocker only kits for I think ~$50 these days. There are videos that will walk you through it. So if you don’t want the safety you can always go that route.


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