out about it. I immediately ordered one, tested it, and got it to one of his people for testing.
Gun Details
We picked up the Beretta conversion unit at the Manchester Indoor Firing Line in Manchester, New Hampshire. We were eager to, in a common figure of speech, “see what it was made of.”
The barrel is steel, and the slide is aluminum. Aluminum slide plus aluminum frame makes for a very light pistol indeed. The action is simple blowback. The ten-round magazine (one only provided with the unit) is polymer. The finish appears to be Beretta’s familiar Bruniton.
A neat little adjustable sight is provided, always a big help when you’re shooting for precision. My boss got to it first and sighted it in for himself, which puts it a little low-right for my eyes. Clicks seemed to be positive and replicable. Sight picture was excellent with a little white dot inset for iffy light conditions.
The slide locks back on the empty magazine, and can be manually locked back via the slide lock lever. Some conversion units don’t have these features.
The slide runs smoothly and effortlessly. The safety/decock lever is that of the F-series pistol, but it also works with the G-series, the designation for a spring-loaded lever, which functions as a one-stroke decocker, but not as a manual safety. However, the Beretta website does not list it as being compatible with the D-series, the double-action-only (self-decocking) variation, which makes mechanical sense.
Clearly marked “22 L.R.” on the barrel, the conversion unit features a very functional ramp and an efficient magazine that delivers the cartridges on a good feed angle.
According to Beretta, the unit is compatible with any Model 92 from the S- and SB-series on up. These are the ones with the slide-mounted safety-decock levers. The very first 92, with frame-mounted manual safety and no dedicated decocking mechanism, is not compatible with this conversion unit. Neither is the Billenium, Beretta’s limited run single-action steel-frame target auto with the frame-mounted manual safety. Nor are the short frame compacts, the 92FC and the 92M. However, the unit is compatible with the Centurion (short barrel/slide assembly on full-size frame) and the Brigadier (full-size frame with reinforced heavy slide).
What is true of the 92 is true of the 96. The conversion unit will work on all .40 caliber Beretta 96 pistols of the F- and G-series, according to Beretta, including the Brigadier and the Centurion but not the compacts. Nor, of course, will it work on the more recent designs, the 8000 series or the polymer-frame 9000 series, which are different pistols entirely.
Endurance
Beretta recently made a series of special Model 92 pistols to commemorate Operation Enduring Freedom. The epoch of the Beretta 92 itself could be called Operation Enduring Reliability. Despite rumors spread by Internet commandoes to the contrary, the military armorers I’ve talked to have been virtually unanimous in their opinion that the Model 92/M9 is an extremely reliable pistol. Its endurance, in terms of breakage, seems no worse than that of the other mainstream high-capacity 9mm service pistols. It has merely gotten a lot more negative publicity for its miniscule number of failures. This is due in at least some part to competitors who were jealous that their gun didn’t win the huge U.S. government contract.
The .22 conversion unit lives up to this reputation. Before it went to the military pistol team, I lent it to my chief of police, who is a big Beretta fan. He put it on his own commercial M92 frame, and proceeded to hammer about 1,000 rounds of Remington .22LR through it. “Love the accuracy,” he reported enthusiastically, “and it didn’t jam once.” I then ran a few hundred rounds of assorted ammo through it myself.
The .22 conversion unit is less picky about ammo than many other .22s, including some other Beretta options in the caliber.
Bear in mind that at this time, approaching 1,500 rounds, the conversion unit had not yet been cleaned. Carbon and lead buildup were visibly present, but the pistol kept chugging along. I say “chugging” advisedly. At least half of the ammo my boss put through it was standard-velocity, lead-bullet target stuff. This ammo has a very mild recoil impulse that will not operate a number of .22LR pistols and even some .22 auto-loading rifles. About half of what I put through it was less than high-velocity too, mostly the inexpensive Blazer.
As crudded up as it was, the converted pistol would very occasionally go “chug, chug.” By that I mean the slide would come back, it would start forward, seem to stall, then finish its forward movement and go into battery. This happened only with the low-velocity ammo. With plated-bullet high-velocity ammo, the standby of plinkers, cycling was crisp and perfect with every shot.
One malfunction finally occurred when I handed it to a friend to try. He held it very casually, wrist and elbow both bent, and obviously with a very light grasp. A few rounds of Blazer into the magazine, the slide went only part of the way back and remained back. “I limp-wristed it,” he said immediately. I told him to go ahead and clear it. He jacked the slide back smartly, the pistol went back into battery; and he continued without further problem.
Twice, again with light loads, the slide came back just enough to clear the spent casing but not far enough to pick up a fresh round. In both cases, oddly enough, the pistol decocked itself when the slide came forward, though the safety/decock lever was still firmly up in the “fire” position. Each time, the slide was racked again, and firing continued normally.
With any .22 auto pistol, it’s a good idea to clean the gun every 500 rounds or so. By the time these few problems occurred, the gun was approaching three times longer than normal between cleanings. With conversion units I’ve found it’s better to clean them every 50 to 100 rounds. It’s hard for me to blame the gun.
Now it was time to put it through its accuracy paces. Remember, the pistol still had not been cleaned after almost 1,500 rounds. We were trying to find out how many rounds it would take to make it stop running without being cleaned and lubed.
How Accurate
Accuracy testing was done with ammo at three different price levels, sort of like the old Sears, Roebuck thing of “good, better, best.” The shooting was done outdoors with two hands braced on the bench at 25 yards. Each five-shot group was measured overall, and also for the best three shots. I discovered several years ago that if five shots were fired from the bench and all felt perfect, measuring the best three factored out unnoticed human error and came remarkably close to what the same gun/ammo combo would do for five shots out of a machine rest.
For a low-priced generic round I chose the CCI Blazer with a lead bullet at what felt like standard velocity. The five-shot group measured 3.25 inches. The first shot had gone wide. The next four went into a cluster measuring 1.63 inches. The best three shots were in 0.75 of an inch. Federal’s standard line Classic round-nose, plated, high-velocity load put five shots into 3.88 inches. Not counting the first shot, the group would have measured 0.94 of an inch, and the best three were in 0.88 of an inch. CCI’s elite Pistol Match, with lead bullet at standard velocity was the priciest load tested. The five-shot group measured a disappointing 3.75 inches, but that was once again due to the first hand-chambered shot. The subsequent four shots went into a diamond pattern that measured an inch on the nose, with the best three clustering into a group of 0.75 of an inch.
The Blazer, which I bought over the counter for $9.95 per brick, had actually given the
