introduced the cartridge just before the Civil War, and it’s been killing people ever since. Just for the heck of it, I took the Beretta to my basement along with an old, hardcover Reader’s Digest Condensed Book, and shot it with each of the rounds I had tested at the range.
The hollow point went in 1
How does this equate to performance in flesh? You can’t really correlate it, scientifically. I can tell you that a .45 ball round will go through a good 6 inches of the same type of material, and will pierce some 26 inches of simulated solid muscle tissue (Fackler formula ballistic gelatin). That’s about a 4.3:1 factor, which would extrapolate to the .22 Short solid bullet going in roughly 6½ inches, and the hollow-point a good five inches. That’s less than half of what the FBI accepts as adequate penetration for defensive handgun ammo, but it’s more than enough to cause death. The .22 Short is not a toy. When used improperly it can be deadly. When used for self-defense, however, it would take surgical bullet placement through an open part of the skull (such as the nasal cavity) into the brain stem to guarantee an immediate cessation of violent action.
Final Notes
Even with its tiny sights, the Beretta 950 BS in .22 Short is an excellent “starter gun” for close-range plinking and firearms safety training. It would be better if they had made more of them with the 4-inch barrel. That’s a gun I’ve rarely seen and never could find to purchase. Even the 950 BS in .22 Short is no longer offered in the U.S., though they seem to be plentiful at gun shows (doubtless traded in by people who bought them for self-defense and smartened up).
The Beretta 950 BS is, quite simply, a neat little pistol. It occupies a special niche in the handgun world.
Beretta has not offered the Jetfire since the end of 2002, and they stopped making the Minx even before that. Says de Plano, “The market made the decision. Sales of the Jetfire and Minx had become miniscule because the people who used to buy them were buying the Bobcat instead.” Certainly the double-action feature and the optional .22 LR chambering of the slightly larger Model 21 made these guns highly desirable. Today the Bobcat is available in blue or Inox, and either .25 ACP or .22 Long Rifle.
Beretta’s .22 Caliber Fun Guns
Beretta has built a lot of .22 rimfire pistols over the years, including many fine ones. Those produced today include ultra-compact pocket pistols designed for last-ditch defense. They can certainly be applied to informal target shooting – plinking – but aren’t geared for something like a pistol match, and don’t have the precise accuracy you’d want for small game hunting. For that, you need to branch to three other points in the Beretta line.
In the current Beretta catalog, I see three options that make particularly good sense for the recreational shooter. The choice will depend on what the shooter’s needs are. Will it be preparation for defense with a bigger Beretta? Small game hunting? Match shooting? Or just general plinking? As always, we need to tailor the tool to the task. Let’s examine each of Beretta’s .22 caliber “fun guns” in their own right.
The Beretta Neos in short-barrel …
… and long-barrel configuration.
Ayoob does not like the front trigger guard shape of the Neos. It goes too far forward leaving the fingertip on an incline that wants to slide back to the trigger, getting in the way of the “finger out of the trigger guard” safety principle.
U22 Neos
Joe Kalinowski wrote to the Beretta website, “Last Saturday myself and two friends were experimenting with the new pistol that my wife had bought for herself. She has a U22 NEOS. We attached a Red Head red dot sight to it. Using standard .22 LR ammo, we were hitting a 5-inch target consistently at 100 yards. We found it to be just a great pistol for target shooting. Both of my friends went out to purchase one after we were done shooting!”
The Neos is a futuristic pistol that would look at home in a Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon comic. The frame is polymer. The grip sweeps backward at a rakish angle that puts the shooter in mind of the German Luger or a 1950s era High Standard Supermatic .22 target pistol. Rising high above the frame, the flat-sided barrel and sleekly sculpted slide flow upward into a full-length rib with a ventilated space that makes you think of an ancient Roman viaduct. To that look of Rome, Beretta adds a touch of Greece.
“The pistol gets its name from the Greek word meaning ‘new.’ And the Neos is one neat gun, thanks to its ultramodern styling,” says friend and fellow gun writer Wiley Clapp in the Guns & Ammo online magazine, www.gunsandammomag.com. At 25 yards, firing with a two-hand hold from a sandbag rest, Wiley was pleased with the results. “Early on it was obvious that this was a decent gun,” he wrote. “The creep in the trigger system was annoying and made me wonder what a good pistolsmith might be able to do. But even with the annoyance – you don’t get a match trigger in a plinker – the accuracy was there. Shooting six premium .22 Long Rifle loads produced an overall group average of 1.40 inches. That is smaller than the X-ring of the Standard American Pistol target (1.695 inches). And the best single group, fired with Eley Tenex, measured .97 of an inch. I think that is far better than we have any right to expect.”
Handgun hunter and all around pistolero Paco Kelly got good accuracy with his Neos, too. Using Remington/Eley target rifle ammo, with a 4-power Simmons handgun scope mounted on Neos’ handy rail, he was able to get a 1.6-inch group. With PMC’s cost-effective new Scoremaster .22 LR match load, he got an outstanding 1.1-inch group. And these were 10-shot groups, not the usual five-shot sequences. Impressive!
Helping them achieve these excellent accuracy results was the full-length mounting rail that constitutes the topmost portion of the pistol. Continuing the viaduct allusion, the edges look like the hand-rails on a bridge. The flat surface is great for pointing rather than precisely aiming. It’s like looking down an aircraft carrier’s deck in one sense, and for a clay bird shooter, it’s more like looking down the wide ventilated rib of a Browning BROADway shotgun.
The wheel above the trigger releases the barrel, a’la the old High Standard Duramatic. The slide stop is ergonomically placed, but check out the location of the thumb safety, near the grip tang.
The sights themselves are an integral part of this design theme. The rear sight takes up the entire width of the sighting plane and proved to be reliably click-adjustable. The front sight rises boldly to give a clearly visible outline to the marksman’s eye. Explains Clapp, “Out front there is a superb front sight.
