us might have to lend our gun to another good guy or gal who will be using it southpaw. At any time, either of us could suffer an injury to our dominant hand or arm that requires us to carry on the weak side for a while. That’s a lousy time to have to call the gunsmith and see how long it will take to install an ambi safety on our carry gun.
If what you want is a smaller, lower-powered version of a modern military or police style Beretta, consider looking for the Browning BDA variation. Remember, its safety/decock lever is operated exactly the same way as the similarly slide-mounted lever on an F-series Beretta.
Like the second-generation Beretta .380s, the current third-generation has a .22 caliber understudy gun available that works exactly the same way. It is the Model 87. This is a handy thing for practice and training.
Recoil of the Beretta .380 is markedly soft. Virtually everyone who shoots one comments on that. When editor Harry Kane and I were putting together the 2005 edition of the annual Complete Book of Handguns, we included an article on very small hideout guns. These ranged from the little Guardian .32 auto, to Beretta’s .32 Tomcat, to the J-frame S&W Airweight .38 Special revolver, the sweet little Kahr PM9 micro-size 9mm Parabellum and the Beretta 86 .380. There was no question that of all these guns, the Beretta .380 was by far the easiest to shoot and to hit center with at high speed.
Muzzle jump is minimal with the Cheetah-class .380s. The low bore axis is one reason and a grip frame that allows a full purchase and a strong grasp is another. I and the other fans of powerful guns can make all the “mouse gun” jokes we want, but the fact is, there are some people who are just intimidated by more powerful pistols but are confident in their ability to shoot fast and straight under stress with a gun like a Beretta .380. Let’s say that you and I have to go into one of those dangerous situations that I’ve come to call The Dark Place. We can choose one of three people to back us up. One has a 12-gauge shotgun, but is totally intimidated by its savage recoil. One has a .45 automatic, and cringes and jerks the trigger with every shot. And one has a Beretta .380, and shoots it fast and straight even when the pressure’s on.
The one with the shotgun will probably miss, if the courage is mustered to fire it at all. The one with the .45 will likely jerk low, and maybe achieve a thigh shot if we’re lucky. But the cool hand with the .380 is most likely to hit dead center in an emergency. The one with the .380 gets my vote. How about you?
The trigger pull is quite good in both double- and single-action. As with their modern service pistols, the current Beretta .380s have generously sized sights that are easy to see, particularly for those of us with aging eyes.
But let’s look at the biggest advantage of the Beretta .380s as currently produced …
The damn things work!
My experience with the elegant and stylish Walther pistols is that some of them feed hollow point ammo and some of them don’t. If you have a good one, the splendid little Walther-influenced SIG .380, will work as well as a Beretta. If you don’t have a good one, it’ll show up in the first few hundred rounds, and you’ll have to send it back to the factory to make things right. The SIG .380s will also slice your hand with the slide as it comes back, and most of the Walther pistols will do the same; they don’t bite as much since S&W started importing them a couple of years ago and made Walther extend the grip tang, but they still bite some. I’ve seen Colt .380s that worked with JHP, and Colt .380s that didn’t. Contemporary .380s from Colt are scaled down versions of the Government Model .45, and if you have average size adult male hands and shoot with a strong grasp in which your thumb is curled down, there’s a good chance that you’ll accidentally depress the magazine release and dump the magazine on your foot.
None of these problems occur with the current Berettas. They feed JHPs. They don’t bite your hand. They’re accurate as hell, right up there with the Walther and the SIG, tied for braggin’ rights as “best of breed” among the .380 pistols past and present in terms of precision shooting potential.
While putting this chapter together, I took a Model 86 out to the backyard range with the only two types of .380 ammo I had in the house, both inexpensive “generic ball” loads. Remington-UMC easily kept all five shots in the head of an IPSC target at 25 yards, with a group measuring 3.05 inches. The best three of those bullet holes were in a cluster spanning only 1.4 inches center-to-center. CCI Speer’s aluminum-cased Blazer delivered a five-shot group of 3.20 inches, with the best four in 1.65 inches and the best three in 0.80 of an inch. Bearing in mind the proven rule of thumb that the best three of five shots handheld from a bench rest will come awfully close to what the same gun/cartridge combination will do for all five shots from a machine rest, that’s damned impressive pistol performance.
Downsides? Really, only a couple. If you have the earlier double-actions with the hand-lowered hammers, you’re almost better off to carry them cocked and locked. Also, to get the great reliability and accuracy and easy shooting of the Beretta .380s, you have to accept that, as Wilson accurately categorizes them, they’re medium-frame guns. If you want a small-frame pistol, small enough for a pocket or ankle holster, and you want it to be a Beretta, you’re probably going to have to go down to the Tomcat .32.
But if you’re looking for a .380 that will be carried in or on a belt, worn in a shoulder holster, packed in a purse, or stored in a lock box or glove box, the Cheetah size Beretta will be awfully tough to beat.
Endnotes
(1)Wilson, R.L., “The World of Beretta: An International Legend,” New York City: Random House, 2000, P. 204.
(2)Ibid., P. 202.
(3)Ibid., P. 205.
Model 92: The Flagship of the Beretta Fleet
Brace yourself for the longest chapter in this book. There’s a reason for that. The book is about modern Beretta pistols, and we’re going to talk about the gun that wrote the most complex and significant chapter in the history of those handguns. The Model 92 is the defining Beretta pistol of modern times. Adopted by all branches of the United States military in 1984, one of the three or four most popular law enforcement pistols in the nation and one of the most distinctively recognizable handguns in the world, the Beretta 92 has become a modern classic, like it or not.
I say “like it or not” advisedly, because with the arguable exception of the Glock, no other pistol has been the subject of such controversy in modern times, if ever.
The great are envied. The great are resented. Therefore, the great are attacked. It is human nature. When you get elected president, some people will want to tear you down. When you win the richest single contract anyone in your industry can remember, the same thing will happen. As soon as it became apparent that the Beretta Model 92 was a great pistol, and that its maker was going to be richly rewarded for it, the envy, resentment, and attacks reached epic proportions.
The defining shape of the Beretta pistol today: the 9mm Model 92FS.
It became the standard military service pistol of the United States, replacing an iconic piece of ordnance that was one of the most beloved guns in history, the 1911A1 .45 automatic. The American police, half a million strong, were switching from revolvers to semiautomatic pistols and the Beretta 92 was the sales leader in that market. The American public had historically based many firearms purchases on what their nation’s police and military were carrying. Accordingly, by 1997, Beretta would sell 2 million of these pistols.
