Beretta snatched the gold ring when the ride on the JSSAP merry-go-round was over, winning the contract as the new primary service pistol of the U.S. armed forces. There were a few broken locking blocks and separated slides. Though some of these involved over-pressure lots of ammo that would have broken any gun, and others involved sound suppressors whose forward-levering weight didn’t allow the locking blocks to work correctly, jealous manufacturers who lost the bid amplified the “problem” to more than it was. Almost without exception, military armorers and trainers who monitor small arms performance in actual conflicts have given the Beretta extremely high marks for its performance in U.S. military service.
It has also stood up nobly in the U.S. police service. For many years now the issue weapon of LAPD (almost 10,000 officers) and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (some 7,000 deputies), the Beretta 92, 9mm has given yeoman’s service. Thanks to its open-top slide design, it is virtually jam-free, and one of the very few pistols that can equal or exceed the Glock in terms of reliability.
The glass-smooth feel of the action as you hand-cycle the Beretta is the standard by which others are judged. The 92F series, with combination manual safety/decocking lever, may have the single easiest slide-mounted safety to operate. Two large departments, one East Coast and one West, mandate that their personnel carry the Beretta on-safe. Each department has logged numerous cases in which the wearers’ lives were saved by this feature when someone got the gun away from an officer, tried to shoot him or her, and couldn’t because the safety was engaged.
The Beretta is also a very accurate pistol. Five rounds of 9mm commonly go into 1-1/2 inches at 25 yards from the standard Model 92. The Model 96, chambered for .40 S&W, passed the demanding accuracy tests of the Indiana State Police and was adopted as that agency’s standard issue sidearm. The state troopers of Rhode Island, Florida, and Pennsylvania joined Indiana and issue the 96 at this writing. The city police of San Francisco and Providence also issue the 96.
A new wave classic, to mix a metaphor, the Beretta 92 proved to be an utterly reliable 16-shot 9mm, winning the U.S. Government contract and arming countless U.S. police agencies. This is a G-model, customized by Ernest Langdon, who won national championships with such guns.
Colt’s Pocket Nine, a 9mm Parabellum the size of a Walther PPK but lighter, was the company’s high point in double-action auto manufacture. For reasons explained in the text, it is no longer produced at this writing.
In .40 S&W, my experience has been that the Beretta is a notch below its 9mm cousin in reliability. For this reason, Ohio state troopers dumped the 96 for the SIG equivalent.
Beretta’s updated Cougar is a good gun. It is the issue weapon of the North Carolina Highway Patrol (in caliber .357 SIG) among others. The latest version, the polymer-frame 9000 series, is not particularly ergonomic and has not been so well received.
Colt
America’s most famous producer of single-action autos has not fared well on the double-action side of that table. Their first, the Double Eagle, misfired constantly in its original incarnation. When I broke the story on that, Colt was gracious enough to recognize the problem and correct it. The pistol, however, still looked like what it was: a Government Model with a double-action mechanism cobbled together in a fragile way to get past the Seecamp Conversion patent. It did not fare well and is no longer in production.
Colt’s All-American 2000 was a sad and ugly thing. Jams. Misfires. Pathetic accuracy and a horrible trigger pull. Heralded by the newsstand gun magazines as a great leap forward in technology, it soon died a well-deserved death.
Colt’s only good double-actions were their last, both DAOs. The little Pony .380 worked, and the Pocket Nine 9mm was a breakthrough: a full power, seven-shot 9mm Luger exactly the size of a Walther PPK .380 but 5 ounces lighter, utterly reliable, and capable of 2-inch, five-shot groups at 25 yards. While the triggers were heavy, they were controllable. Alas, only about 7,000 Pocket Nines were produced before a patent infringement suit by Kahr Arms shut down production.
Heckler & Koch
HK’s 1970s entries in the double-action auto market, the VP70Z and the P9S, did not succeed. The former worked well as a machine pistol and poorly as a semiautomatic. The latter, exquisitely accurate, was before its time. It needed its chamber throated to feed hollow-points reliably, and its decocking mechanism, which involved pulling the trigger, was enough to make police firearms instructors wake up in the middle of the night screaming.
HK’s ergonomic P7 shows off its “guaranteed head-shot accuracy” at 25 yards with two of the most accurate 9mm rounds available, 115-grain Federal 9BP and Winchester’s Olin Super Match 147-grain, both with JHP projectiles.
The P7 was much more successful. With an ingenious combination of gas operation and a squeeze-cocking fire control system that the company called Continuous Action, it created a cult following among handgunners. The gun was either loved or hated with no middle ground. A fixed barrel made it deadly accurate, with sub-2-inch groups at 25 yards more the rule than the exception. The squeeze-cocking came naturally and the pistol was super-fast to draw and fire. A low bore axis, plus the gas bleed mechanism, made it the lightest-kicking of 9mm combat pistols. Widely adopted in Germany, it became the issue service pistol of the New Jersey State Police in 1984 as the P7M8, with American style mag release and eight-round magazine. The double-stack P7M13 was subsequently adopted by Utah state police.
Its strength was that it was easy to shoot; its weakness was that it was easy to shoot. Many instructors associated the design with a likelihood of accidental discharge. Cost of manufacturing plus the changing balance of dollar and Deutschmark soon rendered it unaffordable for most civilians and almost all police. Still produced in the M8 format, this unique and excellent pistol is fading from the scene, but still cherished by a handful of serious aficionados, all of whom seem able to shoot it extremely well.
HK tried to get back into the police service pistol market with the gun they sold to the German armed forces, the USP. A rugged polymer-framed gun, it is available in several variants: lefty, righty, double-action-only, single-action-only, safety/decock or decock-only lever, and assorted combinations of the same. Available calibers are 9mm, .40, .357 SIG, and .45 ACP. It was the USP that introduced the now widely copied concept of the dust cover portion of the frame being moulded as a rail to accept a flashlight attachment.
I’ve found the USP conspicuously reliable, except for occasional jams in the 9mm version. It is also extremely accurate. Though competition versions are available, the standard models, particularly in .45, are tight shooters in their own right. Starting with probably the heaviest and “roughest” double-action only trigger option in the industry, they now have one of the best in their LE module, developed in 2000 for a Federal agency and offered to the civilian public in 2002. The HK USP is approved for private purchase by Border Patrol, and is the standard issue service pistol of departments ranging from San Bernardino PD to the Maine State Police.
Kahr
Brilliantly
