Is it necessary to review the Beretta M9 nowadays? Given the 92-pattern’s long history of military and police issue, I don’t doubt it’s near the top of the list as far as ‘how many people have shot this?’ goes. Am I going to review it anyway? Yes, yes I am. Will it be a traditional review, where I tell you things you already know? No, it won’t.

The gun in question is a bone-stock, commercial production Beretta M9. It isn’t a 92, so it has the flat backstrap and straight dust cover. It’s neither an M9A1 nor an M9A3, so it doesn’t have a rail, retains the original snowman-style sights, and isn’t finished in Modern Operator Tacticool Desert Tan¹. It’s an M9, no more, no less, recently produced but in the very same pattern as the M9 as accepted into US military service in 1985.

Like I said, it’s one of the most widely-shot firearms in history. Like many popular things, the stereotypical view of it is wrong.

If you hang around firearms forums, or if you were recently deployed to somewhere sandy and far away, you may be down on the M9. “It’s unreliable! The fiddly bits inside get clogged with sand. Mine is inaccurate. It rattled when I walked. The slide came off of a buddy’s gun and hit him in the nose.”

None of these complaints are strictly inaccurate, but they don’t capture the full picture. Let’s get nerdy and talk about firearms actions for a bit. The 92-pattern pistol, unlike most modern handguns, does not use a Browning-inspired tilting-barrel design². Rather, it uses a locking block, which engages the frame by lugs until an internal plunger running up against the frame pushes the locking block down to release the barrel.

Though it’s less common nowadays, the locking block action has some advantages. For one, given the traditional open slide, the ejection on the M9 is absurdly reliable. If the case comes out of the barrel at all, it’s leaving the gun. For another, the skeleton slide makes for a much smaller recoiling mass. The main wear item—the locking block—is easier to fix than worn-out cuts inside a slide. All you have to do is replace the locking block, rather than the slide. The bullet at the top of the magazine can feed directly into the barrel, since its angle relative to the barrel never changes. This makes for simpler magazines and requires no faffing about with feed ramps; as a side effect, it means that the M9 will happily feed any ammunition which is not overlong. It also means that feeding failures³ rarely happen outside of torture tests.

Now, the 92-pattern pistol does have some failings as an issue weapon, which we’ve touched on in previous articles. Mainly, a double-action pistol is not especially well-suited to the role the M9 found itself in, that of a soldier’s sidearm. Shooting a double-action pistol well requires mastering both the double-action trigger pull and the single-action trigger pull. It’s a heavy pistol, only incrementally lighter than the 1911 it replaced, and it’s also quite large. I have average-sized hands, and I suspect my thumbs are somewhat shorter than the norm; the magazine release is out of my reach.

I’m purposefully not mentioning the trigger reach or the safety. The former is obviously a problem, and the latter is obviously not. Do you subscribe to the school of thought which claims the 92’s safety is easy to engage by accident while working the slide? If so, next question: have you ever actually done it? Parvusimperator and I once spent a good ten minutes trying to engage the safety by accident, and wouldn’t you believe it, neither of us managed to. This particular complaint is overblown.

I did say that the 92 has some failings as an issue weapon, and if pressed, I might even admit that a striker-fired gun is probably a better choice (for a secondary weapon, because of easier training). Obviously, it isn’t a great choice if your aim is concealment. That leaves two categories: the duty gun and the competition gun. I think it stacks up well in both of those. Let’s look at why.

Weight
For a competition gun in particular, weight is not a bad thing. Even a heavy gun can be comfortably carried in a good holster, and if concealment isn’t a requirement, it’s not terribly hard to make a good holster. Weight means less felt recoil. Less felt recoil means faster, more accurate follow-up shots.

Trigger
It’s a double-action trigger. By definition, that means it’s better than almost every striker-fired trigger in existence. The first pull is rough, but how often do you have to do that? Once⁴.

Dependability
Much like parvusimperator’s favored Glocks, the M9 is, on the whole, a legendarily reliable piece of equipment. Unlike said Glocks, the M9 requires some attention to hold up its end of the bargain. Any firearm with steel riding on aluminum, like the 92-pattern guns, requires lubrication. It also requires occasional replacement—the design life of an M9 is about 40,000 rounds, and combat conditions undoubtedly shrink that figure. Many of the M9’s alleged flaws can be chalked up to pistols nearing their end of life, and to bad maintenance habits⁵. Carrying an M9 by itself, or shooting it in competition, leaves a gun owner room to solve both problems.

It’s no secret I like Beretta’s products. My carry gun, after all, is a Px4 Compact, and I’ve taken to shooting the M9 as my standard competition pistol. It’s plenty competitive, both in 3-Gun Nation Practical division, and USPSA Production division. I have some plans, even, to build a Beretta 96 for Limited competition next season. Watch this space.