OT: Whats your favorite SHTF Handgun and why?

cpirtle said:
In my experience of talking to a lot of soldiers Beretta got a really bad name among them in the sandbox because they had a high failure rate. The vast majority of that was the magazine and Beretta addressed it with Sand Resistant Magazines, but I think by then the damage was done. I'm not going to argue that even with the new mags a Beretta will stand up to the torture tests Glock and others have gone through but I put many thousands of rounds through Beretta's over the years and have found them just as reliable as other high end pistols.
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To be fair, one of the facts that came out later was that, maintenance of the M9's was lacking. User maintenance was not being done, typically, and overall maintenance was not either. Fact is when you are in an abrasive environment, like the sandbox, cleaning is of utmost importance. So not sure I would blame Beretta for that. How many guns would have done better in the same conditions with the same maintenance? No one knows. Most testing I have seen of modern Beretta M9's has been 100% reliable function. The stigma with Beretta was a bunch of broken slides early on with some SF units. This was corrected by Beretta, but the stigma stuck for the longest time. Unwarranted.
 
Cobalt said:
The stigma with Beretta was a bunch of broken slides early on with some SF units. This was corrected by Beretta, but the stigma stuck for the longest time. Unwarranted.
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+1

And wasn't the breakage happening on units with north of 8-10k rounds on them?
 
I recall it being a high number of NATO rounds, which were loaded heavier than the pistols they had were originally designed around. They were, IIRC, a COTS purchase that the SEALs made through their purchasing channels. After all, at the time, I don't believe Beretta had started delivering M9s from their Accokeek factory, which was built specifically to provide the contract pistols, as required by Federal law for contract military items. So the SEALs had gone out and purchased Berettas commercially. At least that is the way I remember it. As an aside, I think it ended up being that the M9 pistols that were delivered on he contract were thusly a better pistol than the original M92, because of improvements made to address the NATO pressure ammunition (and high round counts).
 
cpirtle said:
In my experience of talking to a lot of soldiers Beretta got a really bad name among them in the sandbox because they had a high failure rate. The vast majority of that was the magazine and Beretta addressed it with Sand Resistant Magazines, but I think by then the damage was done. I'm not going to argue that even with the new mags a Beretta will stand up to the torture tests Glock and others have gone through but I put many thousands of rounds through Beretta's over the years and have found them just as reliable as other high end pistols.
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Yeah. Hard to make any kind of argument against a Glock. They are like the AK of the pistol world. They flat out work.
 
dogboye said:
I recall it being a high number of NATO rounds, which were loaded heavier than the pistols they had were originally designed around. They were, IIRC, a COTS purchase that the SEALs made through their purchasing channels. After all, at the time, I don't believe Beretta had started delivering M9s from their Accokeek factory, which was built specifically to provide the contract pistols, as required by Federal law for contract military items. So the SEALs had gone out and purchased Berettas commercially. At least that is the way I remember it. As an aside, I think it ended up being that the M9 pistols that were delivered on he contract were thusly a better pistol than the original M92, because of improvements made to address the NATO pressure ammunition (and high round counts).
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I have read similar writings, and that the beefed up slide was the answer to the hotter NATO ammo.
 
cpirtle said:
In my experience of talking to a lot of soldiers Beretta got a really bad name among them in the sandbox because they had a high failure rate. The vast majority of that was the magazine and Beretta addressed it with Sand Resistant Magazines, but I think by then the damage was done. I'm not going to argue that even with the new mags a Beretta will stand up to the torture tests Glock and others have gone through but I put many thousands of rounds through Beretta's over the years and have found them just as reliable as other high end pistols.
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The military got cheap and were using aftermarket magazines for the Berettas.
 
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