The stainless slide and short external extractor design of the 1990s was probably the best overall design. A well implemented stainless design with no MIM parts would be superior if well implemented.......the key being "well implemented". The old stamped slide guns were VERY well implemented......better than any Sig since.
Last edited by KhanRad; 05-22-2017 at 04:45 PM.
"A man with an experience is not a slave to a man with an opinion."
Quite a few agencies carry the SIG sa/da guns up in the region (NW Indiana). The DNR have carried the P220 in some form or another for at least 20+ years. They went from the P220, to the P220 ST, to the P220 ST Nitron, and then back to the P220 in a relatively short time span. Supposedly they had issue with the ST guns, which was really odd as this was shortly after Ernest ran one and won the IDPA with it A few years ago there was a few P220 ST nitrons that hit the market and they were alleged to have been overruns from the IDNR. I've never met a CO that wasn't happy with the SIG and a lot of officers in the region look down on anything but SIG.
I apologize if the wording in my post was weird but I was asking if Beretta has ever had times where they just cranked out sub-par M9's that made people wary of buying any of them made in 2003-2006 for example. We see this a lot with Sig and even Glock has had issues with some of their guns, though I never heard of any bad things about Berettas but I just wanted to know if there were ever such cases.
It really is a shame that Beretta never got a strong presence in the LE market. I REALLY would have loved buying a bunch of 9mm Vertec police trade ins for $400-$500.
OK, I did flub your question a bit. The article does mention a PD having issues with model 96 Berettas having keyholing issues and the steps taken to resolve it. I've seen other mentions of problem batches of 92/96 series guns but not really a specific "avoid year x-y made guns because of z reason."
They had a very strong presence in the LE market in the Eighties and Nineties, but US LE's decade-and-a-half-plus flirtation with the .40S&W cartridge and Beretta's lag in making a gun specifically designed to function with it killed that.
The Beretta 96 wiped out Beretta's US LE market share.
In the late 80's through the mid 90's, when our agents were allowed to carry any personally owned firearm (above a .380 caliber) that they qualified with, several carried Berettas, (primarily 92s) but that number lagged behind Sig which lagged behind Glock.
Eventually, everyone had to carry their issued Glocks even if their personally owned Glocks were the same models.
Last edited by blues; 05-23-2017 at 08:26 AM.
There's nothing civil about this war.