Beretta m9 review
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We were scheduled to qualify at least once a year with the rifle and pistol. Seasoned M9 in hand, I headed to the range for qualification. To be fair, I never used my M9 to hammer in tent stakes, only to battle the occasional scorpion. How rough you ask? Well, the M9 makes a great hammer if you hold it by the muzzle and you can hammer in tent stakes with the magazine (we didn’t bring many hammers into the field), so most of them had the bottoms caved in from field expedient hammer use. The only magazines that weren’t “liberated” by Marines, and therefore in use, were those that were really rough. They were so expensive that the nice ones would grow legs and end up in a pawn shop near the base if you didn’t keep them locked up. This was shortly after the now defunct 1994 Brady Bill Assault Weapons Ban, “pre-1994” magazines were grandfathered in and valuable. The magazines were funny looking as well (in simple terms, if you park your car on your lawn and think that it is OK, the guns looked great). M16 receivers, M9 frames and slides had as much silver showing as they did black. I would guess the most cherry weapon in our armory would grade at 50%- beat up with extremely worn finishes, especially on the aluminum parts. If you’ve never held a weapon in use by a Fleet Marine Force (FMF or “The Fleet”) unit, you haven’t lived. Note the smile on my face thinking about my Colt 1911, white thermal shirt ( Sergeant Majors don’t like this) and my trusty M9 in the shoulder rig. Here I am the second time in the mid east. From a personal handgun chronology perspective, this was shortly after my Colt 1911 Series-80 Enhanced Officers Lightweight fell apart and after I picked up a used Glock 19 to replace it. It was 1995 and this was my 3rd handgun (in my mind at least, on loan from Uncle Sam). We had a blast the few days we shot there, but the M9s stayed behind with the Army.Ī few months later, I was issued my first M9 when I checked into my unit at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC) in 29 Palms, CA. A hit anywhere on Ivan would register as a hit in the system. They looked like a mean communist sent to destroy the agents of the wrath, we referred to them as Crazy Ivans ( you can see one here). The facility was advanced, even by today’s standards- computerized with a bunch of pop up plastic targets. After a half day of lecturing, we hit the range. We sat in a large classroom with a beat up pool weapon in front of us.
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It wasn’t a fair inter-service comparison because at the time, the Army combined its schools and boot camps into one combined school and at this point the guys I had been with had all been in the service a minimum of sixth months- a lot of which had focused on marksmanship training. Since we had all been through basic and combat training, my platoon smoked the course. We were attending a school on an Army base and shot the Army qualification course. So, like the angry old men who were ranting about the 9mm in the back of your favorite gun rag from the mid-80s, I had some 1911 and M9 overlap.Īs a Marine, I was formally introduced to the M9 pistol back in late 1994/early 1995 by an Army instructor. Look at the serious flaws in Japanese pistols during the Second World War, carrying one with a round in the chamber would have been considered a brave act by anyone who knew better.Īs I’ve mentioned in my Colt M45A1 Review, I’ve been burning piles of money chasing the fully functional, 100% reliable 1911 white whale for two decades. At the theater level, I would argue that pistols have a negligible effect on the outcome of battles. Were there units that depended on them, absolutely, but they were few and far between. I find the military pistol discussion exceptionally interesting because in the military, unlike police forces, pistols are normally issued to officers, staff non-commissioned officers, armor crewman and some machine gunners (USMC) as a last ditch weapon- and this was especially at the time it was adopted (sorry, there weren’t any MagPul videos with super cool transitions back then kids). You can still experience the fall out from this debate today- log onto any internet forum or stand by (or behind) any gun counter, and someone will invariably bring it up (it was the Glock vs. The Italian designed double action pistol had an awful trigger compared to the beloved 1911 (Cooper actually suggested discharging a round into the ground during the draw stroke in some of his writings), and, adding insult to injury, was chambered in the puny 9mm NATO cartridge. When the Beretta M9 was adopted by the US Military back in 1985, real gun guys like Jeff Cooper, weren’t happy.