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Just because you can handle a double stack doesn't mean your short! o_O
Yeah, but usually you have a better chance of finding a Large glove-size on a bigger person. My stubby little fingers wrap around a single-stack 1911 just right... then again, at 5'6" I'm also the general size Browning designed it for as a Horse Cavalry pistol. (5'6" was the absolute upper height limit, though they were also weight-capped at just a little above half my weight, 120# of soldier was the limit a Cav horse could carry and still haul all the gear.)
 
Go figure, they skipped what is arguably the most reliable semi auto pistol ever made and chose the Sig. Never been fired and only dropped once.....oops, now it's been fired. :rolleyes:
 
I'm not sure if everyone has seen this, but I think it illustrates a good reason why the Army didn't really need to switch away from the M9. I know I definitely saw the same things in the Marines.
 
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I remember when the 92 was accepted by the military and it had many problems. As I recall at one point the slides broke and hit you in the face but they blamed that on ammo and fixed the problem.o_O
 
Figured I better look it up before I was called a liar :D

" A Navy Special Warfare Group soldier received an injury in September 1987 when the slide on his civilian Beretta 92SB fractured and hit him in the face. A few months later, it happened again with two first-batch military issue M9 pistols, injuring their shooters mildly. No deaths were involved, but one shooter broke a tooth. You didn't really think a slide breaking from the recoil of a 9mm would kill someone, did you?

The Navy quickly informed Beretta and the other branches of the military that there was a problem. The Army had been doing some independent durability testing on three civilian-spec M92SB pistols. Hearing of the Navy's problems, they checked the slides on those guns for cracks. They found a crack on one pistol slide and decided to shoot all three pistols until the slides broke in the same way that the Navy SEAL pistols had. The gun with the cracked slide let go at 23,310 rounds fired. The other two broke at 30,083 and 30,545 rounds fired. The military and Beretta determined that all of the broken slides were made in Italy and had unusually low metal toughness. They modified the slide design to add metal in the locking block area, and modified the frame so that if a slide did break, it could not fly off the rear frame rails. Eventually 14 slide failures occurred: 3 in the field by the SEALs and 11 in laboratory testing. All guns were shooting military standard M882 pistol ammunition. The M882 round is a standard power round, firing a 124 grain bullet at 1113 feet per second. After Beretta made the design changes and the Maryland factory began producing complete M9 pistols here, the military reported no other slide breakages. EVER.

What does this mean, practically? Well, if you have a Beretta 9mm manufactured sometime before 1987 and you've shot more than 20,000 rounds through it, you should check the slide for cracks. If that situation doesn't apply to you, then forget it. Beretta fixed the problem promptly and permanently 25 years ago, after those three SEALs broke guns shot beyond their intended service life. Breaking stuff is what SEALs do best anyway. Instead of spreading the gun store fable around, ask yourself how many other gun companies would bother to redesign their product after just 14 examples broke, out of hundreds of thousands of pistols built under a single contract. Go on, name one. I'll wait…."
 
They broke at 20k rounds? Good lord that's enough.

My highest round count gun in our family has to be the Marlin 70 .22 at over 5k by me personally and it was used.

Our Beretta has over 3k rounds. Maybe I'm alone but if I cracked a slide at 20k rounds I would call that "within service life." And deem it acceptable.
 
Kinda on topic since the Beretta M9 pistols are being talk about...
My biggest issue with the M9 was that when out in the field for days . weeks etc...on end , the exposed portion of the barrel pick up debris and rust if not looked after.

Now I understand that any true Infantryman will look after their firearms before anything else...
Having been in the Infantry , I also understand just how exhausting it can be and things can get over looked...when things get over looked as a Infantryman , people can die.

Also please note that I do not know of anyone who died from having a rusty M9...Just didn't care for the fact that in my experience it seemed like the barrel rusted up and caught debris quickly.
Andy
 

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