The only thing I've ever had get in the slide is water, which is really only a concern because it drives out lube. Non issue, IMO.



I've never seen that.



People in the military have lots of problems. I shall list some of them:

1. People in the military are not trained in how to use a handgun. Outside of a few specialized unit the training they get with a handgun is vastly inferior to what your typical police officer receives...and that's nothing to write home about, either. They are not taught anything more than the very basics of using a handgun and are given so few rounds to practice with that there's no chance the vast majority of them will ever learn how to properly run the gun. Again, outside of a few specialized units, the military just doesn't give a fuck about handgun training.

2. There are parts on a Beretta M9/92 that are wear items. In other words, they are designed to wear in with certain other parts in a particular gun and not be reused. The military being the military will take a gun that is deadlined and will use the parts from that deadlined gun with other parts from other deadlined guns and will build a working gun out of a bunch of parts from deadlined guns. That is sort of like taking a high mileage Chevy V8 and "rebuilding it" by using pistons, rods, and rings from 8 different cars, a camshaft from a different high mileage Chevy V8 and then wondering why the engine runs like dogshit.

3. The military issued Checkmate magazines with a shit coating on them that sucks in sand. Factory Beretta 92 magazines work much better, as do the new generation mags with various sand-resistant coatings.

4. The military does not perform proper maintenance on their handguns. Ask a military armorer when was the last time they replaced recoil springs in the M9's under their care. If that armorer doesn't work with one of those specialized units I mentioned earlier, the answer will be NEVER. If you do not replace the recoil spring in a pistol at proper intervals it will beat itself to death.

5. Beretta has proposed numerous engineering changes over the years to address issues with the M9. Two examples that jump right out are differently designed safety levers that are easier to use and more resistant to breakage and newer designed locking blocks with a much longer life. The military rejected the new safety levers and even though they got the new locking blocks the majority of those locking blocks have not actually been installed in pistols.

6. Contrast what you hear on the internet about the military experience with the 92 with the experience of a place like Range 37. Dave Harrington has probably overseen more rounds through Beretta M9 pistols than anyone else I can think of and he doesn't report anything like the usual internet bullshit that constantly floats around. The difference is that the guns he dealt with were properly maintained, and as a result they worked splendidly.

7. One of the things people hate most about the M9/92 is the heavy, long DA trigger pull...but do you know WHY it has that trigger pull? Because the military mandates that the gun must be able to bust the absolute hardest primers you can possibly shove into a pistol round. It's possible to dramatically reduce the trigger pull of the DA by making changes to the trigger bar and the weight of the mainspring...but these are deviations from the M9 contract (TDP's, to quote a friend of mine who works military contracts for KAC, are frozen in time) and as such not allowed. Put a Wilson trigger bar in a Beretta 92 and you can drop the weight of the trigger pull by 50% or better.

8. One of the things smaller troops hate about the gun is how big it is. Beretta's M9a3 attempts to address that, too.

When properly maintained (they do need to be lubed occasionally and need to have springs changed occasionally) the 92 is one of the most reliable handguns you can buy. And consistently so. In my years paying attention to the firearms industry, Beretta's 92 family of guns has been made consistently well and has offered consistently good performance. LAPD issued or authorized them for almost a couple of decades with no major complaints. (Apart from complaints about issuing the big DA/SA gun to tiny officers with tiny hands)

Speaking of the 92, here's a little tidbit of info about the 92:

The recent M9 pistol contract lot acceptance tests achieved a MRBS of 25000 rounds over 5 lot tests of 2500 pistols. The lot tests are performed under government supervision after a full interchange procedure that mixes and matches the major and minor components amongst 10 randomly chosen pistols. That is 10X the most stringent requirement for the MHS... In the mid 2000's, over 165,000 rounds were fired in 17 LATs with ZERO malfunctions under the same conditions.

That's 25,000 MRBS.

Twenty. Five. Thousand.

Right. Beretta has submitted multiple engineering change proposals over the years to improve the M9, but most have been rejected by the military. More durable safety levers, more durable trigger return springs, and other things have been turned down.

The M9a3 is a bunch of those types of changes rolled into one package. It's certainly not a much different setup than the M9A1.

The flat rejection is people inside the Pentagon who just want a new handgun mainly because new handgun.

M9A3 changes as best I know them:

- Vertec frame
- New slide which allows easily changing between FS and G configuration
- Threaded barrel
- Rail
- Dovetail sights
- Newly designed safety/decocker levers

There may be more I'm just not remembering.

Look at them very closely next to a standard 92/M9. They use a slightly different geometry...easier to reach.