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Model 92: The Flagship of the Beretta Fleet

Brace yourself for the longest chapter in this book. There’s a reason for that. The book is about modern Beretta pistols, and we’re going to talk about the gun that wrote the most complex and significant chapter in the history of those handguns. The Model 92 is the defining Beretta pistol of modern times. Adopted by all branches of the United States military in 1984, one of the three or four most popular law enforcement pistols in the nation and one of the most distinctively recognizable handguns in the world, the Beretta 92 has become a modern classic, like it or not.

I say “like it or not” advisedly, because with the arguable exception of the Glock, no other pistol has been the subject of such controversy in modern times, if ever.

The great are envied. The great are resented. Therefore, the great are attacked. It is human nature. When you get elected president, some people will want to tear you down. When you win the richest single contract anyone in your industry can remember, the same thing will happen. As soon as it became apparent that the Beretta Model 92 was a great pistol, and that its maker was going to be richly rewarded for it, the envy, resentment, and attacks reached epic proportions.

The defining shape of the Beretta pistol today: the 9mm Model 92FS.

It became the standard military service pistol of the United States, replacing an iconic piece of ordnance that was one of the most beloved guns in history, the 1911A1 .45 automatic. The American police, half a million strong, were switching from revolvers to semiautomatic pistols and the Beretta 92 was the sales leader in that market. The American public had historically based many firearms purchases on what their nation’s police and military were carrying. Accordingly, by 1997, Beretta would sell 2 million of these pistols.

With no lever on the slide, the 92D has room for more grasping grooves than F or G models.

Over the years, there were four subtle variations in locking block design, ranging from this on a Bruniton-finish 92F of the 1980s …

No matter how huge a fleet of products a manufacturing company floats, it will have at least one flagship, one product that is hugely successful. For Smith & Wesson it was the K-frame revolver, introduced in 1899 and now with a history and popularity that touches three centuries. For Colt, the first flagship was the Model P single-action revolver, designed in 1873 and still in production. Now it is the Model 1911 semiautomatic pistol. For Winchester, it was the lever-action Model 94 and the bolt-action Model 70 rifles.

For Beretta the flagship is the Model 92 pistol. To understand why it is as good as it is and as widely used as it is, we have to go back to its roots.

The Derivation

The key design elements that distinguish the Beretta Model 92 from other auto-loading pistols are its open-slide design, its distinctive locking mechanism, and its double-action lockwork. None are unique. The uniqueness came from the nature of their combination by Beretta, and from the collective design genius of Carlo Beretta, Giuseppe Mazzetti, and Vittorio Valle.

… to this on a stainless 92FS produced in 2004.

Says Beretta historian Larry Wilson, “The family tree of the Model 92 is one of the more complex within the domain of automatic pistols, with its roots in the relatively simple design of Tullio Marengoni’s Model 1915. Contrasting the two shows the sophisticated level of Beretta’s research and development team, as well as the advanced state of its manufacturing facility.” ⁽¹⁾

On June 29, 1915, the first patent was issued on the handgun that would be known as the Beretta Model 1915. A blowback pistol chambered for the 9mm Glisenti, then Italy’s military pistol cartridge, it had a “hammerless” look with an enclosed firing mechanism, enclosed barrel, and extremely simplified design and construction. It was followed by a series of 7.65mm and 9mm Glisenti pistols (models 1917, 1922, 1923, etc.) with partially exposed slides, leaving the barrel less and less enclosed by the slide mass. The true “open-slide look” would come with the Model of 1934, the blowback 7.65mm and 9mm Corto that would be the definitive Beretta pistol of the early 20th century, and which would remain so until the coming of the Model 92. By then, the Beretta pistol design had evolved into a burr-style outside hammer format, though the pistol was still single-action.

The Beretta 92 is accurate. This 92F is box stock save for LPA sights just attached by Bill Pfeil. Five shots from 25 yards and five from 50, hand-held from right-hand barricade position, resulted in this 10-shot group of less than 3 inches with inexpensive Federal American Eagle ball.

In the shape of the barrel and slide, and to some degree the overall shape of the gun, the Model 34 presaged the Model 92. But other major design elements were drawn from elsewhere.

The locking block design of the Walther P-38 pistol in 9mm Luger, adopted in 1938 by German armed forces as their primary service pistol, would also find its way into the Model 92. Gun expert Charles M. Heard explained, “The P-38 fires 9mm Parabellum rounds handled by a short recoil system with the barrel being disengaged by cams which are movable inclined planes.” ⁽²⁾

The Walther P-38 also featured a mechanism in which the initial pull of the trigger, “double-action,” first raised and then dropped the exposed hammer to fire the chambered cartridge. As the gun cycled, the slide cocked the hammer, and subsequent shots would be fired with the easy single-action trigger pull. The hammer would be lowered by an internal decocking mechanism, activated by pushing down a lever on the left side of the slide, which when in the down position also functioned as a manual safety catch. This in turn derived from an earlier Walther, the PP/PPK series of pocket-size pistols in .22 LR, 7.65mm, and .380. These pistols had debuted in 1928. While Czech pistols had been built around the double-action feature earlier than that, they had been double-action only, even after the first shot. Walther was the first to produce a double-action mechanism that functioned only on the first shot, cocking itself to single-action for follow-up rounds. Smith & Wesson would adopt it before it was adopted by Beretta, but this Walther concept would find its way to the Model 92 as surely as the P-38 lock-up design.

Heavy dust accumulation from too much holster carry with too little cleaning will not impair the function of this Beretta 92.

Thus, we see that the key design elements that would distinguish the Model 92 were in place on various handguns well before World War II. However, they were not yet ready to be lashed together into that particular pistol. One more bridge had yet to be built: Beretta’s first 9mm Parabellum service pistol.

One valid criticism of the Beretta 92 is that it is large for its caliber.

The Beretta Precedent

By 1950, Beretta had manufactured some two million pistols, but not yet a 9mm Parabellum. In this, the company was decades behind the rest of the European small arms industry. It was time to catch up.

The catch up gun was the sturdy Model of 1951. Over the following decades it would go through various refinements and permutations, and be given various names. Model 1951. Model 51. Model 951. Brigadier. Model 104. In all cases, it was essentially the same rugged pistol. Its single-stack magazine held eight 9mm Luger rounds. The hammer was the common burr or rowel type, but more oval than circular, and in this it differed from earlier Berettas and most other European autoloaders.

The magazine release was a button recessed into the lower rear corner of the left grip panel. The safety was a cross-bolt, which was pressed to the right for “fire” from the left side of the pistol, and to the left for “safe” from the right side of the weapon.

Produced primarily in 9mm but also in .30 Luger, the gun featured the open slide concept of Marengoni. With no upper slide to snag a spent casing during its ejection arc if something went wrong, it was remarkably jam-free. The common “stovepipe” malfunction, in which a spent casing is caught in the ejection port and sticks up like an exhaust pipe, was virtually unknown with this gun. Similarly, the open top above the barrel eliminated a major area where sand and dirt could accumulate and create friction against the barrel that could jam the weapon.

This feature was almost immediately recognized and appreciated by the fledgling nation of Israel, and by the Arab states surrounding it. The Maadi Company was licensed by Beretta to build copies of the 951 for Engineering Industries of Cairo. This Egyptian-made pistol was known as the Helwan.

Pen points to the spot where the rare slide breakages were known to occur. To put minds at ease …

… Beretta introduced what they dubbed the Brigadier slide, seen here in stainless and with added steel in that area.

F-series/M9 pistols are carried on safe by many private citizens and police officers, and by the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps as standard doctrine.

F-series/M9s are carried off safe by many cops, civilians, and the USAF.

Beretta was prescient as to the role pistols would play in the short-term future of military conflict. Wilson quotes the brochures that originally accompanied the Model 951 pistols in the early 1950s. “The experience of the recent (Korean) war proved that an individual defense weapon of high ballistic qualities is still required, the more so against the dangers of enemy raids and partisan warfare met with (by) the supply and contact service, and which demands a ready reaction based upon efficient weapons of outstanding offensive power. Modern warfare, in fact, created the phenomena of (guerrilla) warfare which takes place at the flanks of the operational army units, and the use of pistols and light machine guns, despite the development of new weapons possessing a very high destructive power, cannot yet be considered as obsolete even in modern theatres of war.” ⁽³⁾

As this book is written, that lesson is being proven in Iraq and Afghanistan. While not universally issued to all personnel, the Beretta M9 pistol is dramatically present, strapped to the bodies of a greater percentage of American combat troops than in any conflict in collective modern memory.

The Model 951 did not set the pistol world on fire. It lacked what a marketing specialist might call “the hook,” a distinguishing feature to set it apart from the competition. There was not something it could do that the others couldn’t. It didn’t have the double-column, high-capacity magazine that had been seen as a desirable feature since the Browning High Power of 1935. It didn’t have the double-action of the Walther P-38. It didn’t have the raw, crushing power of the American Colt .45 automatic. Nor did it have the exquisite target pistol accuracy of the SIGs built at Neuhausen, Switzerland. There was, however, a target-model Beretta 51 that would be made for the Egyptian army called the Berhama, which would later be put into Beretta’s regular line as the 952 Special.

Experts of the time, military and civilian, saw the gun as functional but boring and undistinguished. One of the leading handgun experts during the 951’s heyday was Henry M. Stebbins, who wrote, “The Model 1951 or 951 Brigadier is a business Beretta: 9mm Luger caliber, 4½inch barrel (not bad for this caliber), locked-breech action, exposed hammer. There is a cross-bolt safety at the top rear of the frame, a poor location; but the gun has a hammer, too, which most servicemen in any country, right now, probably would say is a good thing on a pistol. Eight-or ten-shot mags are available, and a butt spur for the shooter’s little finger. After the last shot the slide stays open as we should expect with a military handgun. Perhaps the Brigadier has the ambition to become just that: a military sidearm officially adopted by one, two, or how many countries? A lot of them once used the Luger, but now it costs too much to make Lugers, at least as standard items.” ⁽⁴⁾

Tepid words, but at the time the Beretta 9mm was not seen as a hot gun. Stebbins had a point about the safety catch design, at least as seen by those of us accustomed to more conventional placement of that component. Not all agreed, however. One who took a warmer view of that feature in particular, and of the 1951 Beretta in general, was a later expert, Timothy J. Mullin, author of Training the Gunfighter and The 100 Greatest Combat Pistols. In the latter book, Mullin said of the Model 951, “… this is actually quite a good weapon. The design is similar to that of the Beretta M92 and has shown itself to be quite reliable. Of course, the M1951 Beretta uses a single-column magazine, which features a single-action trigger style, but that configuration has some advantages. It has a straight-line feed, thus increasing its feeding reliability. The single-column magazine avoids grip bulk, and the single-action trigger makes it easy to shoot.

“The magazine release is located on the butt, and that is always slow. It also requires two hands to use and has a tendency to get pushed off by car seats. The front sight is narrow and low, and the rear sight is small and shallow, thus indexing is slow. Painted white, they would show up much better. The sights and the gritty trigger on the Egyptian example tested combined to yield a 3 -inch group on the formal range.

“The safety on the M1951 is a cross-bolt variety. This is unlike that found on most other combat handguns, and when you first see it, you will probably view it as awkward and slow. But you will be mistaken. The safety is one of the pistol’s best features. It reminds me of the safety found on the Star Z-63 SMG, and I found that on both the Star and the M1951 you could flip the safety off and on rapidly without shifting your hand at all. In fact, it was faster to operate than a Colt Government Model. All you need to do is take up your normal firing position, with your right thumb (assuming a right-hand grip) resting with the knuckle on the button. Merely extending the thumb slightly will bump the safety off. To reengage, merely straighten the trigger finger out, flex the finger straight out, hitting the button with the inside of your knuckle, and it will flip on. In actual practice, I found it fast and easy. For left-handers, the procedure is reversed, but it is equally simple. You have no need for an ambidextrous safety, extended safety, or external safety, and since the pistol grips are flush with the safety, you avoid the problems associated with flipping the safety off while in the holster. I really like this safety system.” ⁽⁵⁾ (Note that when Mullen refers to the “knuckle” of the thumb, he is describing the median joint, not the proximal joint.)

Long before the U.S. adopted the Beretta 92, it had been fitted with an ambidextrous safety/decocking lever as standard. It is a very southpaw-friendly pistol.

The Model 1951 proved that Beretta could build a rugged, reliable 9mm Parabellum service pistol. The foundation had been laid for the Model 92.

Genesis Of The Model 92

In 1970, perceiving the double-action 9mm to be the pistol of the future, the Beretta company began work on such a gun. It would be Beretta’s first double-action 9mm, and its first pistol with a double-stack, high-capacity magazine. Giusseppe Mazzetti and Vittorio Valle, reporting directly to Carlo Beretta, led the design team, which reportedly at one point had some 15 designers working on the double-action mechanism alone. Much of that development would ultimately transfer to the forthcoming Series 81 pistols, medium-framed autos in calibers .22, .32, and .380.

The first prototypes, reports Larry Wilson, were complete by 1975. This original incarnation of the Beretta Model 92 had the open slide and “oval” burr hammer, and unique magazine release, of the 1951. The shooter operated a frame-mounted safety, pivoting on a pin, the same as a 1911 or a Browning. The trigger guard was rounded.

Its first major contest to become a national military firearm took place in Brazil. Beretta won handily with the Model 92, building the Brazilian military Berettas at a factory it would later turn over to Forjas Taurus. But a much bigger contract was in the wind: after talking about adopting a 9mm pistol since the end of World War II, it appeared that the US Government was finally going to go ahead and do it. Reports Wilson, “ … in 1978 the House Appropriations Committee of the U.S. Congress issued a directive recommending to the Department of Defense that the time had come for a new service handgun.” He quoted Jeff Reh of Beretta, who would be deeply involved in the process, “The idea to purchase a new military sidearm was initiated by the House Appropriations Committee, where Chairman Joseph Addabbo’s staff conducted a study which verified that an unnecessary proliferation of different types of weapons and ammunition existed in the military stockpile. Addabbo’s staff recommended a reduction of the number of weapons in the inventory to ease maintenance burdens and eventually the recommendation was made that a new service sidearm be considered to replaced the venerable Colt Model 1911 .45 pistol.” ⁽⁶⁾

On the prize table was a contract for probably half a million guns. It was the most lucrative single prospect that anyone still living could remember ever having been placed in front of the handgun industry. It triggered one of the bitterest battles that the industry had ever experienced. In the end, some of the guns fell by the wayside, and some evolved of necessity into better pistols than they had been. The Beretta Model 92 was among the latter.

Stainless (“Inox”) construction was a natural evolution for the 92FS, here demonstrated by gun dealer and small arms expert Jim McLoud.

The Fight To Succeed The 1911

The story of the military testing is long and complicated. The most detailed and informative accounts appear in Wilson’s book, and in the United States Marine Corps Diary 1990 in a segment by Matthew T. Robinson, the associate editor of the Marine Corps Gazette. That account was called “The Long Road to Change: Procurement of the Beretta 9mm M9 Service Pistol,” and Larry Wilson dubbed it “the most succinct and straightforward piece” explaining the complex testing procedure and its various “back-stories.” The following is a necessarily brief synopsis.

The testing began in the late 1970s, under the Joint Services Small Arms Program (JSSAP), an entity mandated by Congress. It was determined that the United States Air Force would be the service branch that would lead the testing, which kicked off at the USAF’s Eglin Air Base in Valparaiso, Florida.

There were many entries. Colt fielded their double-action SSP, which did not do terribly well and which never made it into full-scale production. Smith & Wesson entered their Model 459 high-capacity, lightweight 9mm with a double-stack magazine. Ironically, this was a second-generation version of the S&W Model 39, a 26.5-ounce update of the Model 39 of 1954, which had been developed by S&W in the late 1940s the first time the government had indicated that it might be interested in adopting a new 9mm duty pistol. Heckler and Koch fielded two models, their P9 – preceding the Glock as the first polymer-framed pistol– and their VP70, a semi-auto pistol version of their machine pistol. Fabrique Nationale sent three different 9mm pistols to the contest, and Star of Spain sent one. Beretta, fresh from winning the Brazilian Army competition, sent in the Model 92.

The evolution of the Model 92 took place quickly, and of necessity as it faced the most modern high-tech handguns the free world had to offer. Gene Gangarosa, Jr. is a handgun authority who has written an eminently readable book on Beretta pistols, and several great articles. He encapsulated the 92’s development as follows.

“In 1976 Beretta introduced their 9mm Model 92 pistol. It made a big hit worldwide with its 15-round magazine and double-action trigger. In its first version the Model 92 featured a sear-blocking manual safety lever located on the frame’s left side in the manner of a Colt Government Model. Later that year, to appeal to military and police forces, Beretta introduced its Model 92S, a Model 92 with a hammer-decocking manual safety lever on the left side of the slide. An upgraded variant of the Model 92S, the Model 92S-1, appeared in 1978 in response to U.S. armed forces interest in issuing a 9mm service pistol. This added an ambidextrous safety lever, enlarged sights and grooved grip straps to the Model 92S, and placed the magazine release behind the trigger guard. Beretta placed the Model 92S-1 changes into full production in late 1980 when the company introduced the Model 92SB. In addition to all the improvements of the prototypical S-1 variant, the SB version also incorporated fully checkered grips, safety levers reshaped to the current configuration, an overtravel shelf on the trigger and a firing-pin lock. Further changes made to the Model 92SB, in response to continued U.S. armed forces testing, led to the Model 92SB-F, evaluated by the U.S. Army in 1984 and adopted in January 1985 as the M9. Beretta also released this variant for commercial sale and police issue as the Model 92F. Changes included a black enamel ‘Bruniton’ finish, squared combat-style trigger guard, chrome-lined bore, slight flaring of the frame’s bottom front portion, fourth-finger rest on the magazine bottom, relieving the grips’ upper rear corners to allow easier access to the safety lever, and enlarging the grips screws’ screwdriver slots. In 1990, following several slide separation incidents in the U.S. armed forces’ training and experimentation, Beretta incorporated a ‘slide retention device.’ This quick fix consists of an enlarged hammer axis pin, which, if the slide’s rear end separates during recoil, engages in a groove machined inside the slide’s lower left rear portion to keep the slide on the frame. With the slide retention device fitted, Beretta designated the pistol Model 92FS, advancing the gun to its current configuration.” ⁽⁷⁾

Slide markings help track the Model 92’s evolution in America. Beretta’s U.S. corporate base was in New York when this 92F was imported from Italy …

… while Beretta U.S.A, had been established in Maryland by the time the sun shone on this 92F …

… and this contemporary 92FS was proudly “made in U.S.A.”

The 92FS with slide catch device was designated the M10 pistol by the military. However, in all these years, not a single military person who works with these guns has called one an M10 within my hearing. Without exception, with slide catch or without it, FS or F style, the soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen who carry them call these guns “M9s”. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear, did it really make a sound? If a name is changed and no one uses the new name, was the thing in question really re-named?

The entire, every-viewpoint-represented story of the giant cluster-coitus that was the test for the new 9mm U.S. military pistol has yet to be written. Very thorough accounts exist thus far, however, in the writings of Matthews and Wilson, cited earlier, and in Gangarosa’s work. Suffice to say that after a long string of tests, lawsuits, and exchanged allegations, the Beretta Model 92 won virtually all of the tests. In the very last, it finished neck and neck with SIG-Sauer, and very slightly underbid the manufacturers of the SIG P226. Because it had been understood that the military would adopt the winner of the test, and because there were then so many tests over several years, various historical accounts differ as to the year that the Beretta Model 92 was actually adopted as U.S. Service Pistol, M9.

However, the weight of the evidence indicates that the pivotal approval and official adoption came in 1985. There would be many subsequent tests, all of which verified the selection of the Beretta as having been “the right thing to do.” Suffice to say that Beretta considers 1985 to have been the official year of the U.S. adoption.

Lawsuits and trash-talking newspaper stories came into play. There were those who vilified the Beretta. In 1997, one of my editors at Publishers Development Corporation, now Firearms Marketing Group, asked me to research an article on the matter. The research was already pretty much done. I had followed the Beretta testing from the beginning. A good friend of mine, Jack Robbins, was one of the key men involved in the JSSAP project at Eglin. He had told me that the reason the Beretta had won was that it had simply outperformed everything else, and that Beretta had shown a different attitude than most of its competitors. The majority had figured they made the best gun and it would stand on its own. Beretta, more than any other player in the race, had sent its top people back and forth between the U.S.A. and Italy to ask the testers and the military in detail what they wanted and demanded, and had custom-tailored what became the 92F – and ultimately, the M9 – to those wants and needs.

When the slide separations started happening, I was on it like white on rice. I had for many years done the “Industry Insider” column for American Handgunner, and was proud that I had earned a reputation of telling it like it was. I had exposed a number of bad firearms, and a lot of manufacturers didn’t like me for it. I had been banned at various times from Charter Arms, Glock, Smith & Wesson, and Sterling Arms for writing things about their products that the executives didn’t appreciate. One company had pulled over a million dollars worth of advertising out of the PDC magazines, with a senior exec telling the publisher that they would buy again as soon as I was fired. To his enormous credit, founding publisher George Von Rosen told them to stuff it. Later, when that particular executive was fired, his gun company determined that I was no longer the problem. By then, the company had addressed every one of the shortcomings that I had mentioned in the long article series on their guns that had so enraged their former decision-maker.

In short, I was ready to find the fire that was generating the smoke, and expose Beretta for its shoddy workmanship. I had taught at the U.S. Army Marksmanship Training Unit at Fort Benning, and still had honest and trustworthy sources there and in the other services, and in the many major police departments that had adopted the Beretta 92.

I contacted those sources. They told me that the allegations against Beretta had been hugely overblown. The term they most frequently used was “bullshit.” The guns, they said, were working great. Offered total protection from any comeback in the form of anonymity, they had no reason to lie for Beretta.

My job was to find out the truth, and tell it to the readers. I did. What I found out, and what I told those readers, is as follows.

The Beretta Continues

Few modern pistols have been so vilified as the Beretta 92 ... and fewer still so thoroughly redeemed by excellence in wide-ranging field performance.

Known as the M9 in U.S. military parlance, the Beretta 92 is now the primary standard handgun of all the United States’ armed forces and has been the official service pistol for more than a decade. Other nations have been similarly impressed, ranging from the region Jeff Cooper calls “the sandbox” where it was in use by both sides during Arab-Israeli conflicts, to South Africa where it is produced locally under license as the Z-88.

Similarly, the free world’s police establishment has been responsive to the 92 series. The French national gendarmes carry the 92G, and the South African police issue the Z-88. But nowhere have police taken to the Beretta with more street-proven enthusiasm than the United States. Crisscrossing the nation, major departments carry it: Maine State Police to Los Angeles County Sheriffs, Washington State Patrol to Florida Highway Patrol, and countless major agencies in between. From New Orleans (92F) to St. Louis (92D) to San Francisco (96G), the Beretta is as well represented among city cops as among their state and county cousins. Of the four types of handguns authorized to LAPD personnel, the 92F is the overwhelming favorite and the one issued to new recruits at the academy.

The Beretta 92 has been – and still is – widely carried by American law enforcement officers.

Nor have the Feds ignored the Beretta. When I taught at the DEA Academy I noticed a disproportionate number of 92Fs on the hips of agents training for the high-risk Operation Snowcap in South America, despite the fact that most Drug Enforcement Agents preferred something smaller on the list of approved 9mm pistols for daily plainclothes carry. The U.S. Postal Service inspectors are said to have adopted the Beretta.

Seen from below the pistol, this is the subtle yet difficult movement a criminal would have to perform, while an officer held his Beretta still for him, to disassemble the gun in the cop’s hand. The concept of such a disarm is simply an urban legend.

FBI made headlines in the firearms press with their adoption of the S&W 10mm, subsequent large-scale purchases of the SIG 9mm, and orders for a few hundred Para Ordnance and Springfield Armory .45 autos and a small contract for .40 caliber Glocks. Yet almost lost in the shadows was the vast purchase of thousands upon thousands of Beretta 96D Brigadiers as standard sidearms for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a volume acquisition that dwarfs all the auto pistols the FBI has purchased, combined.

The Beretta is also extremely popular among armed citizens as a home and store defense weapon, its frame size being somewhat large for concealed carry. American civilians have historically followed their military’s choice of small arms, and have historically been satisfied. The Beretta pistol seems to be no exception.

Praised by Faint Damns ...

Those who’ve raised their voices to condemn the 92 series Beretta fall into three categories: competitors beaten out on testing, .45 fans, and those who detest double-action autos in general. All three fit another category: sore losers.

The military’s adoption of the Beretta over certain other brands brought threats of lawsuits and Congressional hearings and put the rumor mill into three-shift overtime. Yet subsequent endurance tests validated the Beretta’s durability, reliability, and longevity.

No, the Beretta didn’t and doesn’t come in .45 ACP. Nor did any other gun the U.S. military was going to adopt in keeping with NATO ammo inventory specs. Had the contract been won by the SIG P-226, the S&W 659, the Ruger P-85, or the HK P7M13, that