Читать книгу The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery онлайн

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It has also stood up nobly in the U.S. police service. For many years now the issue weapon of LAPD (almost 10,000 officers) and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (some 7,000 deputies), the Beretta 92, 9mm has given yeoman’s service. Thanks to its open-top slide design, it is virtually jam-free, and one of the very few pistols that can equal or exceed the Glock in terms of reliability.

The glass-smooth feel of the action as you hand-cycle the Beretta is the standard by which others are judged. The 92F series, with combination manual safety/decocking lever, may have the single easiest slide-mounted safety to operate. Two large departments, one East Coast and one West, mandate that their personnel carry the Beretta on-safe. Each department has logged numerous cases in which the wearers’ lives were saved by this feature when someone got the gun away from an officer, tried to shoot him or her, and couldn’t because the safety was engaged.

The Beretta is also a very accurate pistol. Five rounds of 9mm commonly go into 1-1/2 inches at 25 yards from the standard Model 92. The Model 96, chambered for .40 S&W, passed the demanding accuracy tests of the Indiana State Police and was adopted as that agency’s standard issue sidearm. The state troopers of Rhode Island, Florida, and Pennsylvania joined Indiana and issue the 96 at this writing. The city police of San Francisco and Providence also issue the 96.