Читать книгу Gun Digest Book of Beretta Pistols. Function | Accuracy | Performance онлайн

122 страница из 126

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.