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Firearm practice report

Sat, 11/03/2007 - 8:00am — Nick

Since the first time I've ever fired a handgun, I had gone back to the same range and tested out that rented Glock 17. This time I went with my girlfriend and that was her first time actually shooting a firearm, but she did fine without any mishaps.

This convinced me to look around at one of the gun stores and look to purchase my own Glock 17 or a 9 mm handgun in its price range to learn to maintain and to practice shooting with on Wednesday afternoon. How quickly I got a handgun surprised me a little bit. Basically, once I picked out my gun1, from filling out the paperwork to me walking out the door with a brand new handgun, 200 ball rounds for it, and a cleaning kit was no more than 45 minutes.

I have to say, the salesperson at Lafayette Shooters was patient with this handgun newbie. After finding that they didn't have a Glock 17 in stock, he quickly pointed out several other 9 mm handguns at around the same price range. And one pistol seem to have caught my eye: the Beretta 92FS.

I am glad I did my research for the common full-sized 9 mm handguns, as I knew that even if the Beretta 92 had a bad reputation with some in the military (where it was designated as the Beretta M9)2 but I also knew that many from the military and civilian police forces that have actually used the gun stand in combat situations stand behind the weapon as a reliable and sufficiently powerful sidearm (Even if astro had problems with its accuracy3).

When I first held it, the first thing that came to mind was how much heavier it seemed to feel compared to the Glock 174. Recoil should be much less pronouced in theory, but I'll report on that later. The second thing that came to mind is how much bigger the handle feels compared to what I remembered from the Glock. It felt comfortable to me just holding it in the store, and my girlfriend said it didn't feel uncomfortable for her to hold then, but how it feels to aim and fire will have to be done in the range.

And probably the one thing that sold me on the weapon was just how easy it was to field strip it for cleaning. The clerk showed me in the store with the display model, and before I even had even thought of going to the range with it, I had throughly read through the manual and practiced stripping the gun down and putting it together at least a dozen times that night. I also observed and trained myself on the safety mechanism. I didn't even try to dry fire the gun that night, since the manual recommended you not do so without a dummy cartridge or at least a spent casing in the chamber. So my first time firing the Beretta was with a live round at the range, which I ended going to with a friend and my girlfriend Thursday morning.

Between my girlfriend and I, we put 200 rounds through the Beretta without a single issue. One thing, it is a DA/SA handgun, so I made sure to practice shooting it with the double action. And what a hard pull, much harder than I remember the Glock 17 having. On the otherhand, the single action trigger is a joy to fire. I later looked up what others measured as the weight, and the numbers seem to run at 12-14 lbs for the double action, and 3-4 lbs for the single action.

The gun's accuracy? Well, I wouldn't be able to tell you from two novice shooters handling it. Hopefully, accuracy will come with time and proper practice. For a couple of the targets, we simply went through the first 100 rounds shooting at them paying more attention to form and safety training. I do know that it felt like the gun was shooting down and to the left when I first started shooting it, but having a stronger grip solved that. I have a couple pictures of targets of when I started going for accuracy later in the session. Here's the first target:

The procedure I went with this target was as follows: Load a 15-round magazine, chamber a round, and put down the weapon at the bench while leaving safety on. Put target to 3 yards. Pick up the Beretta, disable the safety, fire five, aimed shots, re-engage safety (which also decocks the hammer), put gun down. Move target to 6 yards, repeat with five more shots from the beretta, making sure I re-engage safety before putting the gun down. Finally, move target to 10 yards and fire the last 5 rounds5 This forced me to fire the Beretta in double action mode three times, and the one hole that is just above the lower 8 is from the first double action trigger pull at 3 yards. I should work more on my accuracy with the handgun's double action mode.

My girlfriend was getting a bit tired towards the end, so for a bit of fun, I filled up the two 15-round magazines, moved a fresh target out to 25 yards6, and proceeded to fire all thirty rounds at a steady pace (swapping magazines after the fifteenth shot), taking less than two minutes. Here's the target:

I'm a bit surprised that I did this well. All 30 shots hit the paper. 29 hit the silhouette. 21 hit within the 7 ring7. 13 were clearly inside the 8 ring.

Well, that ends my first report on shooting my new Beretta 92FS8. I have already cleaned the barrel and picked up some silicone cloth to wipe the outside of the handgun with after cleaning and oiling the slide and frame.

If anybody have any tips and advice for anything here, please feel free add them in the comments.

  1. 1. A process that took around 10 minutes
  2. 2. It seems that the Beretta 92FS/M9 was mainly for some slide failure issues in earlier versions, for it being a smaller 9 mm caliber, and because it replaced the much loved .45 caliber M1911 as the standard sidearm
  3. 3. Astro did admit in an email that his experience with the M9 was probably tarred by beat up service models that have suffered through abuse.
  4. 4. Not much of a surprise now that I looked their mass up. According to the numbers on wikipedia, the Beretta 92 is more than 300 grams heavier than the Glock, almost %50 heavier
  5. 5. This was loosely based on a potential test certification my girlfriend may have to go through. She works as a security guard, and has the opportunity to move to a higher pay scale if she can go through it.
  6. 6. Wow that looked small!
  7. 7. I didn't include the one hole just on the outside of the 7 ring on the bottom left
  8. 8. And I conclude that the gun is much more accurate than my girlfriend and I are