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Old November 27, 2008, 05:59 AM   #26
JohnH1963
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Of course the civilian 92s are not going to have the same problems. Civilians, since they actually own the weapon, treat their tools with kid gloves carefully doing whatever they can to make the pistol last.

Its like the difference between a civilian Crown Victoria and the ones the police drive. There is a big difference between how the two are treated.

I think the real point is you dont hear the same things about Glocks or Sigs that you hear about the 92s. Never heard anyone say the Glock was too bulky. Never heard anyone say the Sig was not accurate or unreliable.

The Seals purposely switched to the P226 because they felt the 92s were not up for the job. Many police departments have switched from the 92s to Glocks or other weaponry. The military is the one who is still holding on.
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Old November 27, 2008, 08:50 AM   #27
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Re; M9

First, thanks to you guys for your service. Because of you, I can sit here on Thanksgiving Day and fumble on this keyboard. I'm a Viet Nam vet and my weapon was a M60, and I had a "souveneired" Hi-Power Browning. Keep on Uncle's ass and make him get it right.
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Old November 27, 2008, 09:11 AM   #28
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I understand that civvy Berettas or maybe even police ones, are not gonna see the conditions that the M9's do. But you mention police getting rid of them, could that be because of something like, following the latest trends(with grant or confiscated money), caliber up-sizing, etc? And I can't see how any handgun in that dusty sandy environment can always be 100% without extreme cleaning, like, notice how tight those barrel hoods fit the slides on the Glocks and Sigs? What would one grain of sand in that gap do to the lockup? Etc? I don't think that probably Sigs and Glocks have the widespread exposure that the general issue M9 has, worldwide in US combat.
I bet their "perfect numbers" would slide a bit if they spend 5 years in that environment. Still, IMO I would have let the troops that like the 1911, keep them over there, or reissue them! With ball ammo, the bigger is better!
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Old November 27, 2008, 09:16 AM   #29
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M9 opinion

I was issued a brand new one and had to qualify on it. Every magazine would have at least 2 stoppages and I was not the only one experenceing this. I was issued one along with my rifle and it felt good to have one, but no way would I trust it. It could have been the ammunition who knows, but my enlistment expired before I could use it again.
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Old November 27, 2008, 09:55 AM   #30
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This is all very interesting. I have limited experience with the M9. I was running AK Marksmanship Unit when they first came out and was tasked with training people on the "new" pistol, but before I got started they were recalled because of the cracking slides. So I didnt get very far.

I was trained on the old 1911a1s. Though I'm more of a rifle shooter then a pistol shooter, I qualified higher with the 1911 then I did with the M14. That I couldnt figure out.

We just didnt have the malfunctions with the 1911s that you people mention with the M9.

My personal experience with the 1911 is extensive and I'd proboly cry like a baby if I was to go back into combat and someone tried to take my 1911 and make me take the M9. But my experience with the M9 is pretty limited

Interesting thread.
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Old November 27, 2008, 10:38 AM   #31
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Went bang everytime I pulled the trigger.



OTOH, whatever knucklehead decuded to parkerize the inside of the magazines needs to be drug down the street.
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Old November 27, 2008, 11:26 AM   #32
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No brainer

Not a vet so my opinion is not weighty but it is obvious we should go back to the 1911 and .45 when a change is made.

If not the 1911 then at least the 230 gr .45 with something like the FNP .45 or M&P .45 but I think the military was well served with the 1911 and the .45 and would be so again with both.

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Old November 27, 2008, 02:43 PM   #33
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Wasn't issued the M9 in the service, but used one in my police department. While holstered and used in police departments, the weapons get much better care than in the military.

Compare police issued M4 carbines to the military ones.

In either case, I've never had problems with my duty pistol, and I own two Beretta's now.

A lot of police departments are moving to the .40, which the 96 has inferior magazine capacity (although I still like mine).

The Beretta 92 design has been around a long time and used in various law enforcement capacity around the world. It's a trusted weapon for a reason.
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Old September 5, 2018, 12:00 AM   #34
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I carried an M9 on 2 tours in Korea as an MP. Never really even noticed it was on my hip when I carried it. I also never really had a problem qualifying expert with the M9 or even the clunky old WWII and Vietnam era 1911A1's. The 45's I was issued in the late 80's were absolutely beat to hell. By the time my career had ended, the M9's had been in service for about 20 years and were still always reliable, always accurate and always effective. I don't recall even a jam with my M9's. I think it's more about the man with the weapon and not so much about the weapon; especially when discussing high quality fine firearms such as the 1911a1 or the Beretta M9.
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Old September 5, 2018, 12:18 AM   #35
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I carried an M9 on 2 tours in Korea as an MP. Never really even noticed it was on my hip when I carried it. I also never really had a problem qualifying expert with the M9 or even the clunky old WWII and Vietnam era 1911A1's. The 45's I was issued in the late 80's were absolutely beat to hell. By the time my career had ended, the M9's had been in service for about 20 years and were still always reliable, always accurate and always effective. I don't recall even a jam with my M9's. I think it's more about the man with the weapon and not so much about the weapon; especially when discussing high quality fine firearms such as the 1911a1 or the Beretta M9.
The M9 is an almost universally loathed pistol in the DOD arena.

Fortunately, the M17 is shaping up to be a tremendous improvement.
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Old September 5, 2018, 08:01 AM   #36
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The M9 is an almost universally loathed pistol in the DOD arena.
Zombie thread aside, a simple reading of the ten-year-old posts above show that the M9 wasn't "universally loathed" by those who used it.

Some liked it. Some didn't. Regardless, it served its role as a pistol in modern combat well enough.

Which is to say it spent the majority of its time unused in a holster.


Quote:
Fortunately, the M17 is shaping up to be a tremendous improvement.
The M17 is a double-stack full-size pistol of acceptable reliability throwing a similar number of 9x19mm slugs to the M9, which is a double-stack full-size pistol of acceptable reliability throwing a similar number of 9x19mm slugs to the M17.

"Tremendous improvement" is serious hyperbole.


.

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Old September 5, 2018, 10:14 AM   #37
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Originally Posted by Fishbed77 View Post
Zombie thread aside, a simple reading of the ten-year-old posts above show that the M9 wasn't "universally loathed" by those who used it.

Some liked it. Some didn't. Regardless, it served its role as a pistol in modern combat well enough.

Which is to say it spent the majority of its time unused in a holster.




The M17 is a double-stack full-size pistol of acceptable reliability throwing a similar number of 9x19mm slugs to the M9, which is a double-stack full-size pistol of acceptable reliability throwing a similar number of 9x19mm slugs to the M17.

"Tremendous improvement" is serious hyperbole.


.
He's being sarcastic. He has a thread on his own 92 that he set up for home defense. He does this all the time but his delivery is such that the sarcasm doesn't really translate, or he might mean to do that simply to troll.

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Old September 5, 2018, 11:44 AM   #38
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Originally Posted by Model12Win View Post
The M9 is an almost universally loathed pistol in the DOD arena.

Fortunately, the M17 is shaping up to be a tremendous improvement.
I don't recall the M9 being universally loathed when I was in the Marine Corps in the early to mid 90s. Handguns were generally considered useless in combat, especially in 9mm. I'm not sure what's changed due to recent wars, but at least when I was in handguns were completely irrelevant. You might as well argue about which bayonet is better to carry in combat.

Handguns were kind of considered a symbol of authority though, or a sign that you were somebody important, since staff NCOs and officers were issued one. I also remember being thrilled the first time I handled an M9, more thrilled than any other weapon I used except for maybe the m249(which just seemed totally bad*** to me at first). It seems ridiculous to me now. I guess because at that time semi auto handguns were rare in the civilian world, and this was a pre internet age. Most people's only exposure to them when enlisting was seeing cops and movie heroes carrying one, so they were as foreign to most of us as any machine gun. That's totally changed these days.

EDIT: OK maybe the post I quoted was sarcasm, since the m17 seems to be a total cluster so far.
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Old September 5, 2018, 07:22 PM   #39
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No opinion, because I always managed to find a Chief or Gunny who managed to have a .45 squirreled away in a locker during Gulf War part I, part II and when I was in Afghanistan in 2003.
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Old September 5, 2018, 08:24 PM   #40
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How 'bout an opinion from an afghanistan vet?
LOL...We don't count I guess!

The M9 is a great service pistol. I carried a 1911 in 1/75th...the M9 was more reliable. The Batt 1911's were worn out so not a condemnation of the pistol.

We did test Glock 21's on one tour which were passed on and 1911's were available if you wanted one. Only saw a couple 1911's being carried. The majority of us carried M9's.
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Old September 5, 2018, 08:47 PM   #41
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I wad never in the military, but I carried either an M9 or the civilian M92FS for two years in Kuwait. I found it to be very accurate and reliable when kept the magazines spotless inside (hard to do in the middle of the desert) as an armorer I saw quite a few get the return spring on the trigger bar get dislodged resulting in a dead trigger. Fortunately the tiny springs never fell put of the gun and it only took a moment to pop it back into place. This mostly happened when cleaning the weapon.

My main complaint with the Beretta was the weight and grip size. At the end of the day I couldn't wait to take that brick off my hip, sometimes it would cause actual pain. I wear size large gloves and the grip was merely uncomfortably large for me ( one particular sharp edge near the beavertail tended to bite me during recoil) for female shooters and those with smaller hands the pistol is almost unmanageable.

When I was in Iraq I was issued a variety of pistols. I hated the Zastava CZ 99. The CZ 999 wasn't much better. I very much loked the West German Sig P226's I ran across, they rode easier on the hip than the Beretta and seemed to fit my hand very well, accuracy was very good, but current Sig quality control leaves me skeptical. The Glock 19 was great and I carry one daily now. Small, light, and accurate with the same magazine capacity as the M9. What's not to love?
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Old September 5, 2018, 09:13 PM   #42
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The Seals purposely switched to the P226 because they felt the 92s were not up for the job.
They did not switch because the "M9 wasn't up to the job"...they switched because the M9 was not available.

I was in SOCOM when the M9 testing was going on. The DoD weight requirements put on the pistol manufacturers were unrealistic, IIRC combined with some bad metallurgical batches. We had some slides depart and cracks develop. The M9 had passed all the testing. DoD halted the adoption process and went back to the drawing board. Nobody knew when our war weary 1911's would be replaced in the Army.

During that time, the NAVY simply used the magic credit card to buy a bunch of SIG P226's in 1989....

They tested the only manufacturers who get them something in the holster in quantity. Glock did not pass leaving SIG as their only choice.

That is a full year from 1990 when the M9 was formally adopted. Since that time, a new generation that was not there has cropped up bad mouthing a pistol they have never used and altering the narrative.
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Old September 5, 2018, 09:49 PM   #43
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Interesting and shocking replies. I assumed most the opinions on the M9 would be the same as how I feel about my 92FS. Accurate, reliable, points well, and I personally like the feel of a large grip pistol that's going to be used for self defense. I guess the folks working on the military versions don't know how to maintain them very well? Or the guys carrying them didn't treat them well?
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Old September 5, 2018, 10:35 PM   #44
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I guess the folks working on the military versions don't know how to maintain them very well? Or the guys carrying them didn't treat them well?
The main reliability problem I saw was from the Checkmate magazines that the Army bought that had an out of spec finish applied to the inside of the magazine. This caused the followers to bind when the fine desert sand would get inside them. Unless you have experienced a middle eastern sand storm it is impossible to describe just how dirty any machinery gets in that environment.

The solution of course is to take the magazine apart and wipe everything down, preferably with a rag, but toilet paper actually works pretty well. Unfortunately getting a bunch of former military security contractors to actually follow that advice is/was a road to madness. Most of them would notice their rounds were loose in their magazines, because the follower was jammed, when they received them at shift change and decide the best way to fix that problem was to take the magazine apart and stretch the spring as far as they possibly could to "make it stronger".

I threw away dozens of magazines that were ruined in that fashion. About the time we got enough ammo and magazines to issue them every day with the weapons, instead of hot swapping on post, I finally got our training cadre on board with teaching basic magazine care and feeding and the problem mostly stopped.
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Old September 5, 2018, 10:50 PM   #45
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I have an M9, was never in the military but lived in Saudi and traveled the region, dealing mostly with dukes, spooks, dips, corps and cops.

1) +1 on handguns-in-hand in public significantly and quickly raise blood pressures (in that entire region), where M9 usually meant American.
2) +1 on AK’s are very common and often ignored
3) I have a few thousand rounds thru the M9 with very few FTE’s
4) The M9 magazines are slightly different having a coating that makes them more resistant to dirt and dust
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Old September 6, 2018, 12:52 AM   #46
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Most of them would notice their rounds were loose in their magazines, because the follower was jammed, when they received them at shift change and decide the best way to fix that problem was to take the magazine apart and stretch the spring as far as they possibly could to "make it stronger".
Any positive effect is only temporary--very temporary. That treatment will ruin a spring in short order.
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Old September 6, 2018, 03:02 AM   #47
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Any positive effect is only temporary--very temporary. That treatment will ruin a spring in short order.
That is why I threw so many into the trash.

Also a fair amount of M16/M4 magazines with spread out feed lips. Some to the point it would take two people, one pulling the rifle while the other pulled the magazine, to remove them from the magazine well of the rifle. I shudder to think what those idiots were doing to insert those magazines.

I would generally smash them flat so some well intentioned idiot would not pull bad magazines out and try to reuse them.
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Old September 6, 2018, 10:30 AM   #48
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maintain them very well? Or the guys carrying them didn't treat them well?
Pretty much spot on. The regular army tended to over maintain their weapons inducing malfunctions and problems.

My favorite was the load once and leave it magazine. They would load a magazine and leave it fully loaded for months. I saw regular army guys pull their magazines out only to watch them leave a trail of cartridges like bread crumbs.

We rotated our magazines every week so that the springs would not weaken and induce malfunctions. I still do the same with my CCW gun or any weapon I leave ready to use.
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Old September 6, 2018, 11:56 AM   #49
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Leaving a magazine loaded (modern materials) will not weaken the spring.

Loading and unloading it will.
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Old September 6, 2018, 12:23 PM   #50
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Thanks for resurrecting this thread, very interesting reading.
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