The Beretta 93R (“Raffica”) was developed in the 1970s by Beretta engineer Paolo Parola at the request of Italian military special forces. It took the basic Beretta 92 pistol design and added a well-thought-out burst mechanism under the right-side grip panel. It does not have a plain full-auto setting, but only semiauto and 3-round burst. To help keep the gun controllable, it has a heavier slide to reduce cyclic rate, a detachable shoulder stock, and a folding front grip to help control the muzzle. It uses extended 20-round magazines and is actually remarkably controllable (or so I am told; I have not had a chance to shoot one myself).
For a look at a 93R on the range, I suggest this video from James Reeves on TFBTV:
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this very famous machine pistol! The NFC collection there – perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe – is available by appointment to researchers:
https://royalarmouries.org/research/national-firearms-centre/
You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/
“(…)3-round burst(…)20-round magazines(…)”
This would make last burst being 2-round one. Does said mechanism reset during magazine change or you will start with 1-round burst after reload?
“(…)developed in the 1970s by Beretta engineer Paolo Parola(…)”
It should be noted that it was not first machine pistol by Beretta, as they earlier offered M951R http://modernfirearms.net/en/handguns/handguns-en/italy-semi-automatic-pistols/beretta-951-eng/ select-fire(…)M951R, had been developed circa 1955 and been in limited production until early 1980s, when it was replaced by Beretta M93R.
Now I am wondering if M951R was made by same person or another one?
It resets every time you release the trigger. The mechanism is shown in the clip.
[OFF-TOPIC so ignore if you wish]
Recently I learned about new Winchester .21 rim-fire cartridge
https://winchester.com/Blog/2024/09/Please-Welcome-the-21-Sharp
basically .22 LR cartridge updated with internal-lubricated bullet, which resulted in .21 caliber. It is known to exists with following bullet variations
– hollow point
– FMJ
– Matrix, made entirely of cuprum
It is claimed to be is slightly faster than standard-velocity .22 LR loads with more energy.
But it is unclear for me if it requires totally new fire-arm or some or all existing .22 LR fire-arm could be reworked for said cartridge? Is gain in ballistic enough to justify change from existing .22 fire-arms? What would happen if someone would attempt to use .22 LR in .21 Sharp fire-arm?
The 21 Sharp bullet has a slightly smaller diameter than the .22 bullet. The case diameter is the same as a 22. So I do not think you could reasonably and safely use a 21 Sharp cartridge in most firearms chambered for .22 LR.
See: https://saami.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Public-Introduction-21-Sharp-2023-06-14.pdf
It sounds like Winchester has tried to come up with a more “commercial” and less finicky version of the .12 Eichelberger LR;
https://firearmwiki.com/wiki/.12_Eichelberger_Long_Rifle
Or to put it another way, a rimfire version of the various .22 Hornet variations (.22 K-Hornet, etc.) in terms of ballistic performance.
I could see a .22 WMR version of this in a handgun like the Kel-Tec PMR-30 changing some of our opinions about defensive pistol performance, especially loaded with FMJ or JHP bullets.
clear ether
eon
.21 Sharp is simply .22LR with a tiny-bit-smaller bore diameter so it can use non-heeled, jacketed bullets. .22WMR (which doesn’t need heeled bullets) is already a .22WMR version of this.
“Slightly ffaster? So probably with no vast increase in energy? What problem do the developers of the cartridge see themselves solving? What need is being met? Or are they hoping for sales driven by “innovation intoxication?”
> Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this very famous machine pistol!
Until they arbitrarily decide to force you to remove the video.
Couple of nits to pick at…
Ian states that the 93R was a product of Italian special forces requirements. My understanding was that it was pretty much the same as the Glock 18, an answer to the 1985 airport terrorist attacks in Vienna and Rome, built to the specifications of the Italian counter-terrorism forces of the national police Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza and Carabineri Gruppo di Intervento Speciale.
Obviously, from the dates of development, that “understanding” of mine isn’t quite correct.
They basically wanted something capable of full-auto, and concealable. Same spec as for the Glock 18, in effect. I think the 93R might have been in development, and only got started being noticed about the time of the airport attacks, and then someone conflated the 93R with the Glock 18, so far as causative development history. This was all “lore”, back in the day; I don’t think that the usual gun rag writers knew the facts, and were operating off of rumor.
Which, , is why I have to go and check this crap every time I pull something up from the recesses of my memory. I know I read that both automatic pistols became prominent at about the same time, but… Again, .
The other quibble is that when Ian points to the M9 clone he has for comparison, he makes it out that there was a switch between the safety on the slide vs. on the frame. Not so; early Beretta 92 versions had frame-mounted safeties and magazine releases on the butt, just like (ta-da!!) the Taurus PT-92, which had the original 92 layout. It was not until they had to satisfy US ergonomic conventions that they put the safety on the slide and the mag release behind the trigger guard. Why the US changed from frame to slide? No idea, but that was in all the JSSAP requirements. I think someone wanted to buy the Walther P-38 or the Smith & Wesson 39/59. I honestly see no effective difference between the locations, but I’m sure someone, somewhere had a rationale for it all.
I think the 93R made a better job of answering the requirements than the G18, but then they’d had a lot longer to work on it. It’s also a bit of a quibble to argue that “special forces” are different from what the Italians do their usual domestic counterterrorism with, but the two agencies behind the 93R are both rated by NATO and other treaties as paramilitary police branches, and not counted against CFE numbers. Unless something’s changed… They’re cops; not military.
You leave airport security to the Italian Army, odds are the troops are gonna be doing their patrolling with full-on assault rifles, and there will be machinegun nests set up as security checkpoints throughout the airports. Also, expect innumerable “incidents” wherein putative “civilians” get rather heavily shot up. You do not want the Italian Army doing internal security missions, unless you’ve lost your cotton-picking mind… Especially the Alpini or Bersagliere.
Fifth paragraph down, there ought to be a (heavy sigh) after “Which”, and a (sigh) after the final “Again”.
The safety-decocker on the slide was introduced with the 92S, by request of the Italian Police (that adopted it).
The Italian Police requested a decocker, for the reason that many US Police departments had to learn at their own expense when they adopted a wondernine without it. An agent, full of adrenaline and with sweaty hands, after a shooting, tries to lower the hammer like he did thousands of times in normal conditions and… BANG!
Beretta did put the decocker on the slide because that way it could rotate the tail of the firing pin out of the way of the hammer and decock it completely. Most of frame mounted decockers decock only to half-cock, but at Beretta they didn’t consider the half-cock sear safe enough (mind also that those guns still didn’t have a firing pin block that, on the 92, IE, had been introduced only in the subsequent model, the 92SB).
The demonstration that the position of the safety-decocker depends ONLY on the decocking function is that ALL the various SAO 92 models Beretta made over the years retained the frame mounted 1911-style safety. At Beretta they never considered the slide mounted safety-decocker better ergonomically, only more safe.
A notable exception to the rule that frame mounted decockers only decock to half-cock is the Bernardelli P018/P-One that, to me has the best safety-decocker setup ever.
https://youtu.be/OhdODlo5nOQ?t=196
As you can see, the second click up of the safety lever decocks the hammer ALMOST all the way down, but the last 2mm of travel are done only when the lever is released.
Since 2008 (in response to terror attacks on cities, IE that on Mumbay the same year) the Italian Army patrols civilian areas, especially those with heavy tourists concentrations. You can easily find pictures taken by tourists quite surprised to see militaries there.
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:620/1*lnfOMHVYoer2AFi7onWgXQ.jpeg
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1330/1*jox2T10_zdpTJM5dMKgBCQ.jpeg
(note, the red basques are Folgore paratroopers).
As for the Rome and Vienna airport attacks, the timing didn’t add-up. The weapon is of the late ’70s,and the attacks are of 1985. Also, despite what the Wikipedia page says, the autopsy concluded all the 3 terrorists killed in Rome had in their bodies were 9mm bullets coming from the PM12s of the Airport Police.
And it can’t be due to the 1973 Rome Airport attack. Since the 92 model didn’t even exist in 1973.
The same designer of the gun states it had been done originally by request of the Dallas Police department, but he’s an engineer not a salesman, so it can’t be taken as a definitive answer. Again, the 93r had been released so close to the original 92 that, to me, the most likely explanation is “since we already make an automatic version of the 1951, let’s make an automatic version of the 92. Someone will buy it”.
What I was trying to get across was that the “gun rags” were saying that the 93R was designed and procured due to the airport attacks in ’85, but that that cannot be true because “dates”.
I rather wish that the M9 had been the Sig-Sauer offering; the Beretta 92 we got always seemed to me to be a kludged-together affair, and your timeline lays that out pretty clearly. The P225 was designed with all of its features there from the beginning, it had fewer parts, and aside from the odd manufacturing issue that series had, it was rock-solid. What wound up becoming the M11 was a much better pistol than the M9, to my eye and hands; I still have scars on my left hand from doing clearance drills with the Beretta, and I never once got that sort of thing from the Sig-Sauer’s I’ve handled, or my various Glocks.
To my eye, the Beretta 92 is a pistol that’s very attractive, but badly executed in terms of actual ergonomics and handling. The open-top slide, the multitude of fussy parts, the idiotic exposed draw-bar… I mean, OK, great… You’ve evolved the Beretta M1915 from a great little stylish pocket pistol into a full-house 9mm service pistol, but did you ever stop to think about whether or not you should do such a thing?
I remember when they announced the victor of the JSSAP competition; I was in Germany, and went up to the Rod & Gun Club to refresh my memories on the two finalists. I remember very clearly sitting there with the two offerings (which they’d thoughtfully gotten in to have on hand for people like me…), and I’m thinking “Really? This is what won…? Man, I hope those Tomahawk basing rights were worth it…”
Later experiences as armorer and armorer supervisor/trainer did nothing to change my mind about the virtues of the M9. It always seemed too damn big for what you were getting in terms of power/size ratio, and the complexity? Yeesh. I’d discounted the Glock, back then, because I was young, dumb, stupid, and a traditionalist enamored of metallic frames. After shooting the M9 for a couple of years, and having to borrow what at the time was an unpleasantly cheap Glock 17 and shooting the best match of my lifetime up to then…? I rather changed my mind on the Glock. By that time, the blush was rather off the rose, and I’d lost whatever affection I had for the M9. I mean, it’s not an awful pistol, but… For what you’re getting out of it, in terms of firepower? The juice ain’t worth the squeeze. Something that big, heavy, and unwieldly really ought to be giving you something at least .45/10mm-ish in terms of “oomph” and effect on the target. Good God, the Glock 20 is in about the same size/weight class, fully loaded with 15 rounds. If you’re gonna make me haul that weight around, then by God, make it worth my time, eh?
Got to shoot a magazine at a police trade show at the LAPD academy range. Awesome pistol, the first and only machine pistol I have fired. All shots on target, unlike some of the uniforms attending the expo who were “trimming tree branches”.