Gun Digest Book of Beretta Pistols. Massad Ayoob

crisp 4 pounds.

      Like bigger Berettas of the mid-20th century, the 950 BS has a push-button magazine release located at the lower rear of the left grip panel. Some are of the opinion that’s not the best place to put it. It looks to this writer as though the Italian designers simply bought into the German concept of the 1930s, where the thinking was it would be a good idea for weapons with removable magazines to have designs that forced the shooter to remove them by hand instead of ejecting them and leaving them behind on the battlefield. (You see this concept today with other German small arms, notably the HK series of submachine guns and battle rifles.)

      The shooter used to pressing a button with his thumb to eject a magazine has a tendency to try to do this with the baby Beretta by flipping it upward in his hand. DON’T DO IT! This gives you a very tenuous grasp on the pistol, and creates an excellent chance that you’ll drop it, with a round in the chamber, the hammer cocked and the safety off. You don’t need me to tell you that this would be a bad thing.

       The best very small plinking pistol ever, in the author’s view, was this uncommon 4-inch variation of the Beretta Minx.

      The smoothest reload for the right-handed shooter is to bring the left palm down under the butt of the pistol. Now, as the left thumb pushes straight in on the button, the magazine drops cleanly into the palm of the hand to allow for a secure grasp. Take it out, put it away, reload and carry on.

      That’s the smoothest magazine removal, presuming casual plinking. The most efficient reload, which presumes a “need for speed,” is the one I taught my little girl. Withdraw the fresh magazine, holding it between thumb and middle finger with the bullet noses toward the index finger, which is alongside the front of the mag. Extend your thumb and jab the mag release. The spent mag will fall away cleanly if you press in hard and the pistol’s grip is perpendicular to the ground. Now, insert the fresh mag.

      This pistol has no slide release lever and no slide lock. If it has been run completely dry, you have to “jack” the slide to the rear and let it fly forward.

      A signature feature of the 950 pistol is the tip-up barrel. Beretta continued this concept with their double-action Model 21 .22 LR and their Model 86 .380 ACP. Taurus applied it to their double-action-only clones of the Model 21, the PT-22 and PT-25. On the 950 there is a lever above the trigger guard on the left side of the frame that’s pushed forward to cause the barrel to pop up with its breech in the air and the muzzle down. To allow for the tip-up feature, the 950’s straight blow-back action has no extractor.

       The author’s daughter, Cat, looks back from adulthood at the .22 Short Beretta Minx pistols with which she started a distinguished pistol shooting career.

       For comparison, here is a S&W Model 342 AirLite (top, with Crimson Trace LaserGrips) and “long-barrel” Beretta Minx.

      The tip-up design eliminates the need to jack a slide at all. Its mechanism is easily manipulated, and readily allows anyone to check a chamber, even if they have very little strength. This is one reason I really like this auto pistol for teaching handgun techniques to kids. It also makes enormous sense for adults whose physical strength in the hands or upper body is limited.

      Many years ago, a very good friend of mine who was quadriplegic and had only very limited use of his hands asked my advice on a carry gun. He couldn’t handle the recoil of even a .32 or .380, and he couldn’t draw back the slide of his Walther PPK. I got him into a pair of 950 BS pistols: a Jetfire .25 for carry, and the functionally identical Minx .22

      Short for practice. It worked for him, and until his death he was confident that he had a gun that would work to protect himself and his wife. He knew the limitations of the .25 auto cartridge, but he also knew his own limitations. I knew his determination, and I wouldn’t have wanted to be the thug who tried to mug him or his wife.

      Why a .25 for carry, and a .22 Short for practice? First, my friend didn’t reload his own ammo, and .22 Short rimfire rounds were a whole lot cheaper. Second, while the .25 ACP is pretty pathetic as a self-defense round, the .22 Short is even weaker. Third, while the 950 pistol holds six rounds in the magazine and a seventh in the chamber in caliber .22 Short, it holds eight in the magazine and a ninth up the pipe when chambered in .25 ACP. Finally, while the Beretta 950 is unexcelled for reliability in the world of .25 autos, the 950 in .22 Short jams often enough that I wouldn’t trust if for anything more serious than recreational shooting or small vermin eradication at close range.

       Left: The magazine for .22 Short Minx …

       Above: … is distinctly different from that for the centerfire .25 ACP Jetfire.

       The trigger finger, when held straight, approaches the muzzle of these tiny pistols.

      I recently accepted an assignment to teach in a foreign country where I could be licensed to carry a gun, but couldn’t carry anything larger than .32 caliber. We were able to postpone the trip long enough for me to decide on a .32 Magnum or a .30 Luger auto pistol. I expect it will be the latter. If I were to find myself in a country that said I could carry a gun, but it had to be a .25 caliber or smaller, I would unhesitatingly carry a Beretta Jetfire .25. Or two. Or three.

      But I wouldn’t carry a .22 Short. It’s tough enough to get a sharply rimmed round to feed in a small semiautomatic pistol without making it a Short rimfire round. As it is, Beretta had to build a little ramp into each magazine to make this pistol work in .22 Short. Not for nothing did John Browning design the .25 ACP cartridge expressly to feed in small auto pistols.

       Shooting the Baby Beretta

      This gun is a decent fit for a very small hand. This is true even if the finger is so short that only the pad or even the tip of the index finger can reach the trigger. Sights are rather crude with a knife-type blade front and a V-notch rear, neither very large. The sight picture looks like three tiny teeth, all pointed upward, with the middle one on target. They’ll do for slow-fire fun shooting, though.

      I dug out the two 950 BS pistols my daughter had used so long ago, and took the plain blue one to the range. The .22 Short ammo that was so plentiful in my youth is not so available today. I finally found the CCI brand at a well-stocked local gun shop. It came in three flavors: target, standard and hollow-point.

      The phone hadn’t stopped ringing at the office, and by the time I got to the range it was past the dark side of the end of the day. Even in the car headlights, I couldn’t distinguish the aiming point crudely drawn in pencil on the white side of the IPSC targets, nor could I get a good visual fix on the miniscule blade that is the Minx’s front sight.

      Even so, the wee pistol easily delivered thorax-sized groups. Five hollow-points went into 6 inches even, five target loads into 5 inches even, and a like number of the standard copper-washed solid bullets delivered a group that measured 4 inches. (The distance was 25 yards.)

       Here is the the John Lawson Custom “Sugar and