Tag Archives: beretta 950

Some of my personal carry choices

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I had a message asking for what I personally carry, so far as for self-defense. Remember to abide all of your local laws etc for your own choices. Well, here we go:

minimalist edc– My minimalist EDC set up includes a Smith and Wesson Airweight .38SPL in a Bianchi IWB holster with 5 rounds loaded, 5 in a HKS style speedloader, and 12 in Bianchi Speedstrips for a total of 22 rounds of Federal Premium LE +P. Knife is an old school Case folder and the penlight is a Steamlight Stylus. -It all compacts nicely and I can wear this with slacks at the office or out to the movies with no one noticing anything.

sig edc-A more comprehensive EDC that I often use is my SIG P229R DAK with a Galco Royal Guard IWB holster and a benchmade folder with pocket clip. For illumination, a Steamlight ProTac with aftermarket paracord lanyard if needed. Spare mags are shown in three different variants of carry. At the top a MOLLE style mag holder that can be reversed to wear IWB. Below that is a traditional open top kydex holder for two mags OWB (to be concealed by an over shirt or jacket) or, along the slide of the SIG, rests a hybrid pocket carry mag holder that looks like a pocketknife from the outside. I can carry the SIG alone, or one extra mag, or two extra mags, or heck, even all four extra mags should I chose.  This is my general teaching rig when I am conducting CCW or LE classes.

backup guns-Among my rotation of backup guns include from top to bottom: A Beretta 950 in .22LR, A North American Arms 22WMR, a Ruger LCP .380ACP and a little Davis .25ACP Derringer. They also work great for carry each and of their own.

The Baby Berettas: A tale of tip up barrels

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They’ve been around now for almost seventy years—those little Beretta pocket pistols with the tip up barrels. Just what is the deal with those things and why would you want one? Keep reading.

These small framed, Beretta pistols use a super simple blowback action. This also means the gun has a pretty stout recoil spring to keep the action pushed forward and a short slide—and this makes it hard for some to grip. To get around this, Beretta used a barrel with a pivot pin that pops up and out of battery when a latch is depressed. With the barrel tipped up, you can load, unload, reload, and check to see if you have a loaded chamber with the flick of the lever. The concept has long been used with one of the earliest examples seen on the 1908 Steyr 7.65mm pistol.

Introduced in 1950, Beretta came out with the Model 950B pistol. A single-action semi-auto with a 2.38-inch tip-up barrel, it had an overall length of 4.5-inches. Since the gun fired from a cocked hammer, the tip-up barrel made absolute sense from a safety perspective. Rather than use an extractor, the gun could pop spent casings strait up with the barrel tip lever, giving the gun the sometimes annoying habit of smacking the user with brass right in the forehead. The gun tipped the scales at a handy 9.5-ounces empty. Compare this today to the revolutionar-i-ly small Ruger LCP of 5.16-inches overall and 9.5- ounces, and you see why the 950 was a hit almost immediately…

Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

Beretta-Minx-950B long and short