Getting Raffica with the Beretta 93R
Beretta has been in the firearms-making business for nearly 500 years in the Gardone Val Trompia region and, while we visited the amazing complex, we were asked what three guns we would like to shoot in the company’s on-site shooting range, located inside a mountain. Because Beretta.
Our choice was easy: the classic Cold War-era PM12 “Spaghetti Uzi” submachine gun, the exciting new NARP rifle, and the elusive 93R machine pistol.
If you are pure of heart and wish hard enough, dreams can come true. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
While we’ll get into the first two later, let’s go ahead and get into the 93R.
The 93R in its most basic form. Note the folding handguard and extended compensated barrel. The frame-mounted two-position select fire lever (with three dots denoting its 3-round burst) is above the grip. The safety button is behind it.
Select-fire, with options for a three-round burst or single shots, the “R” in its model designation stands for “Raffica,” which roughly translates into “gust” or “flurry.” To help control this zippy 9mm with its 700 round-per-minute cyclic rate of fire, the frame has a hinged metal forward grip and an extended barrel with compensator cuts. Beretta marketed the pistol with an extended 20-round magazine to feed the brass-chewing little beast, which would allow for six bursts of three rounds and a seventh of two.
The company produced (and continues to develop) several generations of submachine guns, and a similar select-fire pistol had already preceded the 93R. The M951R was adopted by several Italian special forces and police units in the 1960s.
The M951R, which was a select-fire variant of the Beretta M1951. Note the folding foregrip. Whereas the M1951 is a single-stack 1950s forerunner of the Beretta 92, the M951R (again, with the Raffica) was a select-fire great uncle to the 93R.
From one of Beretta’s period brochures on the 93R, emphasizing the gun could be fired both with and without its stock. Ideally, a uniformed officer could carry the pistol with a standard 15-round flush-fit mag inserted, with a spare 20 or 30-rounder and folding detachable stock carried in belt pouches. (Photo: Beretta)
To see the gun in action and read the rest of this, check out my column at Guns.com.