This article is to make everyone aware of the particulars of the Beretta Storm and the gun being a bit difficult when it comes to ammo. As always, click the link of READ MORE below to read the article and the find the link to the video.
Beretta Storm Ammo issues
by Jessie Indracusin
Introduction
First off, I want to mention that the Beretta Storm is a fine gun. However, every gun seems to have it's problems too. It appears after owning this a few years, I just found mine. This is a gun that I have put thousands of rounds through, so an ample "break in" period has been made. It is a carbine, that for the price, there is nothing else in the same class.
I have loved this gun and so has everyone who has ever shot it. Men or Women, adult or teens (yes, we supervise youths in the State of Texas and teach them proper gun safety), everyone loves shooting it. Very little kick, light weight, balance towards the rear, all of these are excellent reasons to buy a Beretta Storm. So now let me get into the heart of the issue.
Junk in, Junk out
I have pretty much only show Remington UMC Mega 250 packs through this gun from day one. This was more of an issue of the fact I never shoot less than 250 rounds at a shoot (if someone dropped off a fork lift of ammo next to me at the range, I would probably shoot all day until I feel asleep with my cheek on the stock). So the discounted price and the decent quality of ammo, I figure I couldn't go wrong. Now let's fast forward to shooting in the Obama generation.
It seems these days it's easier to run across a hooker than it is to find a sporting good store with ammo. I went to my local academy last week and everything was wiped off the shelf. My only option for .40 S&W ammo for my Beretta was some 180 grain Monarch Brass Ammo. I shoot the .45 ACP rounds from Monarch all the time in my H&K UMP 45 (probably at least 5000 rounds of it) without an issue, so I decided to get some. An associate of mine wanted to attend a Carbine shooting course here in Dallas, so I let him borrow the Storm to go along with me to course. The storm is fairely simple, easy to shoot and for a novice, seemed like a good bet.
He was having SIGNIFICANT jamming issues. I assumed the issue must have been shooting error since he has never done any stressful shooting. These issues happened even after the gun was just cleaned a week earlier, three times for the Beretta Cleaning Video, so I had to assume it wasn't the gun.
I took the remainder of the 200 rounds of the Monarch Ammo to my local shooting range and wanted to determine what the deal was with the gun and the accuracy. Using two different 20 round magazines, I saw the same issue on both clips. The gun was jamming every second or third round!
I tried applying some gun oil to the bolt assembly to see if it would help and it did not. I was even having issues with the clip falling out of the gun. I thought the whole gun was falling apart on me.
A friend of mine who came along with me, had some alluminum Blazer .40 S&W ammo. I swapped him a box of my Monarch for a box of his Blazer. Out of the 50 round box, I had one malfunction. The 1 in 50 being much better than the 1 in 3. Going back to the Remington UMC, the gun fired flawlessly again.
I wanted to know if the ammo itself was complete junk. We fired 50 rounds of the Monarch through a Walther P99 AS .40 S&W model and had zero jams.
Conclusion
I didn't think the Beretta was going to give me some flash backs of my Beretta 92 days. I assumed that problems I experienced in the past with this issue on my Beretta pistol were engineered there way out of this. The Beretta is a good carbine for taking to the range, maybe even doing some vermint hunting on a large farm. However, the Beretta has to be CAREFULLY maintained and ammunition thoroughly tested before determing this gun being used as a home defense gun.
If you take anything out of this article, it is this. If you are using some expensive home defense ammo, buy an extra box and painfully shoot the ammo through it. I know this can be painfully considering that the special ammo I use for home defense is 4 times more than what I shoot at the range, this is critical with the Beretta. The last thing you want to happen is you have a miss feed when you are shooting at a burglar in your house.
A bullet that cost you a dollar a bullet is no good defending yourself with if the gun jams up with.