Today my gun club held an NSSF Open House, and I was a Range Safety Officer in the pistol pit. We provided 9mm pistols for those that wanted to try their hand at shooting steel, but we also encouraged those with pistols to bring theirs. One guest brought an older Beretta 380 that still has me stymied with respect to it's function, and I would love some help figuring it out.

This pistol looks like a current production Model 85, it was a single stack. This is where it starts getting strange. I couldn't find a model number, but from the patina and extremely thin front sight, I suspect that this pistol is at least 50 years old. This pistol has the European heel magazine release. On the slide near the hammer is some type of safety, but it didn't function as a decocker. On the left side of the frame, just above the trigger where you would expect the takedown lever, was another safety. When the lever was moved to the rear, an F and a red dot were exposed and the pistol could fire. With the lever moved forward covering the F and red dot, the pistol couldn't be fired. With the empty magazine in place, the slide locked open, but as soon as the magazine was removed, the slide went into battery. Not surprisingly, the owner didn't know how to operate this pistol. For movement off the line, I gave the owner an ECI, in order to show from a distance that the pistol was unloaded.

My questions:
1) if the lever above the trigger was the safety, what purpose does the lever on the slide serve?
2) if you can identify the model (it looked like a 2/3s scale M92), would this pistol have a slide lock other than the magazine follower?
3) would the frame lever that functioned as a safety also function as a takedown lever?

I like to take pride in figuring out how different firearms function, but this pistol has me at a loss. Can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance for your assistance!

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Judge control not gun control!

Maybe ?
Beretta M1934 - Wikipedia

or
Beretta Model 70S .380 Auto

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Super Snooper

I wondered about those, but the slide mounted control has me baffled.

Does the gun actually say Beretta on it? I'm wondering if it some kind of semi-copy of a Model 70 made in South America or the Middle East.

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Release the Kraken

Pawngal, LVSteve:

Neither picture is close to what I was working with. It literally looked like a reduced size 92.

Please excuse my upcoming blasphemy. If you placed the thumb safety from a Mauser HSc on the slide, you'd have a close image. The lever on the frame wasn't connected to anything externally, whatever it was connected to was all inside the frame.

The slide WAS marked Beretta. What was a bit off was the magazine release, it was very large compared to the rest of the pistol, and it's shininess made it look like chromed plastic, but it was metal. The rest sight was very similar to the GI driftable rear sight on a 1911.

What truly baffles me is why I couldn't get the slide to stay open without a magazine in place!

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Judge control not gun control!

Could it be a m-51? They are single stack and look like a commander size M-92
SWCA 892

This is my M1951, slide does not lock back without a magazine.
Forgot, OP said .380

Attached Images

	IMG-3899.jpg (167.3 KB, 21 views)
	IMG-3898.jpg (161.8 KB, 25 views)

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Super Snooper

A number of older Beretta handguns used the empty magazine to hold the slide open. There was no separate internal lock such as a PPK would use. IIRC the frame mounted manual safety could be used to manually lock the slide open for take down. I can't recall any of these older models having a slide mounted lever such as you describe and cannot find anything similar in a quick search of Beretta models.

Possibly it was a short lived model variation made for a specific market? Really don't know. Strangely your description matches a Tanfoglio design, the Gt 380 series which does look a lot like a Beretta but certainly shouldn't be marked as such. At least not legitimately. The frame mounted safety on those blocks the trigger, the slide lever locks the firing pin. Very curious................

I would have guessed 1934 or 1951 as well...

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Jorge

desi2358 may have pegged it. When I googled an image of the GT380, that is exactly the pistol that I was dealing with. I freely admit, I did a cursory scan of the slide, but I was also flustered. It looked so much like a single stack 84/85, I probably let my initial impression override what I was reading!

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Judge control not gun control!