The long, cold, and snowy winter is finally over. So, I took two of my recent acquisitions to the range to shake them down and see how they shot.

One was a 3913 that I bought in February. It's an older production date, but I don't know the exact date of production. It's old enough that it has the original "non dimple" grips and after I cleaned it up, it looks like it spent most of it's life in a safe.

The other is a newer Bersa Thunder 380CC. I'm the second owner and the original owner told me that he only put a couple of hundred rounds through it. Given how it looks, I'm confident he's telling the truth.

I shot the Bersa first. It's a snappy little gun, but for a pocket gun I found it pretty accurate. It took a small bite out of the web of my shooting hand, but that could be more me than the gun. I'll have to work on that.

The problem I had was that with the Federal .380 jacketed round nose, I had at least one FTF per magazine in the first 50 rounds. Obviously not something I'd want in a self defense firearm. I don't know if it's the bullet shape, the gun, or some combination of the two. After putting 50 rounds through it, I put it aside and picked up the 3913.

Shooting that reminded me why I like the compact single stack 9mm guns so much. Not one FTF or other hitch. Felt recoil was negligible and it's as typically accurate as you'd expect.

Then I picked up the Bersa again. The first couple of magazines still had the FTF problem, but the last two went through flawlessly.

One thing I'm a bit concerned about with the Bersa is the slide lock. Just slapping the magazine in causes it to release the slide, even if I don't intend to. That's a good thing to know, even though it's a bad thing to have. No slam fire, which I would expect not to happen.

I suppose that I could take it to a smith and see if he can cut a deeper notch in the slide, but it's not high on my list.

Provided I can figure out and correct the FTF issue it will make a good pocket pistol for when I can't carry one of my 391x firearms.

Still, it just reinforces that the quality of the 3rd generations is something to admire and they are still my favorite carry guns.

__________________
Can open, worms everywhere.

I thought you were going to be comparing two S&W models, and I was all set to needle you that you needed to change your thread title to:

"A Tale of Two Smitties"



OK, we'll do that next time....

__________________
Ukraine -- now more than ever

All of the Smiths I own are boringly reliable and more accurate than I can ever hope to be. Not much to write about.

After doing some reading on various forums (there's even a Bersa forum) it seems that my problem might be related to break in, me putting the recoil spring in backwards, or maybe magazines. I'm going to clean and lube it tomorrow and get to the range sometime in the next week.

__________________
Can open, worms everywhere.