Articles

MiniFirestorm 9mm

Gun World

by Jan Libourel

A new compact 9mm auto pistol from Argentina is the Mini Fire Storm. This is a conventional double-action pistol of original design. Actually, it is evidently a compact version of an earlier pistol from Argentina, the Bersa "Thunder 9." However, the manufacturer of record of the pistol under review is "Firestorm, Inc.," not Bersa. Whatever the connection may be, I was always very partial to the Bersa pistols. One of the first pistols I evaluated professionally was a Bersa Model 644 single-action .22 pocket pistol. It was a little rough in spots, but it was sensationally accurate and very reliable. I liked it a great deal better than a Walther PP .22 LR that I had traded off a short time before, and from that day to this, my attitude toward Bersa pistols has been that they are basically, good sound guns and very good values for the money, albeit a bit rough in spots. The same holds true for this pistol, which like the Bersa guns is marked "Industria Argentina, Ramos Mejia, Argentina."

As an aside, I hope this isn't a sign that I'm slipping into my dotage, but I recalled that we had reviewed the Bersa Thunder 9 at the publication I used to edit before assuming the helm of GUN WORLD in February 1999. My recollection was that this Bersa had been reviewed only a short time before my departure. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that this "short time" was actually almost five years!

The foremost design influence on this pistol is evidently the Sig-Sauer P220 line. The operating system is a modified Browning tilting barrel setup that is very similar to the SIG-Sauer's.. A squared shoulder on the barrel engages the edge of the ejection port to effect slide to barrel lockup, just as on the SIG-Sauer P220 series of pistols.

Takedown is similar to the SIG-Sauers as well. Remove the magazine and make sure the chamber is empty. Depress the takedown latch on the left side of the frame and the slide assembly can be removed from the frame; this permits the recoil spring and guide and the barrel to be plucked from the slide. The maker does not recommend further disassembly except by a gunsmith.

In the manner of Beretta pistols, there is an exposed drawbar that runs along the right side of the frame. It is a massive piece of steel that looks like it should give trouble-free service indefinitely. In fact, everything about this pistol is massive, sturdy and engineered for ruggedness and dependability.

If there is a more southpaw friendly DA pistol in existence, I don't know what it is. This pistol has ambidextrous manual safety levers. They are located just where they would be on 1911 pistol, which is surely the most ergonomic location. Raising the safety lever drops the hammer and puts the pistol in an "on-safe" mode. Depressing the safety lever puts the pistol in a "fire" mode, evidenced by the appearance of red dots on each side of the slide that are covered when the safety is engaged. The arrangement on this pistol allows the pistol to be carried on-safe to foil gun snatchers, as some combat authorities recommend, yet the safety can be disengaged with great speed and ease. The maker's handbook recommends always keeping the safety engaged when carrying this pistol with a round in the chamber. Since this pistol has a typical modern firing-pin blocking plunger safety in the slide, I suspect this may be something of a belt-and-suspenders approach, but I would never counsel readers to flout a manufacture's safety warnings.

In addition, this pistol has ambidextrous slide stop release levers. As a general rule, I have always found a second slide release lever to be unnecessary for left-handed operation and an intrusive, makeshift setup. However, the slide stop levers on this pistol were so well designed and unobtrusively located that I found the ambi slide stop arrangement to be quite inoffensive. The magazine release button is also reversible for further ambidexterity.

The sights on this pistol are fixed, with a modern, non-snagging profile. The rear is theoretically drift adjustable for windage, but it was just about perfectly regulated as it came from the factory. The front sight has a white-dot inlay, and the rear notch has a white outline. A tiny bit more light on either side of the front sight would have been desirable. Of course, this could easily be remedied in a few minutes with a suitable file. Nonetheless, the sights on this pistol were quite satisfactory "as is."

The frame is made from a lightweight aluminum alloy. The trigger guard is rounded, not squared, as on the older Thunder 9. The front strap is serrated and has integral finger grooves that mate with a finger rest extension on the polymer base plate of the magazine. Coupled with the checkered polymer wrap-around stocks, this arrangement affords a very solid, comfortable grip. The dust cover is grooved for a light or laser mount, although choices in this department may be limited by the short distance the slide and frame extend beyond the trigger guard of this compact pistol.

Magazine capacity is 10. I suspect that outside the U.S.A., it's a couple of rounds more in 9mm Parabellum. (The same pistol will be offered in .40 S&W, and .45 ACP variants are forthcoming.) I noticed that there was a "10" rather crudely scribed on the bottom of the polymer floorplate. This pistol has a skeletonized, elongated-burr hammer in keeping with current fashion. There is a small stud on the rear face of the trigger to limit over-travel.

The steel parts are finished a semi-matte blue-black oxide. The frame is anodized to closely match the frame. Mould marks are noticeable on the safety and slide stop levers, and tool marks are quite noticeable around the edges of the ejection port. Otherwise, one is left with the sense that this is a well-made and reasonably well finished gun in the somber, all-black contemporary style.

Before trying this pistol out at the range, I had only two criticisms of this pistol. The cocking pull was a bit heavier than I like, and the single-action (cocked) pull was also heavy and had noticeable creep. For a pistol clearly marketed as a concealment gun, it is a bit on the chunky side. Maximum width (at the edges of the safety levels) is 1.46 inches.

At Insight Shooting Range (17020 Alburtis Ave., Artesia, CA; 562-860-4365) I did the usual things I do when evaluating any handgun, shooting the pistol from a rest for accuracy at 25 yards and then trying various close-range (5 to 10 yards) drills. Loads used in this evaluation were as follows: From Cor-Bon there were jacketed hollowpoints loaded to +P levels 90-, 115-, 125- and 147-grain weights. MagTech was represented by 115-grain FMJ ball and 115-grain JHPs. Pro-Load furnished a 115-grain JHP and a 124-grain weights, and Texas Ammunition provided a 115-grain JHP.

Briefly put, if I were grading the Mini Firestorm's performance, it would ge an A+ for reliability and a C- or maybe a D+ for accuracy. There is little to say about reliability. This pistol functioned perfectly with all 11 loads throughout all the shooting I did with it. In the accuracy department, the best group of the day, right at 2 3/4 inches, was achieved with Cor-Bon's 147-grain JHPs. With a number of groups, but by no means all, the notorious "4&1" effect was quite noticeable. This was certainly true of the runner group, fired with Texas Ammunition's 115-grain JHPs. This had four shots clustered into 1.9 inches (three of them in 0.8 inches) and the fifth opening up total group size to 3.3 inches. Potentially an even better group was fired with the MagTech 115-grain JHPs; four shots were clustered into a mere 1.5 inches, but no fifth bullet hole could be found. (I suspect it went over the top of the target.) The other groups were not nearly as good, ranging from a little over 4 inches to about 6 inches, and a few were even worse than that. With some, the "4&1" effect was noticeable. Both of the Pro-Load offerings had four shots grouped in respectable clusters of about 1.5 inches with the fifth bullets' holes doubling total group sizes. Mitigating this to some degree was the fact that the sights were very well regulated. The majority of groups were perfectly centered.

There is a faction combat pistolmen who claim that we writers set too much store on 25-yard groups, and they may well have a point. When I tried this pistol out in my close range drills, the lackluster accuracy performance at 25 yards seemed inconsequential. Even at 10 yards, I found I riddled the X-rings of the B27 centers every bit as well as if I had been using an accuracy-tuned 1911. However, I found that the heavy trigger pulls (both DA and SA) did slow me down somewhat.

Any negativity I may have expressed in this article should be balanced against the fact that realistic retail for this pistol is going to be about half what you would have to pay (at minimum) for a "first tier" combat auto. Maybe you won't achieve match target accuracy with it, or you may find trigger pulls less than perfect. However, for a relatively low price, you will be getting an absolutely reliable little pistol that shoots where it points and is plenty accurate a realistic combat ranges. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me!