Articles

MiniFirestorm 9mm

Handguns 2002 Buyer's Guide

by J.B. Wood

When the original Bersa "Thunder 9" arrived in 1993, it quickly became one of my favorite 9mm pistols. It had all of the features of a Walther P88, and it cost about half as much. Both the slide latch and the safety lever were fully ambidextrous, and the magazine release was reversible. The smooth-surfaced trigger was perfectly shaped, and there was an adjustable trigger stop in the frame. The fully adjustable rear sight was recessed into the slide. In those pre-Feinstein days, the magazine held 15 rounds. After that silly law was passed, Bersa and the importer chose not to reduce it to 10 rounds, and discontinued this superb gun in 1995. I still treasure my original pistol, and shoot it often.

Fast-forward to the present. A compact version of the same pistol has just arrived, and they're calling it the "Mini FireStorm." The Bersa company in Argentina has a division named "FireStorm, Inc." and this appellation is now used on several pistols marked by SGS Importers International.

Gun Details

The new compact version boasts all the quality of the original. Materials, design and workmanship are still outstanding, and it costs only about one-third of the price of a Walther P88. It has most of the features described earlier, including the fully ambidextrous controls.

There have, of course, been a few little changes. The front of the trigger guard now has a smooth, rounded contour, instead of the serrated re-curve of the original. The frontstrap of the grip frame now has shallow finer-recesses, the lower one mating with the magazine floorplate extension, allowing ample room for all three fingers of the average hand. The sides and back of the wrap-around polymer grip have good molded checkering, and both sides of the grip have a moderate thumb-rest. The whole package just feels good in the hand.

The adjustable trigger stop has been replaced by a fixed conical stud on the back of the trigger. The square-picture sights have a white dot on the front, and a white frame around the rear notch. The rear sight is contoured, Novak-style, and is non-adjustable.

The frame is high-grade aluminum alloy. All of the firing systems parts are steel. The locking system is falling-barrel, with an angled track in the barrel underlug and steel bar in the frame. The recoil spring system is double-concentric, and the inner spring is a reverse coil. The slide rails run the full length of the frame.

With the hammer cocked, moving the safety upward to on-safe position disconnects the trigger bar, locks the slide and drops the hammer to uncocked position. The sear does not receive the impact. The safety lifts a separate internal block to arrest the hammer. Also, there is an automatic firing pin block that's cleared in the last fraction of trigger movement.

The ejection port is large, and it has a slanted cutaway at the rear. The extractor is heavy and strong. The highly-polished feed ramp is integral with the barrel, and the delivery angle from the magazine is shallow. All this contributes to flawless feeding and ejection.

The double-action trigger pull is smooth and easy, with no discernible "stacking." The single-action pull is crisp at four pounds on my pistol, and the take-up and over-travel are minimal. The good grip shape gives a comfortable and steady hold. I will usually expect a compact version to group more loosely than a full-sized pistol. Not so, here.

Gun Details

At the range, from a casual rest at 25 yards, the MiniFireStorm put all five rounds of each load into the black of a standard target. The Magtech 115-grain full-jacket load grouped 2-3/4 inches, with one in the 10-ring. With the Norma 124-grain JHP Plus-P, they were all in the 9 and 10 ring, a 2-1/4-inch group.

Whenever I am shooting 9mm, and I load with the Black Hills 147-grain full-jacket subsonic, I know the group is going to be very small. I wasn't disappointed. Three in the 10-ring, two just above i9n the 9-ring, 1-3/4 inches. For a compact pistol, that's outstanding accuracy.

For after-shooting takedown for cleaning, you just take out the magazine, turn the lever on the left side down to vertical, and run the slide and barrel assembly forward off the frame. The barrel and recoil spring assembly are then easily taken out of the slide.

The marking on the side may now be "FireStorm, Inc." but Benso Bonadimani, Lucas Bonadimani and the very skilled workers down in Ramos Mejia, Argentina, are still making the same fine pistols. This is one of them.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

SGS Importers International
1750 Brielle Ave., Unit B-1
Wanamassa, NJ 07712
(732)-493-0302
www.firestorm-sgs.com, gsodini@aol.com