Beretta 92
Italian series of semi-automatic pistol
The Beretta 92 (also Beretta 96 and Beretta 98) is a series of semi-automatic pistols designed and manufactured by Beretta of Italy.
History
Carlo Beretta, Giuseppe Mazzetti and Vittorio Valle, all experienced firearms designers, contributed to the final design in 1975.
The Beretta 92 was designed in 1975, and production began in 1976. Many variants in several calibers continue to be used to the present.
Evolution
92
Production began in May 1976, and ended in February 1983. Approximately 7,000 units were of the first "step slide" design and 45,000 were of the second "straight slide" type.
92S
In order to meet the requirements of some law enforcement agencies, Beretta modified the Beretta 92 by adding a slide-mounted combined safety and decocking lever, replacing the frame-mounted manual thumb safety.
This resulted in the 92S, which was adopted by several Italian law enforcement and military units. The magazine release button is at the bottom of the grip as is customary in Europe.
This model was produced from 1978 to 1982.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q211333. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1975, 1976, 1983 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Beretta 92” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.