The Thunder 380 is popular in the US market as a small and light, easy concealable, high-quality and competitively priced personal defense handgun. The compact Thunder pistols sell very well in countries that ban the use of more powerful cartridges for civilian personal defense purposes.
The Thunder 22 pistol chambered for the 22 Long Rifle cartridge is widely used among recreational shooters in North and South America, and the Thunder 22–6, a longer-barreled version of this pistol, is used in high-level competitions. One of the winning IPSC competitions for Team Bersa The Bersa Thunder 9, an evolution of the Model 90, was chosen. For more powerful rounds, starting with the 9×19mm Parabellum, the Thunder line is based on a locked breech and short-recoil modified Browning design.Īt the end of the 1990s Bersa won the contract for supplying a new standard sidearm for the Argentine Armed Forces and Argentine Federal Police that were looking to replace their aging Browning Hi-Power pistols. 380 ACP, the handguns are compact in size and based on a blowback system. However, the Thunder series in reality includes two totally different designs in mechanics and appearances for cartridges up to and including the. In 1994 a new model name for the entire production line was introduced, "Thunder", followed by a number indicating the handgun caliber. In 1989 the first full-size combat pistol was introduced, the Model 90, chambered for the 9×19mm Parabellum cartridge. Many more successful models in increasingly more powerful calibers were produced in the following years, making Bersa a well-known and respected name in the firearms world. In 1960 the name "Bersa" was introduced, taken from the initial letters of the founders' first names. In 1959 the first 22 Long Rifle pistol was commercialized, called "Modelo 60", which later evolved in the "Modelo 62", and based on a modified Beretta design, it sold extremely well.
The gun did not have much commercial success and very few of them were produced nowadays they are quite rare collector's items. Their first handgun was a modified version of a Ballester model which they called "Luan", combining the first two letters of the last names of the 2 designers of the pistol, Luce and Antonovich. At the beginning they were producing parts for the now defunct Argentinian arms manufacturer Ballester–Molina. The company was founded in the mid-1950s by Italian immigrants Benso Bonadimani, Ercole Montini and Savino Caselli, all of them mechanical engineers.
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