When the storm was about to come out, Beretta said they priced the storm at the same or less than the model 92FS....or so they said. I became disapointed at the price that was finally released and only the 9mm came out 1st....then the 40..almost a year later....and another year for the 45ACP. The prices started at over $800 and now have dropped to about $500.

Because of my disappointment in the large price tag I did a lot of shopping around in pistol cal carbines. The hi-point acarbine actually gets really good reviews and at under $200 it is a steal....but ugly as sin. The ruger carbine gets poor reviews and again ugly. HK's are over priced too in my opinion for a semi-auto version....but sexy. There is no way they are worth $1500 though; you could buy 7 Hi-point carbines for that.

That got me into AR pistol cal carbines.
I then looked at RRA/Colt style vs. Olympic style.

The Oly uses a standard lower and a blow back style upper, so sharing any AR lower reduces costs dramatically. The Oly is availabale in 9mm, 10mm, 40S&W and 45ACP. The mags are modified UZI with a 10 round capacity with the exception of 9mm which uses modified Sten Mags and has a 32 round capacity.

The RRA/Colt style uses different parts in the lower from a different hammer to a different buffer. The upper is also a different upper reciever all of which makes these dedicated pistol set ups that can not be changed quickly.

I then looked into reliability and design and found that Olympic made the 1st pistol cal rifles and Colt actually tried to liscence manufacturing from Olympic Arms...but were refused. Well that told me that because Oly would not sell them a liscence agreement they decided to designed their own. I felt that the Oly was the way to go and have never looked back. My Oly upper now had it's own dedicated lower...not because it need one...but just because all my uppers now have dedicated lowers in the set-ups I like for each. It also has 3-32 round mags and has about 8000 rounds through it with out a single gun problem failure.

If I had to do it all over I might get a SBR stamp and get a very short carbine version in 9mm....say a 7.5" barrel rifle carbine....this would be waaay shorther than any CX4 and a lot more versatile.