POTD: The Benelli B77 – When the Shotgun Guys Tried Pistols

Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a rare miss from a company that doesn’t miss much. This is the Benelli B77, the .32 ACP member of Benelli’s short-lived run at the handgun market in the late 1970s and 80s. You know Benelli for shotguns, and there’s a reason: the pistols flopped.

The flagship of the family was the 9mm B76, and it had an odd party trick. Most autos this size are simple blowback or use a tilting barrel. The B76 instead ran a fixed barrel with an inertia-driven locking system Benelli patented, a bolt with ribs that lock into the receiver, held shut by the inertia of the slide until chamber pressure drops. Aside from their shotguns, Benelli is about the only outfit that ever made inertia locking work.

Here’s the catch with this particular gun. The B77 is the .32 of the bunch, and the .32 doesn’t make enough pressure to need that fancy lock, so it’s just a plain blowback. You’re looking at the simple cousin in a family known for its clever mechanism. The whole line arrived too late, into a market already flooded with double-stack service pistols, and Benelli wisely retreated to the shotguns that made them famous.

Most of our POTDs utilize images from our friends at Rock Island Auction Company, the premier firearms auction in the United States. Take some time to browse their current auctions – who knows, maybe you’ll find a piece of history to take home!

“Benelli Model B77 Semi-Automatic Pistol with Box.” Rock Island Auction, www.rockislandauction.com/detail/5032/1151/benelli-model-b77-semiautomatic-pistol-with-box. Accessed 25 June 2026.

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