>>Benelli motorcycles were acquired by the Chinese QianJiang Group in 2005<<

Had one of these too.... all 6 cylinders of it!

I've never had the click issue happen in the field over 20 years of using Benellis but I clean and lube my guns occasionally and am aware to not ride the bolt into the locking lug recesses. I can make the Benelli click happen but have to do so intentionally.

Regarding Retay, I didn't like mine nearly as well as a Benelli and thought it was overpriced when I can get a Montefeltro or M2 for a similar price. I sold the Retay, which I think I paid around $1,000 for. at about $500 and it took about a year to sell in like new condition. I replaced it with an M2, which I used the gunbroker make an offer feature to purchase, resulting in $1,150 shipped. Super happy to have the Benelli, but I'm just a guy that bird hunts and shoots clays three or four times a month and not paid by a manufacturer to rep shotguns on the Internet. I also consider the click a non-issue for me, and Retay's fix didn't matter to me.

Enough people have been frustrated with the Benelli click over the years to write several novels.

Much ado about very little

Novels of ‘babble’ brought on by internet ‘experts’ fanning non existent flames.......

I shoot the Sport II and have never had an issue. But, now that I have typed this, I hope I have not awaken the "click gods".

Been shooting Benelli since '98 and have never had the click once while actually using the gun. I have been able to induce it on a new gun while slowly riding the bolt shut but once I get a case or two through the gun even that gets hard to do.

That’s good to know. I’ve only owned my Benellis for five years but have never encountered the out of battery situation. Checked out a 20ga Montefeltro today and nearly bought it (just don’t know if a 20ga is for me). I’ll probably wind up with it eventually.

I only used a Benelli SBE on an AR hunt for 3 days. I experienced the infamous click while trying to shoot on two separate occasions. I think what was happening is that somehow while sitting in a flat bottomed boat, I had set the butt down a bit too hard and got the out of battery click.

After the second time it happened, I just kept the butt elevated or on my boot when I set it down. I don't now own or use any Benelli shotguns.

I've been shooting the hell out of Montefeltros for over 20 years. The only hiccups I have witnessed (not experienced) have been a fail to load when one of my friends soft-shoulders one of them. I have never experienced the "dreaded" Benelli click. I have dropped more geese and killed more turkeys with my Montefeltro 20 than all of my other guns combined. That's alot of guns AND birds.

I don’t own any Benellis but we’ve had two Franchi Affinitys in the house and they both initially “clicked” badly. Had nothing to do with bumping the gun or riding the bolt gently. You could release the bolt solidly with the button, or fire a second or third shot at doves without dismounting the gun, and they would click probably 2-3% of the time. I started using a lot more Breakfree CLP on the bolt and bolt head and in the barrel where the head locked in, and the clicking stopped. Either they like to be run “wet” or they just needed a little breaking in, or perhaps both.

One Affinity was eventually traded for a Beretta A300 which turned out to be a far superior gun. The other is still in use but hasn’t clicked now in probably >2k rounds.

I have noticed I can’t easily stick my HK M1 super 90 if I try. It has wear marks/light grooves on the indexing pin from the cam slot in the bolt from lots of use and just falls into the chamber. My Cordoba is much easier to stick and has been used far less. That said, it has never clicked as I don’t ride the bolt or slam the gun down hard. I also think the older guns that you could ghost load are less prone to the click than the new guns that had that “problem” fixed. Not sure why as I don’t know why they changed in the action to prevent ghost loading.

In what ways is the Beretta far superior to the Franchi?
Do you shoot it better or is it in the machining, fit, finish?
I like the A300, just haven’t justified one.

I should say “rationalized”, not “justified”, to be accurate.

Just based on the couple Franchis we've owned, and now five A300s / 400s in the house...

First of all there's the "click" on two-out-of-two Franchis, which is admittedly not a big sample size but it's still 100%. I agree with someone above that perhaps it's just inherent to the inertia design that the spring has to be relatively light.

As a hunter this left me with a gun that was, hopefully, reliable if I ran it wet and if I made sure to close the bolt hard with the release, making a resounding CLANK. Kind of puts you in a pickle when you're getting out of the pickup with your hunting partners, and just over the crest of a hill is the pond with several hundred geese honking. Everyone else is loading up, and quietly and gently closing the action on their pump 870, break action, or gas autoloader before you all spread out and creep over the hill together. You also quietly close your inertia action (so as to not be "that guy" who makes the deafening goose-honking turn into a sickening two seconds of silence before the sound of wings flapping -- just out of range). But by quietly closing your action you have to wonder if your first shot will be a click, followed by some profanity, followed by fumbling for the little carrier release button at the front of the trigger guard, then jack the unshot shell out of the chamber, let the bolt fly forward to chamber the second (of only three) shells, shoulder the gun again, get on a goose again, and hope it doesn't click this time.

The same concept goes for quietly getting out of the pickup before you walk a strip of grass for a pheasant, except that rooster isn't going to give you a chance for a second shot after the click.

The one Franchi I sold also had another problem where a shell would not release into the action (either when firing, or when pressing the carrier release button) and the carrier (or elevator, lifter... whatever you want to call it) remain locked down, basically acting as if it had fired the last shot in the magazine when it hadn't. I could have sent it in, but I sold it with full disclosure of the issues.

I've not had a single malfunction, jam, anything with any of my Berettas ranging from 7/8 oz ultra-light loads to 3" magnums. Again, yes it's a small sample size and I may just be lucky with one brand and unlucky with the other. But I do note there are not dozens of threads on this forum dedicated to "The Beretta Click".

Fit and finish seem *slightly* better on the A300, but still a gun you won't be afraid to carry around behind the seat of a pickup. A400 obviously much better wood than the 300, and yet cheaper than most Benellis, I believe.

I didn't care for the Franchi recoil pad design where it had a weird curve to the plastic, meaning the wood stock was not a straight cut at the butt. It seemed pointless except perhaps to force you to buy their proprietary replacement butt pads if you wanted to change the length of pull.

I guess maybe I just like gas guns better.

There’s no doubt that quietly closing the bolt on the gun you’re talking about requires a visual check to make sure the bolt is in battery. And the Franchi recoil pad was a deal breaker for me too but mainly aesthetic in my case.

You can sneak the bolt closed on any inertia action by using your index finger to rotate the bolt head into the chamber just as it’s closing. I do this frequently whenever I want to load quietly. Yes it’s not convenient but then again you are not always sneaking in on game either. Once you know your gun you can visually check if it fully chambered or not and easily check it.

There are many many knock off using this same action selling in the market these days. If it was that big of an issue these inertia guns would not sell and Benellis design would have been a market failure. If you want to ensure a no click design buy a retay or ethos.