GTA 6 Girardi ES9: Jason's pistol and the Sua Sponte engraving

The Girardi ES9 is one of only three Grand Theft Auto VI weapons that Rockstar itself has put a name to. It appears in the Ultimate Edition material, which describes personalised sidearms with detailed engravings for Jason's Girardi ES9 pistol and Lucia's Klose K17 pistol, and the official editions page lists personalised weapon variants among the Ultimate Edition contents.¹²³

Where it shows up

PC Gamer calls the ES9 Jason's preferred pistol and notes it has been visible repeatedly across the trailers and screenshots.⁵ GamesRadar points to a screenshot of Jason sitting on a motorcycle holding a Beretta 92FS style pistol, and to him firing the same weapon from a vehicle in Trailer 2.⁴⁷ Both outlets identify the real-world basis as the Beretta 92FS, the full-size 9mm service pistol with the distinctive open-topped slide.⁴⁵

The engraving is a character detail

The Ultimate Edition version of Jason's pistol carries the phrase Sua Sponte, which GamesRadar identifies as the official motto of the US Army Ranger Regiment, roughly meaning acting of one's own accord.⁴ That lines up with what Rockstar has said about Jason's background, and it is a rare case of a cosmetic bonus doubling as characterisation rather than just a paint job. Lucia's matching pistol is engraved with roses and her signature instead.⁴

Named guns are the new normal

PC Gamer highlights the shift the ES9 represents. In GTA 5, most weapons were labelled by class, such as pistol or heavy pistol, while a lot of the GTA 6 guns spotted so far carry specific brand names and model numbers, which makes them far easier to tell apart at a glance.⁵ Girardi is a new in-universe manufacturer, not one carried over from earlier games in the series.⁶

The real Beretta 92 behind the ES9

The Beretta 92 that the press keeps pointing to as the ES9's real-world twin has its own long history. Carlo Beretta, Giuseppe Mazzetti and Vittorio Valle designed it in Italy in 1975, and Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta put it into production the following year with an open-slide design that Beretta still markets as a feeding and reliability advantage.⁸ The pistol's biggest break came in 1985, when a variant won US Air Force trials and the US military adopted it as the M9, a contract that ran for decades and put the shape into the hands of American service members worldwide.⁸ Roughly 3.5 million have been built since 1976, which is a big part of why the silhouette reads as instantly familiar in films and games and makes it a natural template for a GTA sidearm.⁸ GTA Wiki's breakdown of the ES9 goes further and pins the personalised Ultimate Edition variant specifically to the newer M9A4 model rather than the plain 92FS, while the standard black version keeps a slide-mounted safety and decocking lever and skips the frame rails altogether.¹²

Pistols have a long history in this series

GTA Wiki's Pistol entry notes that some form of basic sidearm has appeared in every entry in the series going back to the original 2D-era games, and that in the HD Universe it carried through GTA IV, Chinatown Wars, GTA V, GTA Online and now GTA VI.⁹ The real-world reference point has shifted from game to game: GTA IV's pistol reads as a Glock 17, while the GTA V and Online version is built to resemble a Taurus PT92AF, itself a licensed variant of the Beretta 92F.⁹ In GTA Online that base Pistol unlocks at Rank 1 for $2,500, with an Extended Clip taking it from 12 to 16 rounds for $9,175 once a player reaches Rank 3, alongside a flashlight, a suppressor and cosmetic tints.⁹ GTA V and Online also carry a separate Combat Pistol, styled after an HK P2000 mixed with a Beretta Px4 Storm, unlocking at Rank 9 for $3,200 with its own extended magazine and attachment tree.¹⁰ None of that carries over automatically to GTA VI, but it shows the ES9 is arriving into a series that has cycled through several different pistol identities already, rather than introducing the idea of a named sidearm from nothing.⁹¹⁰

Girardi next to an established name

The contrast PC Gamer draws between named GTA VI guns and the class-only labels of GTA V gets sharper once you look at who else is making guns in this game.⁵ Hawk & Little is not a new name Rockstar invented for GTA VI, it is the same in-universe manufacturer that GTA Wiki describes as marketing itself as the largest firearms manufacturer in the United States, protecting Americans from each other since 1850, and that supplied a large chunk of GTA V and Online's handgun and rifle roster, including the Combat Pistol and the standard Pistol.¹¹ Girardi carries none of that baked-in history. It has not been credited on a weapon in an earlier game, which fits the pattern of GTA VI mixing at least one legacy brand (Hawk & Little, on the Morgan revolver) with newly introduced names like Girardi and Klose for the protagonists' personal sidearms.¹¹⁶

What the reworked combat could mean for it

Rockstar's Extended Look showed a combat system built around a vitals-based targeting display, where red markers on an enemy indicate a lethal shot and yellow markers around joints flag a non-lethal, disarming one, plus a slow-motion aiming ability that Engadget compares to Michael's ability from GTA V layered with Max Payne 3-style kill cam shots.¹³ The same breakdown notes players can swap between two carried firearms without opening the weapon wheel, which still exists for picking from the wider arsenal.¹³ None of that footage was built specifically around the ES9, and Rockstar has not said whether named sidearms behave any differently from other pistols in a firefight, but it does describe the kind of encounter the ES9 will most likely be used in.¹³

What is not confirmed

• Damage, accuracy, magazine size or price. Rockstar has published none of it.⁵⁶
• Whether Lucia can carry the ES9 and Jason the K17, or whether sidearms are locked per protagonist.⁵
• Whether the base ES9 is available to standard edition players, or only the engraved version is an Ultimate Edition extra.¹²
• Which attachments the pistol accepts.⁴