It's pretty expensive to deal with the small shops. Lots of catologs and promo items, few sales. Maybe they would rather have the guns sold by the big outfits like Gander Mountain, Bass Pro, Cabela's, Dick's. ect. Beretta has been around longer than any other gunmaker, since the 1500's, so I would not second guess them on marketing.
BTW, Harley-Davidson Motorcycles did somewhat the same thing to their smaller dealers about 25 years ago, I don't think they suffered too bad from it.