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Showing Original Post only (View all)How Military Guns Make the Civilian Market [View all]
This week, the U.S. Army will brief arms manufacturers on the design requirements for a new standard-issue handgun. Several gun makers will compete for the lucrative contract, developing weapons that are more reliable and more powerful than those currently in service. Officials say the upgrade is overdueits been nearly 30 years since the Army adopted the Beretta M9. But the last time the military challenged the industry to make a better handgun, all the innovations intended for the battlefield also ended up in the consumer market, and the severity of civilian shootings soared.
Studying gunshot injuries in the D.C. area in the 1980s, Daniel Webster of Johns Hopkins University noticed an alarming trendas time went on, more and more patients were arriving at the emergency room with multiple bullet wounds. In 1983, at the beginning of the study period, only about a quarter of gunshot patients had multiple injuries, but in the last two years of the study, that proportion had risen to 43 percent. Over the same period, semiautomatic pistols with a capacity of 15-rounds (or more) were replacing six-shot revolvers as the most popular firearms in the country. Its not difficult to see the correlationmore bullets in the guns, more bullets in the victims. But why had guns changed so radically in such a short period of time?
In 1980 the Joint Services Small Arms Program invited the firearms industry to develop a new military handgun, with more than double the capacity of the sidearm American troops had been issued previously. At the time, soldiers were still using essentially the same handgun their grandfathers had carried into the trenches of World War I, a pistol John Browning had designed at the turn of the century. Its standard magazine held just seven rounds. The U.S. Army had a long wish list for a replacement, with 72 mandatory design requirements and 13 additional desirable features. According to Leroy Thompson, author of The Beretta M9 Pistol, many of these mandatory requirements were very military-specific, which made it difficult for an off-the-shelf commercial pistol to fulfill them without alteration.
In a series of trials, prototype guns were slathered with mud, soaked in salt water, subjected to hot and cold temperatures, dropped, and fired thousands of times. The Army tallied each misfire and scrutinized each mechanical failure, requesting various design tweaks along the way. Italian manufacturer Pietro Beretta entered the trials with a prototype based on their Model 92 semiautomatic pistol, which had been developed for Italian military and police forces. By 1985, Beretta had won the contract, and the Army placed a preliminary order for more than 300,000 of the new pistols, now designated M9. Initially the guns were manufactured in Italy, but to meet demand Beretta moved production to Maryland.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/how-military-guns-make-the-civilian-market/375123/
Studying gunshot injuries in the D.C. area in the 1980s, Daniel Webster of Johns Hopkins University noticed an alarming trendas time went on, more and more patients were arriving at the emergency room with multiple bullet wounds. In 1983, at the beginning of the study period, only about a quarter of gunshot patients had multiple injuries, but in the last two years of the study, that proportion had risen to 43 percent. Over the same period, semiautomatic pistols with a capacity of 15-rounds (or more) were replacing six-shot revolvers as the most popular firearms in the country. Its not difficult to see the correlationmore bullets in the guns, more bullets in the victims. But why had guns changed so radically in such a short period of time?
In 1980 the Joint Services Small Arms Program invited the firearms industry to develop a new military handgun, with more than double the capacity of the sidearm American troops had been issued previously. At the time, soldiers were still using essentially the same handgun their grandfathers had carried into the trenches of World War I, a pistol John Browning had designed at the turn of the century. Its standard magazine held just seven rounds. The U.S. Army had a long wish list for a replacement, with 72 mandatory design requirements and 13 additional desirable features. According to Leroy Thompson, author of The Beretta M9 Pistol, many of these mandatory requirements were very military-specific, which made it difficult for an off-the-shelf commercial pistol to fulfill them without alteration.
In a series of trials, prototype guns were slathered with mud, soaked in salt water, subjected to hot and cold temperatures, dropped, and fired thousands of times. The Army tallied each misfire and scrutinized each mechanical failure, requesting various design tweaks along the way. Italian manufacturer Pietro Beretta entered the trials with a prototype based on their Model 92 semiautomatic pistol, which had been developed for Italian military and police forces. By 1985, Beretta had won the contract, and the Army placed a preliminary order for more than 300,000 of the new pistols, now designated M9. Initially the guns were manufactured in Italy, but to meet demand Beretta moved production to Maryland.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/how-military-guns-make-the-civilian-market/375123/
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Stun guns, water pistols, nail guns, glue guns, air guns, toy guns, bb guns?
Starboard Tack
Jul 2014
#3
So you're saying that nearly every gun in the civilian market was designed specifically for killing
flamin lib
Jul 2014
#4
I believe, along with a number of NRA tactical instructors, that the majority
flamin lib
Jul 2014
#13
I've asked my colleagues the same thing because I've seen this claptrap before,
IronGate
Jul 2014
#25
Funny, I sent you a list pages long with publications which you claimed to have "read them all"
flamin lib
Jul 2014
#55
That's as ridiculous as saying anyone choosing to not carry WANTS to be a victim.
Nuclear Unicorn
Jul 2014
#43
Like the Cialis daily users they just want to be ready when the moment's right. nt
flamin lib
Jul 2014
#23
You just don't get it do you? You don't even try to get it, it seems. Don't want to get it.
NYC_SKP
Jul 2014
#21