Government intervention in small arms development

[Perd Hapley]

The following article proposes that government should do more to fund R&D in small arms.

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016/02/27/can-break-small-arms-plateau/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

Your thoughts?

[dogmush]

More then announcing trials for new rifles and pistols every other year, then never having them when a whole new set of weapons are designed?

What should they do, subsidize small arms like corn?

[Jamisjockey]

Yeah that's how you end up with bad designs.  Allow the free market to compete and let the companies do their own R&D

[HankB]

The government will manage small arms development the way it manages the space program.

Note that politics downed two shuttles and ended (hopefully just for a while) America's manned space flight capability.

But NASA has diversity and EEOC compliance!!!!

[Andiron]

But NASA has diversity and EEOC compliance!!!!

Making nice with the mooselimbs is now the mission :puke:

[lee n. field]

Yeah that's how you end up with bad designs.  Allow the free market to compete and let the companies do their own R&D

It's a gun, not a moon rocket.

[dogmush]

Joking aside, gunpowder driven small arms is pretty mature tech at this point.  I don't think you are going to see anything put small incremental tweaks until we completely change to something else.  Something as revolutionary as brass cartridges was.  Dunno what that'll look like, but it'll be pretty cool.

If, however, you want to know whether the government or industry drive development in this sector better, I invite you to look at the period between 1970 or so and 2004, when we went from the M16 to the M16A2, or the CAR-15 to the M4. The G3 went to the HK33 and the MP5. The FAL went to ....The FAL I guess. We did get the AUG and P90 in there. Then compare that with the small arms that have entered the market from 2004 until now. SCAR, AR-lego kits, Tavor, MDR, RDB, RFB, ACR, Scorpion EVO 3, hell who knows how many others are floating around gunbroker.

Now what happened around 2004?

[BlueStarLizzard]

So we now want the government funded smart guns? 

[Devonai]

Fifty years of progress and I'm still using dental tools to scrape a robot's anus.

[birdman]

Easy, rescind the Hughes amendment and open the registry.  Done.
If there was a civilian market for real select fire...done.

[brimic]

Easy, rescind the Hughes amendment and open the registry.  Done.
If there was a civilian market for real select fire...done.

I'd go much further than that, but that goes without saying...

Magpul (and many others in the small startup private side) have put out more useful innovation and improvements than the fat, happy, government fed companies like colt in the last decade, and that's without even touching the basic design of the ar-15 rifle.
We had Cavalry arms making novel polymer receivers before the heavy hand of .gov flattened them- for the offense of violating some nonsensical bureaucratic decree.

[Jamisjockey]

It's a gun, not a moon rocket.

Until you procure 500,000 of a new one to fight a war, but the design sucks and they jam in the field and take decades to get the design to work right.

[Fly320s]

Fifty years of progress and I'm still using dental tools to scrape a robot's anus.

Strange hobby you have.

[brimic]

Fifty years of progress and I'm still using dental tools to scrape a robot's anus.

Having a rifle pissed on will fix that mess.

[Jim147]

Im an android not a robot and leave my butt out of this.

[just Warren]

Fifty years of progress and I'm still using dental tools to scrape a robot's anus.

Dev is the Fifth Yorkshireman.

[seeker_two]

Do we really need any more large-frame 9mm service pistols? Because that's how you get more large-frame 9mm service pistols.....