The scary black M9 Reddit(really!?!)/Fiscal Times
I'm going to skip the normal format for this post. As you may know the Defense Department is looking to replace the venerable M9 pistol. It's out of date, inaccurate, not particularly reliable and most of them are beat to hell. You would expect an article about the replacement of the M9 would go into detail of what the problems are and what the potential replacements would be. Not so for this Fiscal Times article.
The article, titled "The Army's New Handgun: A Weapon For Criminals?" is ludicrously misinformed. First of all it makes the bizarre claim that military firearms would somehow drown hospitals in gunshot victims. An amazing claim for a gun that either does not exist, or like the M9 before it, exists in the civilian market ALREADY! To continue the article claims that when the M9 was adapted in 1985 was somehow responsible for the increase in the number of bullet injuries per shooting in DC through a period between 1980-1983. See the problem? The authors are blaming a gun that did not exist as a U.S. military firearm for a supposed rise in gunshot wounds! And the so called "high capacity" 9mm's like the Beretta 92, the M9's ancestor made in 1972 were not a result of military development, they were sporting and police pistols, some of which were modified for military service. The innovation came from the civilian market, not the military! Anyone who has even the most basic knowledge of firearms should know this.
The M9 is most likely going to be replaced because there have been many advancements in handgun technology and safety since it was adapted. They aren't going to make it more deadly (unless they do decide to go to a heavier caliber which is extremely unlikely due to NATO treaty regulations) they are going to make it more safe, more reliable and more usable for soldiers. The fact of the matter is that there are better civilian arms on the market then what the military is currently equipped with. The Pentagon wants to correct that (in theory at least, arms procurement is incredibly complex. They might just stick with the M9).
That's it. No deadly bullets. No massive technical innovations and no change to the firearms that are already available on the civilian market. How anyone could come to that conclusion is beyond me. So that leaves two options. Either the author had no idea what she was talking about or she had an agenda. My guess is the second option considering some of the other posts on The Fiscal Times, and the irrelevant paragraphs at the end that claim that gun ownership is down.
I could post dozens of examples of gun control advocates either getting basic facts wrong or deliberately lying but this post is getting a bit long. The point is that just because you read something about firearms on the internet, even at an otherwise reputable site (I don't know about The Fiscal Times but I first saw the article on Yahoo. It disappeared before I could post this) it's usually better to listen to someone who has even the most basic knowledge of firearms. At least the comment section called her out on it...
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