WEAPONS OF WAR
“Nobody needs a Weapon of War!” is the oftenheard, plaintive cry of the anti-gun crusader.
They want them off our streets. Generally, they point to firearms like the AR-15 and its many clones, due to their use by the military as well as civilians. Wouldn’t those same people be surprised if they knew that many military weapons had humble beginnings as firearms designed for the consumer market?
To demonstrate use by the military doesn’t alone define a firearm as a weapon of war, we’ll take a look at three origin stories for weapons systems that ended up in the military arsenal.
SIG SAUER P320
The most recent example of a civilian firearm’s adoption for use as a military weapon is the SIG Sauer P320. Introduced to the market in 2014, it’s a striker-fired pistol with a polymer frame. Almost three years later, it was adopted by the U.S. military as the Modular Handgun System to replace the long-serving M9 handgun, built by Beretta and based on its commercial 92F model. The Department of Defense plans to purchase 421,000 units of the 9mm NATO P320 pistol to be delivered to the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force in
