Contest Entry: Why M9s and Shoguns Are The Coolest Guns In The Army

By Dan Zimmerman

I joined the Airborne infantry because jumping out of a perfectly good airplane seems easy when the static line pulls your shoot for you. That was honestly my line of thought when signing up. A $3000 airborne bonus didn’t hurt either. Between basic training, and the range days at Fort Bragg, I got to shoot most of the current U.S. Military’s small arms. I carried an M249 SAW on my first deployment and an M4 on my second. I was a gunner behind a .50 cal and M240B. There I was, surrounded by all these guns I would probably never own in civilian life. Actual assault rifles and machine guns. Grenade launchers, like the M203, M320, and the MK19 . . .

Why then, would people always want to fondle my Mossberg 500? A gun that anyone could walk into any gun store in the country and buy? The same thing would happen to the machine gunners in my platoon. They were among the few issued the Beretta M9. People always wanted to play with their pistols. The same pistols you could buy at those same gun stores that sold the Mossberg 500.

We all know the answer to this question. …read more

Source:: Truth About Guns