These new, high-capacity guns were hitting the street at the height of the crack epidemic and the era of the drive-by shooting, in a newly deregulated market—in 1986, Congress had passed the Firearms Owners Protection Act. “There was in essence a perfect storm,” Daniel Webster told me. “That legislation greatly decreased risks for people who were diverting guns to criminals. The standards for convicting someone of violating federal firearms sales laws were increased substantially, at the same time that the penalties for those gun sales violations decreased. [Congress] decreased the budget for the ATF. They decreased the number of compliance inspections that they could do. They also rewrote the criteria for needing to have a federal license to sell firearms. So all those things were at play, including the type of guns that were being made.”

Annual gun deaths peaked in 1993. The following year, Congress adopted an assault-weapons ban that capped magazines at 10 rounds. Since the ban expired in 2004, handguns with 15-round capacity or greater have been used in several mass shootings, including the Virginia Tech massacre (55 victims); the attempted assassination of Representative Gabby Giffords (19 victims); and the 2009 Fort Hood massacre (45 victims). Over the past decade, annual gun deaths have crept gradually upward.

Although military contracts drive innovations that make guns more lethal, the same contracts can also spur advances in safety. In the handgun trials of the 1980s, the U.S. military insisted upon several safety features that were state-of-the-art at the time. The Beretta could be safely de-cocked with a live round in the chamber; a firing-pin block prevented the gun from discharging when dropped; a loaded-chamber indicator allowed the user to confirm, visually and by touch, whether there was a bullet ready to fire. Does this mean the next-generation military handgun will integrate the cutting-edge safety technology of 2014? Will the Army adopt some form of smart gun, ensuring the weapon can only be fired by authorized users?

Critics say smart guns are impractical—too complex, too expensive, and not reliable. Even if the industry were to overcome the technological hurdles, though, the Army isn’t likely to adopt smart-gun technology now or any time soon—why would they? The most obvious application is to prevent a child from discharging a parent’s gun, and American soldiers don’t take their kids into combat. In this regard the military brass seem to differentiate between guns suitable for the bedside table and guns purpose-built for the battlefield—a distinction that sometimes eludes the American public.

Whatever new handgun the Army adopts to replace the M9, it will fire a more powerful cartridge than the Beretta’s 9mm. This could be the .45-caliber ammo currently used by the Marines or, according to an Army spokesperson, it could be the .357 SIG or .40 S&W, two cartridges that didn’t exist in the '80s, and which were developed for law enforcement officers to counter increasingly well-armed criminals. It might be quite some time before the Army selects a winning design and awards the new contract. Once they do, you can expect to find an almost indistinguishable pistol in a gun shop near you.

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