[Chainmail]

Great rationale: we should get the inexpensive weapons because maintaining/rebuilding high quality, dependable and lethal weapons is "too expensive". What if it's your life or your son's life on the line? Is cost the determining factor?

I am a combat veteran of the Vietnam War and I remember all too well the "hi-tech"/least bidder weapon we got to replace our M-14s with. Cost a lot of our lives, but what the hell, it's only somebody else's kids.

[ansel12]

We didn’t have the Glock during the Vietnam war when I and my brothers were serving, but it’s reliability and ease of maintenance, and light weight, and high capacity would have been useful for our American GIs, when the American made Colt rifles jammed.