JohnBiltz said:
When the 1911s in armsrooms were finally replaced by M9s we were hoping they would be sold off to the public, they were destroyed. You think in an environment like that they are going to let you bring guns back from the war? Not going to happen.
Yes the hundreds of thousands of 1911s that were entirely civilian legal under existing laws were destroyed by the government specifically to keep them from going to civilians.
Similarly the M14s, easily reduced to semi-auto only (and some have been welded to accomplish that) were destroyed specifically to keep them from going to civilians.
Many other guns from Thompsons to m3s were likewise destroyed in large numbers.
As well as various semi-auto marksman and sniper rifles not kept in inventory.
The military is relatively anti-gun, and untrusting of enlisted personnel.
They have in recent times tried to force all service members to register even guns owned off base. Guns stored on base often must be kept in armories. Even soldiers with CCW licenses in the state they are stationed in cannot have their firearm on them on base.
The military goes out of their way to reduce how often many soldiers have access to weapons. Unless they are in immediate need of a firearm they are kept disarmed in general.
Soldiers in the barracks often cannot even have knives, or knives over some relatively small length. Because they don't want them having deadly weapons.
The mentality that exists would not want to actually increase the number of arms personally owned by soldiers. All other considerations aside, just soldiers having more personal weapons would be seen as undesirable.
Beyond all of that:
Most modern arms on a battlefield are selective-fire. This means most legitimate war bring backs would be illegal to own as a civilian. Soldiers should not be allowed to own something civilians cannot.
So you would need to repeal the 86 machinegun ban to resolve that issue.
These various police actions and insurgent based conflicts have the military primarily dealing with civilians. Any motivation added for some soldiers to steal from the civilian population could be counterproductive to winning hearts and minds or reducing enemy recruitment.
This risk is further increased due to the machinegun ban, as since the majority of actual enemy weapons will be selective fire, soldiers wanting their bring back and unable to acquire one that is not selective fire from actual enemy fighters may turn to taking semi-auto firearms from civilians.
Soldiers should have no personal motivation to steal rifles, shotguns, or pistols, from civilians, or claim civilians were enemy combatants to steal from them for personal gain.
When you remove the opportunity for any personal gain, you reduce motivation for corrupt practices.
It would seem we have lots of laws that create classes of citizens, and make us, well, NOT-equal. Once again, how many laws were broken when the Army brought that Glock back and gave it to George W Bush? I'm all for equality.