Wierd, that somehow you think the manual safety and decocker is going away on the next gun? Every serious entry will have a safety and decocker. The SA/DA requirement will probably stick around too.
I don't recall saying that the manual safety and decocker IS going away on the next pistol, just that it would be nice if it DID. I'M not the one who must buy (not directly, anyway) or tool up for this arm, so if the military is well & truly determined to overcomplicate the mechanism with safeties made superfluous by proper weapons handling, so be it. I'M unlikely to ever use one in combat, but the members of our uniformed services can't really say that.
If the pistol simply MUST have a DA configuration, then the SA option is, to me, a necessary feature, also. Except for expense and complexity (two ships which have already sailed, it appears), I have no REAL objection to a DA autopistol that I may always use in SA mode (Condition 1).
I've operated a beretta since about 1987 in training. Real live combat use of a pistol...0 times.allways had a rifle. The people that were traditionally issued pistols grab a rifle if they end up needing one.
Thank you for your service, and I am happy for your good fortune to always have a better tool at hand for your combat experiences. Sidearms fill the same roles in combat as seat-belts, airbags, parachutes, Epi-Pens, and crash helmets fill in other more mundane aspects of our existence. The salient characteristic shared by these devices is that if one is without them when they really need them, they'll probably never have need of any of them, ever again.
The sidearm is a DEFENSIVE weapon, used to deliver an instantaneous and disabling response to an unprovoked and unforeseen attack. Failing this, its use is a delaying tactic, meant to keep its operator in one piece long enough to escape the threat, or gain access to more effective weaponry. There is a more humourous depiction of this, by Mike Irwin (I believe), who characterizes sidearms as "the starting pistol for the fat man's mad-dash tactical retreat".
That said,
I am not
a special operator, that goes in pistols blazing,
and I doubt that any SO worthy of the title would do so, unless no better weapon was at hand. I've made no claim to be an SO, ever. To postulate that I am is to "assume facts not in evidence" as the litigators are fond to say.
Further, since your suggestion that I
stop posting to Internet gun boards.
is predicated on the false notion that I AM an SO, I elect to relegate said suggestion to same fate the M9 deserves, the nearest trash heap. Both items are long overdue there.
Waste of time or not, it appears that the M9 is fated to be replaced. If so, then replacing it with a better sidearm is the only ethical outcome.