People who haven't studied guns tend to assume that the evolution of small arms towards an assault rifle was in someway inevitable.

I'm here to say that this doesn't follow.

In this thread, I'll pickup on the US crossovers I referenced but didn't cash out in my last thread

1/

If you look closely, there is a tendency among some scholars to erroneously link 3 things:

-the qualities of the infantry

-the soldier's capacity to think & use weapons independently

-& the notion of a democratic values

2/
This really struck me when reading Stephen Biddle's really interesting (but obvs I don't agree with it) book:

3/

https://t.co/3pYHztTqD8
The problem with that argument is its underlying technological determinism that implies only democracies can really produce the type of soldier capable of employing weapons like assault rifles.
4/
The argument makes little empirical sense but it also demonstrates a misunderstanding as to how technologies emerge into the military organisation.

5/
From my point of view it also fails to explain how the US Army managed to conjure the relevant myths to allow it to switch allegiance from the rifle to the M-1 Garand to the M-16.

6/
After all, each one of these weapons symbolised the nation and its martial prowess even as it switched from a weapon for marksmen to a weapon used by conscripts in Vietnam.
7/
In this respect, the US Army needed to re-frame the institutional markers of its professionalism from marksmanship to something higher up than skill at arms.

8/
& there can be little doubt that this is reflected in the changing qualities of those soldiers it has recruited over time.

9/
This points to the need to be attentive to the demographic profiles of those being recruited.

But it also means paying attention to how the military mythologises its weapons & how they redescribe these myths in new stories about the systems they create.

10/
So while there's a tendency to assume the assault rifle was inevitable, there's a whole heap of social & cultural referencing that needs to be accounted for that explains why these things are in no way inevitable.

After all, US commanders didn't want to replace the Garand.

11/

More from Society

Imagine if Christians actually had to live according to their Bibles.


Imagine if Christians actually sacrificed themselves for the good of those they considered their enemies, with no thought of any recompense or reward, but only to honor the essential humanity of all people.

Imagine if Christians sold all their possessions and gave it to the poor.

Imagine if they relentlessly stood up for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.

Imagine if they worshipped a God whose response to political power was to reject it.

Or cancelled all debt owed them?

Imagine if the primary orientation of Christians was what others needed, not what they deserved.

Imagine Christians with no interest in protecting what they had.

Imagine Christians who made room for other beliefs, and honored the truths they found there.

Imagine Christians who saved their forgiveness and mercy for others, rather than saving it for themselves.

Whose empathy went first to the abused, not the abuser.

Who didn't see tax as theft; who didn't need to control distribution of public good to the deserving.

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@franciscodeasis https://t.co/OuQaBRFPu7
Unfortunately the "This work includes the identification of viral sequences in bat samples, and has resulted in the isolation of three bat SARS-related coronaviruses that are now used as reagents to test therapeutics and vaccines." were BEFORE the


chimeric infectious clone grants were there.https://t.co/DAArwFkz6v is in 2017, Rs4231.
https://t.co/UgXygDjYbW is in 2016, RsSHC014 and RsWIV16.
https://t.co/krO69CsJ94 is in 2013, RsWIV1. notice that this is before the beginning of the project

starting in 2016. Also remember that they told about only 3 isolates/live viruses. RsSHC014 is a live infectious clone that is just as alive as those other "Isolates".

P.D. somehow is able to use funds that he have yet recieved yet, and send results and sequences from late 2019 back in time into 2015,2013 and 2016!

https://t.co/4wC7k1Lh54 Ref 3: Why ALL your pangolin samples were PCR negative? to avoid deep sequencing and accidentally reveal Paguma Larvata and Oryctolagus Cuniculus?