A healthy civilian market means you aren't entirely dependent on the government and therefore politics for innovations. E.g. the AR-15 and its round, which wer

A healthy civilian market means you aren't entirely dependent on the government and therefore politics for innovations. E.g. the AR-15 and its round, which were adopted as the M16 and 5.56x45mm came from the civilian market (and the round's parent was civilian). Most or all of the modern optics that have been used in the GWoT came from the civilian market. Our current and prior service handguns came from civilians, and the same civilian, perhaps with funding from the military during WWII, designed the heavy machine gun we still use to this day. He also designed the lighter crew serviced machine guns we used from WWI (at least in part) through the Korean War. Oh, and the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), our light machine gun prior to light versions of General Purpose Machine guns (and part of the internals of our current medium and light general purpose machine gun were inspired by the BAR). Our sniper rifles are all militarized versions of civilian rifles, and I believe their scopes as well. The gold standard sniper bullet is from a civilian company, it's called the Match King, indicating its original purpose. And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head from the 20th Century. I can give you iffier examples of problems that we believe have come from places that extinguished or prevented the development of gun cultures, which is not to say that such places and governments haven't come up with good guns and rounds.