I also have trouble understanding why Phil of all people is so into taticool. Most ex-military dudes I meet are KISS or have the “you can get this, it’s the same but cheaper than x” mentally. I guess Phil just wants to rebel against the concepts of what a beautiful woman should be, what a man should be and what the military told him to do.
I remember when I was a teenager I wanted to buy a 5.7 but literally only because it was the “best gun” on counterstrike and I didn’t know shit about guns.
Two kinds of ex-mil go tacticool:
The extreme over-extra moto types, and the poser-pogs.
The extreme-moto types want to get all the bells and whistles and bible-verse scopes that those officer types wouldn't let them have when they were in. They want the tricked out hoopty gun of their dreams to make all those civies at the range jelly, the gun that would have single handedly let them assassinate bin Laden if only command & the armory hadn't been such anal dicks.
Moto + Free time + ETS vacation payouts & Montgomery GI bill payments are a hell of drug, and soldiers are not known for good financial decisions at the best of times.
The poser-POGs are trying to overcompensate for living la vida fobbit during their deployments. So they see Rangers and Delta types strolling around with their cool optics and forward handles and try to emulate that. If the delta guys have an red-dot, and the ranger doorbusters had another one, they need to have both on their rifle.
Phil was a cav scout, which in general is one of the least-poggy MOSes you can have. But Cav Scouts especially are all about no unnecessary bling, because they are intended to forward operate (i.e. outside the wire) for days at a time. They dismount constantly and have to hump their 72-hour ruck every time, so they are like turbo backpackers looking to shave ounces off their gear load.
I knew a cavscout who said he'd open up his MREs and pull out heaters, toss all but one of the utensil packs, and even chuck the fucking cardboard boxes to save just that little bit of weight.
However, Phil was in Germarny. The fact we never heard about him in Iraq makes me believe he was there for the entire time, so despite being in a pretty hooah-hooah MOS. he also, despite being a Cav Scout MOS, might have a HQ bitch and stuck running copies, feeding the shredder, and answering the phone - office drone shit. If this is the case, it probably gave him POG-like envy. Though I suppose on the other hand, I believe we only have Phil's word he was a cav scout.
tl;dr- Remember the ranger in Blackhawk Down complaining about being HQ attached & only making coffee? My guess is that's Phil.
I wanted to buy a Five Seven partly for Counter Strike reasons, partly because as military gun it triggered the pantywaists, and wanted one still after looking into it because other than "Its an expensive gun that is expensive to fire because they have to import the ammo from the moon" it doesn't have a lot of down sides.