Thank you for your comments!
I don't think it's right to identify 'hi-tech' with 'latest available technology', as Gnomon suggests. A flint axe was cutting-edge technology in 30,000 B.C.; yet any [censored] Sapience who hadn't seen an axe before, could figure out how to make one for oneself just by looking at it for fifteen minutes. If you look at a Benelli Vinci now, you couldn't either figure out what the plastic used for the stock is
The question is not whether the gunmakers used the latest technology available to them, because they did. Teasdale-Buckell's chapter on Gibbs of Bristol in Experts on Guns and Shooting contains an interesting discussion on how patterns and interchangeable parts technology was introduced to British gunmaking, for example. This disproves my point that gunmaking almost didn't change across 1814 - 1913 time span.
The question is, why does it appear so that the more technology was available, the less progress was made? Is it an illusion? Is it because, as apachecadillac suggests, the military importance of infantry arms was decreasing, and consequently less attention was given to R&D in this area? Is it because, as some argue today, the reliance on research technology actually hinders progress, because it limits the access to research and limits possible research outcomes to what the technology can do?
Or, it has just struck me, is it a representation of 'predator-prey' mutual adaptability principle? Us as predators evolved to such a high degree that our prey can't evolve fast enough to adapt to that. And so we have to slow down, even slide back to more primitive ways of getting game, to avoid the prey's (and consequently ours) extinction?
