I was talking about this piece with my husband and he brought up this striking quote from Eisenhower, early in his Presidency:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

Eisenhower was no pacifist, of course; he'd been a general in WWII. But he had a strong understanding of the respect due to the tragedies of war. He also ended his Presidency with that famous speech warning about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" and its political power. The political power of the arms industry is surely at least partly responsible for Shapiro's choices, here, as Jarvis Coffin notes. I don't think that's an excuse, though. Shapiro might feel bound to support his constituents and their industry, but this would not preclude him from nevertheless treating weapons and their deadly purpose in an appropriately sober fashion.