And I think you don't know many of these scientists, do you?
Sit down, take a deep breath, take yourself above this loosing or winning an argument over a random place call DFI...and start digging about scientists who did something in weapons, engineers who came up with revolutionary designs in defence or random self taught dude who made designs so advanced that they're being used in almost all firearms from the past century.
You'll realise that most of time they did something that they were not supposed to do in their field. Coz a "firearm scientist" will always remain in the notion that he knows everything about guns and can't do certain things because things like "no one has ever done that / the scientist at DRDO are more intelligent than him / or as you said, how can someone know even an iota more than an ex-sailor" will simply constrain him. But on the other an almost illiterate boy by the name of John M Browning will come up with an innovation, coz you know...he was illiterate.