Why is Assault Vest themed the way it is?

Pokemon generally doesn't have guns outside of a few exceptions like early episodes of the anime and gigantimax intelleon but neither of those were relevant in gen 6 when the assault vest was made. Why did they choose to theme it after an assault vest of all things? I've never seen this discussed but now that I'm actually thinking about it it feels weirdly out of place, especially for an item that was pretty clearly meant to see competitive play.

Also why does assault vest specifically allow Me First of all status moves according to bulbapedia? That seems bizarre to me