  The astrophysics community is considering plans for a variety of gamma-ray
telescopes (including ACT and GRIPS) in the energy range 1--100 MeV, which can
fill in the so-called "MeV gap" in current sensitivity. We investigate the
utility of such detectors for the study of low-mass dark matter annihilation or
decay. For annihilating (decaying) dark matter with a mass below about 140 MeV
(280 MeV) and couplings to first generation quarks, the final states will be
dominated by photons or neutral pions, producing striking signals in gamma-ray
telescopes. We determine the sensitivity of future detectors to the
kinematically allowed final states. In particular, we find that planned
detectors can improve on current sensitivity to this class of models by up to a
few orders of magnitude.
