USA Today: Police needing heavier weapons

[Kadie]

Police needing heavier weapons
Posted 2/19/2007 11:07 PM ET


By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Law enforcement agencies across the country have been upgrading their firepower to deal with what they say is the increasing presence of high-powered weapons on the streets.

Scott Knight, chairman of the Firearms Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, says an informal survey of about 20 departments revealed that since 2004 all of the agencies have either added weapons to officers' patrol units or have replaced existing weaponry with military-style arms.

Knight, police chief in Chaska, Minn., says the upgrades have occurred since a national ban on certain assault weapons expired in September 2004. The ban, passed in 1994, in part prohibited domestic gunmakers from producing semi-automatic weapons and ammunition dispensers holding more than 10 rounds.

"This (weapons upgrade) is being done with an eye to the absolute knowledge that more higher-caliber weapons are on the street since the expiration of the ban," Knight said. He said his own department of about 20 officers is in the midst of determining whether to upgrade its weapons.

Ron Stucker, criminal investigations chief of the Orange County Sheriff's Department in Florida, says the department has been rearming many of its deputies with assault weapons in the past two years.

Stucker says deputies are now "frequently" encountering assault weapons in local robberies and during simple traffic stops. Weapons seizures in Orlando have increased overall by 26% since 2004.

more...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-19-police-weapons_x.htm?csp=34

[tularetom]

1. This is nothing new - cops love gadgets

About 25 years ago our local police chief proposed the purchase of an "urban fighting vehicle". The paper printed a picture of the thing. It looked an awful lot like a friggin tank and cost a couple million bucks. The rationale for buying was very similar to the USA Today article. The baddies had bigger guns so the cops needed even bigger ones to counter them. It was pure scare tactics. The thing was such a ludicrous example of overkill that the chief was practically laughed out of city hall by the city council who of course held the purse strings and refused to go along.

[Kagemusha]

2. So are these claims like, true, or something?

About the AK-47 becoming a weapon of choice like this etc etc etc... true? False?

[benEzra]

3. False. According to the FBI,

all rifles COMBINED account for less than 3% of homicides, or less than half as many as fists and feet and only a small fraction of the number committed with knives.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_20.html

If you grok Excel, download the Excel version and sum the columns. The people claiming that rifles of any type are the "weapons of choice of criminals" are full of BS; rifles are almost never used criminally, and anybody claiming they are is cherry-picking their incidents.

The weapon of choice of criminals is the .38/.357 caliber revolver, but that wouldn't scare the taxpayers into shelling out $$$ for more kewl toys or voting for new gun bans, so they trot out the "OMG SCARY LOOKING RIFLES!!!!!!111" argument.

BTW, actual AK-47's are still very tightly controlled by Federal law; possession of one without Federal authorization (BATFE Form 4) is a 10-year Federal felony.

Between 1994 and 2004, there were some minor (and silly) restrictions on non-automatic civilian AK lookalikes, but they were NOT banned. The law merely specified that an AK lookalike, or other civilian rifle, manufactured after Sept. 1994 could have either a protruding handgrip or a bayonet lug or a screw-on muzzle brake, but could not have more than one of those features at a time. The upshot was that ban-era AK lookalikes were made with smooth muzzles and truncated gas blocks, minor features that only an aficionado would notice.

[Richard Steele]

5. As false as they were the last time they made the rounds.

That "ban" never affected anyone's ability to aquire
these weapons LEGALLY, let alone ILLEGALLY.

So why would LIFTING it affect anything either?

[benEzra]

4. That article is pretty misleading...

Knight, police chief in Chaska, Minn., says the upgrades have occurred since a national ban on certain assault weapons expired in September 2004. The ban, passed in 1994, in part prohibited domestic gunmakers from producing semi-automatic weapons and ammunition dispensers holding more than 10 rounds.

The pre-1861 capacity limits merely raised the price of pistol magazines, practically speaking. They didn't affect rifle magazines in any significant way.

"This (weapons upgrade) is being done with an eye to the absolute knowledge that more higher-caliber weapons are on the street since the expiration of the ban," Knight said.

BS on multiple counts:

(1) The Scary Looking Rifles that he's trying to stir people into conniptions over aren't "high caliber" weapons. They are SMALL caliber weapons, i.e. the least powerful of centerfire rifles.

(2) Scary Looking Rifles weren't banned in any way by the 1994-2004 "assault weapon" bait-and-switch. They were merely limited to one Scary Feature (e.g., protruding handgrip OK, screw-on muzzle brake OK, but not both on the same rifle).

(3) The number of Scary Looking Rifles in private hands probably tripled or quadrupled 1993-2004, due to the immense backlash against the ban. The expiration of the ban has seen sales return back down to more or less normal levels.

(4) The shift from shotguns to small-caliber rifles for police use isn't fueled by the perception of parity with Ramboesque bad guys, but by the simple realization that shotguns are less versatile than small-caliber carbines. Shotguns are limited to short ranges, so they don't offer much more range than a pistol does. The use of buckshot in urban environments poses a higher risk of harm to innocent bystanders, and makes precision shots difficult. Using slugs instead of buckshot makes the shotgun a beast to shoot (a 12-gauge slug is .729 caliber, folks), and difficult for small-statured officers to shoot and to qualify with.


Back to the BS about modern-looking carbines being "banned" 1994-2004. Here's what a ban-era (2002 model) civilian carbine looked like. Circled portions show differences between this ban-era carbine and pre- or post-ban versions:



FWIW, this is not a real AK-47, and it is NOT an automatic weapon. Actual AK-47's, and other automatic weapons, are tightly controlled by the Title 2/Class III provisions of the National Firearms Act of 1934, and possession of one without Federal authorization (BATFE Form 4) is a 10-year Federal felony. This is a non-automatic civilian carbine that's a shade less powerful than a .30-30 Winchester, and it fires at the same rate as any civilian pistol or self-loading rifle.

I purchased the above carbine in 2003 from my local gun shop.

He said his own department of about 20 officers is in the midst of determining whether to upgrade its weapons.

Gotta do some fearmongering in order to loosen up the town budget, looks like...if he confined himself to reality, he might not get those kewl new toys to play with...

[Lance_Boyle]

6. Gotta get my eyes checked...

I missed the second "r" in "reaRming" and laughed myself silly.

"Ron Stucker, criminal investigations chief of the Orange County Sheriff's Department in Florida, says the department has been rearming many of its deputies with assault weapons in the past two years."

[slackmaster]

7. This is so obviously a crock of shit

A political ploy so the cops can get cooler toys at our expense.

...Knight, police chief in Chaska, Minn., says the upgrades have occurred since a national ban on certain assault weapons expired in September 2004. The ban, passed in 1994, in part prohibited domestic gunmakers from producing semi-automatic weapons and ammunition dispensers holding more than 10 rounds....

The only truth in that statement is that magazines that hold more than 10 rounds could not be manufactured or imported for civilian use during that "ban" period. But they were already around in abundance for most firearms that can use them.

All the "ban" really accomlished was to cause arms makers to make slight modifications in order to comply with the ban. Colt continued to produce its AR-15 rifle by removing the bayonet mount and fitting the weapon with a plain-ended (not threaded) muzzle.

"This (weapons upgrade) is being done with an eye to the absolute knowledge that more higher-caliber weapons are on the street since the expiration of the ban," Knight said.

Let's see some verifiable evidence for that claim.

(Cue sound of crickets chirping...)

[Kagemusha]

8. Then it annoys me greatly the headline says the police NEED these weapons

rather than they WANT these weapons...

[benEzra]

9. Actually, over-10-round mags could be imported...

IF they were manufactured before Sept. 1994, AFAIK. That's why after the initial jitters, the Feinstein law didn't affect rifle magazine prices to any significant extent, because the worldwide stock of full-capacity rifle magazines for AR's, civvie AK lookalikes, etc. was so immense. I purchased a couple of 30-rd "AK" mags for $9.99 each during the ban; 20-rd Hungarian "tanker" mags were $5.99 each from Tapco, as I recall. Now if your rifle was a post-'94 design that used proprietary mags (coughAR10cough), you were stuck with itty-bitty mags, but if your rifle took AR/AK/FAL mags, you weren't affected much.

Pistol mags were much more affected because there wasn't a huge worldwide surplus of pre-'94 Glock magazines, so the price skyrocketed. (I think my wife paid ~$110 or $120 for a $20 Glock 19 magazine around 1996 or so, ouch.)