Hey, I’ve got a great idea. We could ask all law-abiding individuals to turn in their firearms to “keep them off the streets” and then give everyone stun guns to defend themselves!
(03-24) 04:00 PDT Boise, Idaho — The 30-year-old mother of three jumped from her disabled SUV after a chase last fall, holding a gun to her head to keep police back. Officers fired a stun gun but the nonlethal weapon was foiled by her heavy coat.
Oh. Crap. How about an armor-piercing stun-gun, or are those illegal? (UPDATE: “Fired” a stun gun? Do they mean tase me bro?)
You know what, this really pisses me off. Children’s toys should be foiled by heavy coats. Self defense weapons are … you know … kind of important. Jackets shouldn’t prevent them from working. What’s next? Self-defense squirting lapel-flowers? Self-defense hand buzzers?
*BBBBZZZZZT* “OW! Okay! You got me! I give up!”
When she pointed her handgun at the two nearest deputies, officers switched to assault rifles, hitting Sarah Marie Stanfield of Boise eight times with bullets designed to break apart on impact to increase internal damage. She died of multiple gunshot wounds.
Why didn’t they first try to tase her, bro? What about the hand buzzer? Tossing beanbags at her? Lawn darts? Gas canisters? Cranking up some Right Said Fred? There’s got to be numerous ways you can take down an armed suspect without needing a gun, otherwise, why would all these peace-loving individuals be trying to take them away?
Some jurisdictions across the United States have been arming rank-and-file officers with high-powered assault rifles for a decade or more. But law enforcement officials say that trend has accelerated in the last year because of greater numbers of shootouts, standoffs in which police were outgunned, rising officer deaths and mass shootings of civilians by heavily armed gunmen.
Stats, bozo. Show me stats of all these “assault weapons” deaths. I don’t buy it. And you certainly don’t have to be “heavily armed” to walk into a gun-free zone and slaughter a dozen people. All you need is a pocketful of ammo and a .22, all you’re going to get is begging and some pencils thrown at you, unfortunately.
“If you get into a firefight, you want to be the winner,” said Scott Knight, police chief of Chaska, Minn., and chairman of the firearms committee for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “Our departments are moving to those weapons out of necessity across the country.”
Sometimes civilians are in firefights and they want to be the winner too. Minnesota is shall-issue, so I won’t come down too hard on Chief Knight here, but what’s good for you should be good for me. I shouldn’t have to depend on a phone call to 911 and buying 5 minutes of time for you to bring your poodle-shooters to the party.
Chaska, 25 miles southwest of Minneapolis, is a town of only about 24,000, but earlier this month Knight ordered the department’s first 10 assault rifles, each with two 30-round magazines.
Swanky!
Only patchwork information is available on how many other law enforcement agencies are outfitting deputies and patrol officers with assault rifles, the kind of firepower once reserved for specialized SWAT teams. But from Chaska to Miami to college campuses, agencies are acquiring AR-15s or M-4s, both close relatives of the military’s M-16. The rifles fire bullets with enough velocity to penetrate some types of body armor and have greater accuracy at longer range than handguns.
It’s so cute when journalists try to describe ballistics to readers, isn’t it? What they leave out of course is the fact that a $100 mil-surp rifle can blast the shit out of most body armor and can certainly cause someone’s head to go ker-puffle with one well-placed shot.
Last year, Miami Police Chief John Timoney authorized his patrol officers to carry AR-15s because of an increase in assault rifle use by criminals.
Timoney never met an authoritarian idea he didn’t like. This doesn’t surprise me.
“This is a national problem. Police agencies all over the U.S. are going to bigger weapons,” said Timoney, whose agency now has about 50 AR-15s and expects to get 150 more. He blames the 2004 expiration of the federal ban on assault weapons for the escalation of heavily armed violence.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Okay, okay, sorry. In all seriousness here. Have a look at Miami’s stats:
2001: 66
2002: 65
2003: 74
2004: 69
2005: 54
2006: 77
Disingenuous people will use any excuse to grab more power in any way they can - whether there’s a reason to back it up or not. That’s what makes the 2nd so important and that’s why it’s the one piece of American History that anyone who is a liberty-loving individual must work to preserve in full and without concession. Otherwise? It’s all over. And fast.
In 2007, according to preliminary numbers compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 69 officers were shot to death, up from 52 in 2006 and the most in five years. Last year included six shootings where two or more officers were killed in the same event, fund spokesman Kevin Morison said.
With what?
“There just seems to be more brazen, cold-blooded killers out there,” he said.
So let’s militarize the police and start kicking some ass! Indeed.
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence said it understands the moves to assault weapons. “Police officers need to be able to defend themselves and the rest of us, and they need the weapons to do so,” said spokesman Peter Hamm.
I don’t know about you, but seeing Peter Hamm talking about “needing assault weapons” is just … I don’t know … unnatural.
Law enforcement officials say the trend toward issuing assault rifles to regular patrol officers started in Los Angeles in the wake of a 1997 shootout after a botched bank robbery. Two heavily armed men wore body armor that stopped 9mm bullets fired by the handguns carried by police, 11 of whom were injured along with six civilians. The two robbers were eventually killed. The Los Angeles Police Department now issues AR-15s.
One headshot will defeat any body armor out there. That was clearly a bad situation. I have no problem with a police department that has a little dash of a SWAT arsenal available to them. I have a huge problem with all police officers being militarized.
