Police departments – at least, some that Mother Jones talked with – are ostensibly trying to get rid of surplus military gear:
Even before police militarization made the news, hundreds of police departments were finding that grenade launchers, military firearms, and armored vehicles aren’t very useful to community policing. When Chelan County police officers requested one armored car in 2000—the request that landed them three tanks—they pictured a vehicle that could withstand bullets, not land mines. Law enforcement agencies across the country have quietly returned more than 6,000 unwanted or unusable items to the Pentagon in the last 10 years, according to Defense Department data provided to Mother Jones by a spokeswoman for Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who has spearheaded a Senate investigation of the Pentagon program that is arming local police. Thousands more unwanted items have been transferred to other police departments.
The catch? The Pentagon doesn’t really want it all back. It’s cheaper to let local cops maintain it than to keep it in Federal storage.
Which is vexing some cops:
In reality, however, police departments may find the returns process slow, mystifying, or nonfunctional. Online law enforcement message boards brim with complaints that the Pentagon refuses to take back unwanted guns and vehicles—like this one, about a pair of M14 rifles that have survived attempts by two sheriffs to get rid of them.
I’ve got an obvious answer – one that’ll make cops, the Pentagon and citizens (the right ones, anyway) happy: sell it to private citizens. Or at least the private citizens that pass the same background check that qualifies them for a state carry permit. It’ll save government money, and make the country safer by making Real Americans better-armed.
Facetious? Halfway. A fair chunk of this equipment could, and should by all rights, be going into the “Civilian Marksmanship Program”. But Barack Obama has been sandbagging the CMP for the past six years – which is why the price of surplus M-1 Garand rifles (from WW2 and the Korean War) is so very high these days.
But I digress.
And I’m about to digress some more; it’d seem we have some real powderpuffs in uniform (empasis added):
[Hillsborough NC police lieutenant Davis] Trimmer has twice requested permission to return three M14 rifles that are too heavy for practical use.
“Too heavy for practical use?” They weight eight pounds. Our troops lugged them all over Vietnam, for crying out loud.
Maybe the lieutenant was referring to carrying all three of them together?
Turn them over to me, if that’d help…
“They weight eight pounds. Our troops lugged them all over Vietnam, for crying out loud.”
This is true, Mitch, but that’s why the military went to the M-16. It was lighter and we didn’t have to worry about the wooden stocks warping in the humidity of tropical jungles. Because of the weight and overall length, it was also harder to “point and shoot” in jungle warfare.
That said, if they were put up for public sale and I had the money, I would buy one in a heartbeat!
“sell it to private citizens”…I like it!
The gear you buy depends on the war you intend to fight.
Open fields of Europe – aim and shoot your M-1.
Jungle of Vietnam – spray lead from your M-16.
Mountains of Afghanistan – launch rounds a mile from your Barrett .50.
I’d be perfectly happy to have an M-14 to defend me and mine when the Zombie Apocolypse hits Saint Paul. Sign me up with Berg and Bosshoss.
I’ve shot the M-14 and like it well enough, but as a police weapon it’s not a good one. It’s too heavy with relatively low round count. It’s a great thing for recreational shooters, but just the size and weight make it less useful for police than the shorter and lighter M-16.
Just think of your average cop trying to chase someone. They’re already carrying more pounds than they should (aren’t most of us?) and they can’t afford any more trying to keep up with “youths”.
Oh, for police work, the M14 strikes me as really stupid. (As opposed to the M21, the match-grade sniper variant with the Redfield scope). It’s heavier than the M4s that are in vogue these days, and the 7.62×51 round has got some wicked overpenetration in urban areas.
But for the “Zombie Apocalypse”? I’ll take one. Or two. Or four.
Somehow it strikes me as odd that police forces, which I would presume are significantly drawn from the ranks of military veterans, really had that much trouble figuring out that true military vehicles would not be a good fit for city streets.
At the very least, it suggests that they were having trouble reading a specifications sheet, or inferring the sheer size of a vehicle or weapon, from the drawing. Sounds like departments like New London, CT need to relax their prohibitions of intelligent people joining the force (this is a fact; they limit officers, hence chiefs, to average intelligence. No kidding). Someone who can figure out that a 10-12′ tall vehicle ain’t exactly going to be what you want in the city.
For that matter, if indeed nerdbert is correct that officers are trying to apprehend suspects while carrying an M14 or M16, I’d suggest those officers need a refresher course in tactics. You can’t be carrying such a weapon in your arms–really the only place to do so–without clearly conveying a willingness to kill the person you’re chasing. Little bit different from Barney Fife with the revolver in the holster, to put it mildly.
BB, you should take a look at how those things are used. Rifles are used in very special cases by cops generally. In most cases where cops are pulling out rifles you’ve got sprints over shorter distances when the case goes from one of paramilitary-style raids to chases of escapees. They have those weapons there to intimidate more than anything else; after all, the .223 round is not the most effective killer, you’d be far better off with a shotgun. But when things go south and the bad guys run you’re not going to leave your weapon behind to chase someone, so you’re stuck running after a “youth” with a rifle in hand.
Sounds like a problem where they’re using a SWAT team to handle something that even Barney could have dealt with, nerdbert. :^) Again, question of tactics.
Near as I can tell, this traces back to two things:
1) A wave of cops who served in the Gulf War, and came home and joined the police at the height of the inner-city crack “epidemic”. Murder rates were high (this was the era of “Murderapolis”), people were panicking about violent crime, and a generation of cops grew up with a culture that became even more “us against them” than it had already been.
2) Criminal firepower underwent a quantum leap. Crooks that had used revolvers and sawed-off shotguns were hitting the streets with 17-round Glocks and much more. I think the SWAT community got especially freaked out by an infamous bank robbery in NOrth Hollywood in the mid-nineties, where two gunmen in heavy (and homemade) body armor and carrying an array of black guns (AKs, ARs, and an H&K 91, the the German equivalent of an M14) got into an extended firefight with a whole slew of cops armed with revolvers – and beat them back, for a long, long time. I imagine every cop in America saw that video and thought “I need more firepower”. Hell, that video probably knocked revolver market share off by 8% all by itself. I can imagine every police chief imagining the same thing in his jurisdiction. If they were my cops, I’d wanna gun up too.
IMO, if one puts a bi-pod on the end of an M-14, they have a nice equivalent to a BAR.
I just took possession of a brand spanking new Springfield M14 in July. I don’t find it heavy at at all…the targets look like they have been carrying a load though.
swiftee; It’s not heavy to the regular Joes like us that shoot it a couple of times a week, but hump it around all day while slogging through rice paddies (swamps) and dense jungle (heavily wooded areas) and it will feel like it weighs 50 lbs. real fast.
“Too heavy for practical use?” They weight eight pounds.
Basic RRA A4 black rifle is 8.2#’s. Add all the doodads to make it tacticool and you’ll be pushing 10+. I don’t think LE are opting for plastic 6# Bushmasters and Windhams.
Even if its heavy at 10 + pounds I’ll take the SA M1A SOCOM II. Mounted with a Shepherd scope I’ve put a full magazine in a silver dollar size hole at 300 yds. with .308 Win ammo. Accuracy and power for sure.
police need CQB weapons, not tack drivers. They are clueless!