Scary black guns for Boston PD? No, says Mayor.
I’m conflicted over this story sent to us by Jerry920 from Fox News in which the Boston Mayor-elect Martin Walsh, opposes arming some local police with AR-type rifles. While I’m concerned that police are beginning to look more and more like an occupying force, what with their black, military style clothes and military-style weapons, I don’t think that politicians are the people who should make the decision how they should be armed;
The Boston Police Department had been pushing for a limited number of officers to carry the high-powered rifles, in light of recent mass shootings as well as the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this year.
But after the incoming mayor initially stayed mum on the idea, a spokeswoman for Walsh told the Boston Herald he’s not on board — not yet, anyway.
“Mayor-elect Walsh is opposed to the AR-15 rifles,” she was quoted as saying. “Unless otherwise convinced by the Boston Police Department, he does not think they are necessary.”
The plan is to arm 22 officers on the Boston PD force with AR-15 style weapons (the scariest looking weapons). Now if they had planned to arm every single patrol officer with an M4 slung across his chest, I might have a bigger problem with it, but it’s to arm a very small percentage of officers, who one day might need the large ammunition capacity weapons. And if having those officers available as one tool in their box to fight crime on one occasion in the coming years saves a life or two, I think it’s probably worth it.
But for a politician to arbitrarily make the statement “I don’t believe arming them with assault weapons is going to make them any safer,” like City Councilor Charles Yancey said, is just myopic. Of course, all of those police organizations who lined up behind the “assault weapon ban” brought all of this irrational fear of the guns in the first place and they’re partly at fault.
Category: Crime, Liberals suck
What the hell is with these dumb asses? Do they forget LA when the two heavily armed bank robbers with body armor held off countless officers, some with AR-15 style weapons and more. This is PC at its very best, which will be the very worst for the people of Boston. Why not make their job a little harder, just stencil “No AR-15 In This Patrol Car” on the side. I am quickly loosing faith in the guts and fortitude I find in America. Liberals are off the rails to the Nth degree. I WANT criminals to be afraid of the police and how they are armed. I want to know they are armed to the teeth for my protection because I have nothing to fear from them. All the Mayor of Boston is doing is helping the criminals out.
Money quote:
“I don’t believe arming them with assault weapons is going to make them any safer,”
Steel on target. Memo to libtards–cops aren’t armed to make YOU safer, they’re armed to make THEMSELVES safer. Kinda like why we arm ourselves.
Even a liberal can be right once in a while. Not often, but sometimes. Yes, we’ll just sit back and listen to your heads explode now.
Oh, and anyone who thinks another North Hollywood type scenario can’t happen in Boston, raise your hand.
give them all wiffle ball bats! just like the damn few episode! that will solve aeverything
I guess the question to ask is: What situations have the officers of the Boston PD been in that having an AR would have helped?
George V
Stupid Liberal Tricks…
Under the plan, according to MyFoxBoston.com, the city would buy 33 AR-15 rifles, at $2,500 apiece. They would go to two trained officers in all 11 districts of Boston.
$2500 a pop? Someone isn’t shopping very smart, now are they?
@6 it is Boston.. they love spending the peoples money. Not like you or I who are going to actually spend a little wiser. Probably had all the bells and whistles too though. As well as those illegal in Massachusetts collapsable stocks, flash suppressors, 30 round post ban magazines…
lol isn’t this what fucking swat teams are for?
Both and the Mayor and the PD are retarded.
@1: Proponents of a heavily armed police force have used the LA bank robbers as the prime example too many times. How many more shootouts like that have there been? Neither robber was taken out by AR-15s. One was taken out by a sniper with a bolt action hunting rifle and the other took himself deep. How many of the shooters in massacres in the last 20 years were taken out by heavily armed SWAT teams, that you always see on the news after the fact, strolling around in their finest tacticool equipment? How many were taken out by cops with AR-15s? How many times did up-armored Humvees in the hands of law enforcement become necessary?
I, like Jonn, am conflicted on this one, because I see the need for the cops to have some of the equipment, but I see too much of it being un-necessary for law enforcement and am tired of the LA bank robbery being waved around as the reason for all of it. I have endorsed my Legion Post giving funds to my local police dept. to help them obtain AR-15s to replace their aging 9mm stuff in their squads. I don’t have a problem with them having ARs as squad equipment, just like the standard shotgun in the squad, but I do have a problem when you have most of your force walking around looking like they’re vying for the cover of tacticool monthly. Yes, I understand having something and not needing it versus needing it and not having it, but when youre spending my money to get it; you had better have more examples than one that took place 20 years ago and not in my State.
OT–I can (sorta) understand why the police/LEO’s have to get more/better weapons, North Hollywood being only one example. When the druggies start sporting AK’s, etc., what other choice does law enforcement have if they want to have even the slightest chance going up against those guys?
That being said, however, when the police turn those guns on ordinary law-abiding citizens (**cough cough** Jose Guerena **cough cough**) on the mere SUSPICION (and a false one at that) of wrongdoing, then we’ve got an issue. When jerkwater towns like Keene, NH, get $300K in federal money to buy an armored vehicle, for what? Round up those hippies feeding the parking meters so the town loses a revenue stream?
Sadly, cops have lost their policing skills and relied far too heavily on firepower they never should have needed or used on lesser threats. YMMV.
There are VERY limited circumstances in which serious firepower is needed by police. When officers are hit, it’s usually up close and personal, and spontaneous, not from distance and not with prior notice of an impending gun battle. But cops like toys and all like the psychological feel-good of having the biggest, baddest shit around.
@6
Bad shopping? When I was a police chief, got 2 M-16A1’s from the Army, at no cost. The military is still giving stuff away to police and fire departments.
Well, I would have cops armed solely with a revolver, and add a shotgun for every squad car.
To my mind, if the citizen is forbidden from owning it, then so should all the cops. Make every cop follow every law on the books, from having to attend firearms safety courses, to keeping his weapon unloaded and in a safe when at home, to being forbidden to carry one into a school, or jail or courthouse, etc. Whatever stupid, craptacular law your stupid craptacular state puts on it’s books, every cop from the chief on down should be required to follow it. No exceptions, for any reason, while the law(s) are in force.
But that’s just me. As others here know, i am opposed to ALL firearm laws. You should be able to own and carry anything you can afford. The only place you shouldn’t have the right to carry, whether open or concealed, is on private property where the owner posts it as a “Gun Free” property. I can support that.
To my mind, Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms belong on store shelves and not as a government agency.
YMMV, but that’s how I see things.
Just for the heck of it, I googled “police used ar15”. There are several stories about how police used an AR15 to stop the Navy Yard shooter. After clicking “next” a bunch of times I haven’t seen a different story about police use of an AR15.
Can anyone point me to a better site or suggest a more-productive search argument? There are many stories about police departments buying them, few about their use by police.
Or, is this like the rest of the country — that is, there are 300 million guns and VERY few of them are used in crimes. Maybe the police have a shitload of them and they are VERY rarely used?
FWIW, the only tactical use I can come up with is suppression. If you need something accurate for sniper work, the AR is okay but there is more to deploying a police sniper than just having a rifle. Did I miss something ?
Back in the mid-90’s, when the Clinto Administration got Congress to ram through the “Assault Weapons” ban, someone wrote an article in one of the major daily papers comparing the list of “To Ban” weapons with the FBI’s survey data.
Apparently, the FBI had (and I suppose still does) a survey of those arrested with a firearm. They had gone into the prisons to ask those convicted of felonies what their preferred weapon was.
Of the top 10 weapons mentioned by felons in the FBI survey, only ONE, the Tech-9 Pistol was on Congress’ “To Ban” list. It reenforced the opinion that I, and so many others have, that this is all about “scary weapons” and not actual functioning. It about disarming civilians rather than providing safe neighborhoods. In other words, it’s about control by the government, and nothing more.
BTW, the #1 weapon on the list was a .38 revolver because it was easy to conceal and control, plus ammo was inexpensive. The 12 gauge shotgun was also on there because, as was often remarked by the prisoners, they rarely had to load it. The size of the bore was sufficient to cause people to respond in the manner desired.
Here is BATF’s survey from the year 2000. Similar results.
http://www.tonyrogers.com/news/top_10_crime_guns.htm
As usual, Gun Control has nothing to do with guns, it’s all about people control! Tyrants and Dictators, wannabe and otherwise, prefer unarmed peasants by a 10 to 9 margin! Hey liberals, do us a favor, STAY THERE, do not migrate, and do not reproduce!
#8 FC0311,
My thought(s) exactly, don’t the Boston Finest already have a SWAT team? That’s enough ARs for now.
And if Hizzonor is going to be afraid of Teh Big Black Scary Gunzzz, I wonder when he will form a committee to take away the Bo-po-po’s Eeeeeevil Black Plastic Glocks, and issue good ol’ all-steel 6 shot revolvers??
@8 – SWAT teams are great…for preplanned situations. For a rapidly developing situation, like an active shooter, the patrol officers who work the area where the incident occurs are going to be the first ones on scene. I’m not saying every officer out on the street needs to have an AR-15, but a couple assigned to each squad would go a long ways. God forbid we have a Mumbai style attack on a soft target stateside (mall, museum, etc), and the local PD has been constrained like the mayor-elect is trying to do here.
If the Citizens can’t have them, neither should the police. Sorry BPD, GLAFY.
I too have mixed feelings here. I’d like to see every cop have an AR-15 in the car (even more, though, this being California, I’d like to see the asinine regulations on them that apply to civilian ownership repealed). Even if the perps have only got Saturday Night Specials, it just seems like it’s better to have them outgunned than under, or even on the same level. I’m sure you guys would feel the same way; there’s a fair number or maybe even a majority, of combat veterans on this blog. Forgive this civvie’s speculation, but would you guys want to shuck artillery, tank, and air support just because you probably wouldn’t need it as a matter of life and death in the average firefight or IED explosion? Part of the reason (hell, the MAIN reason) the US consistently crushes anyone who tries to stand against it in a straight fight is because we have such overwhelming firepower and it’s so coordinated. It’s not supposed to be a fair fight. In the same way, even though they probably would never need it, it seems better to have the cops way over-gunning the bad guys in the fight; it save lives that might be lost if more finesse had to be used because they had lighter weaponry.
That said, a lot of these guys cops really need to have their noses rubbed in reality. I’ve seen cops walk down the street with ankle holsters, .44 magnums, chest bandoliers full of handgun mags, and swat-level body armor. Even a Randall survivor knife and some web gear once. Note to them; you are not patrolling the streets of Kabul or the dusty highways of Helmand province, you are patrolling the streets of middle America. Please quit scaring women and kids by buying into Bushmaster’s man card hype and take what you need and nothing more. And just because you have heavy firepower like the AR-15 I want you to have, doesn’t mean you need to take it with you when you walk down the street for a doughnut.
Those empowered to wage war and those empowered to enforce law require different tools to perform their respective duties. When, for any reason, real or imagined, the tools of war become the tools of domestic law enforcement, the vital and essential distinction between warriors and police officers begins to fade. And that is what bothers most of us about the tools of war being in the hands of our domestic law enforcers. And it damn well should bother us.
@22—You’re absolutely right. However, IMHO, there is a balance to be struck. The reason they started forming SWAT teams was in response to the Texas Tower Sniper, Charles Whitman. That was one instance where the small-town howdy-doody revolver and 12-gauge police force failed miserably, and there are others, like the North Hollywood bank robbery, and the ’30s gangsters (the rural police were so outgunned by outlaws like Bonnie and Clyde and Baby Face Nelson it was insane). When you are racing to the local airstrip to rent out a crop duster and basically doing repeated fly-by shootings of the Texas Tower to try and hit the shooter, and relying on civilians with surplus deer rifles to provide fire support, something has to change. Having SWAT teams and a somewhat military-esque police force is somewhat like owning a gun for self-protection in the first place—you probably will never need it, you hope you will never need it, but if you DO need it, you NEED it.
However, you are correct that the steps some PD’s are taking are absolutely ridiculous. No small town needs a Bearcat APC to serve warrants. The OSU campus police do not need surplus Cougar MRAPs to handle drunk hippies, overly-ramped up college students, and stoners. I think limiting those kind of excesses would be a great start. Every PD should have to write a business case when asking for old military hardware on why it is necessary.
Total bullshit. I guess shotguns are just viewed as popguns by the discerning criminal. Actually, when I was a cop, if I had bought a long gun, it would have been a shotgun. There’s something about racking the slide that gets people’s attention.
But, my department was nice enough to provide both AR’s and 870Ps in our district armory.
“That [the Texas Tower shooting] was one instance where the small-town howdy-doody revolver and 12-gauge police force failed miserably….”
Charles Whitman was felled by a 12-gauge shotgun and was, immediately before he was blasted, distracted by shots from that howdy-doody revolver. How is that failure?
Isn’t there a revolver that has a cylinder that can be switched out with another one, as easily as a magazine can be switched?
@26. Over the years there have been many but they proved impractical. If you drop your speedloader, you can grab another. If you drop your second cylinder, you can grab it too–and hope the hell the rounds are still in it (they won’t be) and that the cylinder is undamaged if it dropped on the street. Speedloaders do the job, w/o risk of rounds dropping out. And well practiced users can do reload in the blink of an eye.
@ #27: And those speedloaders for revolvers can still be used after being stepped on, dropped, cracked and otherwise broken. Or so I’ve heard.
@26 – sorry, ma’am, the last time people carried spare loaded cylinders was in the Civil War – especially on the 1858/1862 Remington revolver, it was far easier to swap out the cylinder than to load one. Since cartridges became metallic, speedloaders and full-moon clips are the way to go and almost as fast as swapping magazines in a semiautomatic.
They are, however, just as bulky, fragile, and awkward to use if the shooter doesn’t practice, as a magazine can be. The one absolutely fastest reload still remains the same – a second loaded gun.