We all need politically incorrect, self-loading rifles
Tam:
How come some of the very same people on my side who spend a lot of their time pointing out that AR-15s and semiauto AKs and the like are just “sport utility rifles” and totally constitutional for a citizen to own then turn around and lose their feces over the police having AR-15s because it’s “paramilitary”?
I agree. Police should have rifles that are effective.
September 20th, 2010 at 9:21 am
The difference, of course, is that the police version is full auto while my version is semi-auto.
A semi-auto rifle is a semi-auto rifle.
A fully auto rifle is not a semi-auto rifle.
September 20th, 2010 at 9:26 am
That’s a straw man argument. Who, specifically, is making the argument that they should be allowed to have an AR, but the police shouldn’t?
The objection usually isn’t to the police having ARs, it’s to police being able to have full-auto MP5s, M-16s, and other weapons that have been all but outlawed for the average citizen.
Police officers are just normal people wearing badges. If politicians can’t trust their civilians with a certain type of weapon, then the civilians who make up the police force should also not be trusted.
The police should only be allowed to buy and use weapons that can be legally possessed in their locality.
September 20th, 2010 at 9:31 am
Bullseye!
Give that man a blog!
September 20th, 2010 at 9:32 am
I say give ’em battons and White gloves. It will do away with the accidental shooting and the overly aggressive attitude when we carry and they don’t.
Seriously, I agree there is no reason for civilians and police officers to both have AR’s. If civilians cant get post 1960’s full autos neither can the LEO’s. If they want to pay the price, and get a tax stamp to have the thing go to the evidence locker the first time they use it at work that’s their choice.
September 20th, 2010 at 10:46 am
I think the no-knock warrants and potentially other tactics are the real complaint, and the AR’s serve as a symbol of that, especially to those who have not yet considered the situation in detail…
September 20th, 2010 at 10:54 am
…but, of course, TD _is_ absolutely correct…sorry it took me two tries to say it right..
September 20th, 2010 at 11:13 am
I believe that the laws in nearly all locations make special exceptions for police possessing those weapons as part of their job. Now if you want to be a little more specific and state “legally possessed by regular citizens” I’d agree that that is more appropriate.
I’m going to go with Don on the tactics part. No-knock raids are so heavily over utilized that people are being killed and injured, not to mention their property destroyed, by the inappropriate use.
September 20th, 2010 at 11:30 am
I’ll have to disagree. I cannot think of any situation where the police should have/need _full_ auto rifles. They should be restricted to semi auto.
The “common” citizen on the other hand should have whatever said citizen desires. That would include full auto. And the restriction against police having full auto only applies to their _official_ work; as individuals, they can have whatever they want too.
September 20th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
+1 for TD, that’s what I was going to say. The law should be that the police should have the same rights to weapons as we do, no more, no less.
September 20th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Although the SWAT guys have full auto, most of the times when I read about “patrol rifles” they are semi-auto AR15s. With that in mind though, I agree that the cops shouldn’t have weapons that are denied the average citizen.
September 20th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
“veeshir”,
Sure about that? All of them? Even most of them?
All the cops at the carbine class I just attended had semiauto patrol carbines. Were they all in the minority?
TD,
Well, people in the linked thread…
September 20th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
“trackerk”,
I agree 100%. In a jurisdiction where civilians are denied full-auto, then Citizens On Patrol should be denied them, too.
September 20th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
I think that police should be issued a longgun that supports the same magazines and ammunition as their carry pistol.
September 20th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Pat: An “AR-15” is not a machinegun.
An M-16 or M-4 is.
Both cops and civilians have excellent reasons to have a carbine. (Heck, I think both have excellent reasons to have M-4s, but the NFA makes that difficult for the civilians.)
September 20th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
I completely disagree with allowing the cops to have full auto regardless of whether a civilian can own unless they go through the same things a civy does to buy and possess one. Yes the whole you have to have tell the batf in advance if you move the things off of your personal property routine.
September 20th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Actually Pat the original ar-15’s are machine guns. They became the m-16 only after the army grabbed them. The weapon from stoner was ar-15 and they were select fire.
September 20th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Okay, I would suggest that people who are happy with regular citizens owning an AR are not upset with a cop having a semi-auto AR.
I would say that people who don’t want the cops to have a semi-auto AR don’t want me to have one either.
I know that when I read someone talking about “paramilitary” guns, I’m thinking full auto.
So saying people are upset with cops getting semi-auto rifles is pretty much a strawman argument.
The ones who are against them having semi-autos mostly don’t want anybody to have them or are against cops having guns period.
September 20th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
It seems funny to me that the citizen owned AR-15 is an assault rifle, but when the cops own them they are
“patrol rifles”
September 20th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Setting aside any argument I’d make over whether there should even be cops…
I found it very amusing when the term “patrol rifle” started popping up, because a good number of the same people who don’t think “civilians” (I hate that word in this context) should be allowed to have “assault weapons” think it’s just scandalous that the cops they think are protecting them don’t have all the “patrol rifles” they want.
Having said that, I’ll admit I found Tam’s statement confusing because I don’t know of any gun-rights advocates who don’t think cops should have access to AR-15s. At least, unless the cops in a particular jurisdiction are being paid to deny that right to the people they’re supposedly protecting. In which case, I personally think they should be issued Nerf guns.
September 20th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Joel,
I was being deliberate in my usage of the term “civilian” in the above comment, since it applies to the po-po, too.
And I’ve seen plenty of people on internet gun boards over the years go on at length defending the ownership of medium-caliber self-loading rifles for their practicality in self-defense situations, and then turn around and deride a picture of some random cop with an AR as a “ninja” or “jbt” or whatever, regardless of its applicability to the situation at hand.
You know me well enough to know that I’m no cheerleader for ski-masked thuggery, but at the same time, I think a good shoot is a good shoot, whether it was done with a .38 or an AK, and whether it was done by Joe Sixpack or Deputy Sixpack. (And knowing the capabilities of the average shooter, I’d much rather they have something with a shoulder stock and a long sight radius, if at all practicable, if they’re going to start slinging lead around Mayberry.)
September 21st, 2010 at 12:22 pm
What upsets me is that, if I have a semi-auto M4, it’s an evil assault rifle, with no purpose other than killing lots of people. But if a cop has a select-fire M4 (yes, I know they aren’t all select-fire), it’s a patrol rifle.
So it’s not that they have them. It’s the MSM spin that is so annoying.