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DC police to get "assault weapons"
Story here.
Strange part is that the firearms sound like M-16s and M-4s converted over to semiauto. (1) surplus may be cheap, but unless they replace the receiver it's legally a full auto no matter what you do to convert it; (2) military M-4 cost around $1500, whereas AR-15 clones can be had for half that (and probably still less if you're buying in this sort of quantity); (3) has the government stopped buying M-4s at that price, since it apparently is selling off a surplus of them?
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"Thanks to military surplus, the Metropolitan Police Department is converting hundreds of military automatic weapons into semi-automatic rifles"
'Converting hundreds of military automatic weapons' is like trying to make a pig's ear out of a silk purse. I would rather see Congress declare DC a military occupation zone, wall it off like Sadr City, and go house to house with machine guns looking for drugs and civilian owned guns. The Katrina confiscations actually worked in spite of the post-recovery lawsuits. Guns were taken, guns were kept.
Let's get on with it, shall we? Let them strike the first blow and see if the people can draw the line. Posse Commitatus has been repealed, we all know this is the wave of the future and everyone in Congress would feel much safer -- which after all is the important thing.
No? OK, how do you stop DC from buying machine guns and coverting them? We know: 1) It's immoral, 2) DC doesn't really care about the Constitution, and 3) Laws are made for the rest of us. Do you think Speaker Pelosi will speak out against this? I'm betting on 'nope.'
By the way, loved the ACLU quote: ""Well, of course the police have a right to protect themselves. They protect citizens so if they can't protect themselves, they can not protect citizens." Oh. If the people can't protect themselves, then ...?
How bout dat? Two cities where guns are banned to the ordinary citizen and both want "assault rifles" for their police forces and APC's in Chicago's case. All because their cities are so peaceful and crime free, what with guns being banned and all.
Instead of strengthening the ability of the citizen to protect himself, their response is to mobilize a military force to crush everybody alike. Somehow I don't think that equality under the law is exactly translates to this.
I guess there is a case to be made that it is democratic, after all, the cops will crush the freedom of everyone, no favorites under the law there. Ain't democracy grand?
Photos in the Washington Post of police training on the 'new' rifles at a range pretty clearly shows that MPD got older M-16A1s. Not M-4s or other newer variants.
Of course law enforcement agencies are exempt from the relevant NFA and 922(o) prohibitions on possessing machineguns, so there's technically no need for MPD to convert these rifles to semi-auto (and doing so wouldn't change their NFA status anyway). But having spent too many years reading about (and sometimes directly witnessing) the general level of incompetence of the MPD, frankly I'm relieved they're doing something, no matter how small, to inhibit their ability to mindlessly just "spray and pray."
What's more interesting is the ACLU's comments within. Are they realizing they may have to warm up to the 2nd Amendment or they'll obviously look incongruent?