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Jerry Dunleavy says:

“That said, their apearance in the drug dealing scene in the 1980s is a fact”

The existance of AK look alikes (or any other so called “assault weapons”) in any more than a handful of gang related crimes during the 80's is a myth – there is simply no evidence to support it. This can be readily established by reviewing Federal murder and violent crime statistics for the period. The overwhelming majority of gun related crime (generally around 80% in any year of the 80's or 90's) employed hand guns – no surprise because of consealability. During these years, typically 10% of all gun related crime involved shotguns, 10% rifles of all types – semi auto, lever, bold, and slide. Pull out the 22 auto loading plinkers like the Ruger 10/22 and rifle crime drops by about half. If you look at only look at semi auto center fire rifles, you are talking a small fraction of these cases a year. So called “assualt weapons” – maybe a handful of crimes a year. No proliferation, although there were plenty of polititians, some of them police chiefs, that would make you want to think otherwise.

Case in point – I remember a 1990 or so news conference put on by the Chief of Police in Oakland, which featured a display of all of the deadly firepower (assault weapons) that had presumably been threatening the police and had been taken off of the streets. (At the time he was shilling big time for the first attempt at passing an “assault weapon” ban during Bush I). Anyway, after the fact it was revealed that the city had no captured “assault weapons” to display – they had been borrowed from a gun store for effect.

In the same vein, the chief of police in Miami was quoted talking about the wide spread mahem caused by automatic “AK-47s”; “grandmothers and children were being greased along with the gangbangers” was, I think, the quote. Problem was NOBODY in Miami had been killed with any automatic weapons, and no police officer or civilian had been killed with any gangbangers with “assault weapons”.

“a fact and police who spend a much higher time around crooks than regular people are more likely to feel the impact of firepower upgrades”

Actually, there is little evidence that regular cops either advocate for a great deal of additional firepower or significant gun control. Police chiefs and other politicians certainly do, but rarely regular cops. Certainly a lot of the officers that I know were happy to move up to large capacity 9mm pistols from revolvers during the 80's (particularly after the introduction of effective 147 grn rounds), but that was more an issue of minimizing potential reloading than anything else – 9mm loads range in effectiveness comparable to typical .38 loads to .38 +P. In other words, 9mm pistols were not more effective stoppers than the revolvers they replaced, only larger capacity and faster to reload. Since the vast majority of shootings take place at less than 5 yards and involve less than 5 shots total from all parties, the actual (as opposed to theoretical) affect of large capacity magazines and such is probably pretty small.

For this reason, it's not surprising to find that the FBI had, for many years, used primarily .357 revolvers, even when automatic weapons of all sorts were available. The large scale move to pistols only took place after Hoover's death, reflected the entry to the marketplace of a number of new autoloading models, and, incidently parralled a decline in the general level of shooting skills among agents (at least according to G Gordon Liddy) And, after flirting with high capacity 9s and then moving to 10mm and 40 caliber pistols after the Miami shooting, many federal officers are returning to variations on the .45 1911, or modern DAO .45s – 100 year old designs with smaller capacity, but more effective rounds, requiring greater emphasis on shooting skill rather than volume of fire.

“I think 223 is the way to go and that “shotguns” would have not gotten the job done at all in North Hollywood.”

Read up on the incident – police borrowed 4 firearms from B & B Sporting goods – 2 Bushmaster rifles (semi-auto AR clones in .223) and 2 12 gauge shotguns. Moreover, given the limited utility of automatic weapons over semi-autos in law enforcement, why is a .223 (developed to provide low recoil for controllable auto fire, and a very poor stopper when used in a barrel of less than 18 inches in length – an M4 barrel is usually 14) preferable to other available cartridges?

“The M4 has since become standard, in part due to the North Hollywood shootout”

Since the M4 didn't settle the incident, it's not clear how you or anyone else can make this leap. The M4 has more likely become a standard due to the provision of a great deal of military technology – including small arms – to local police departments during the 90's. Question – why do you feel that an M4 is the way to go over, say, a Ruger Mini 14, since the latter fires the same round, costs half as much, and was adopted as the standard general distribution ploice rifle by the NYPD?

In fact, let's extend the thinking using current experiance in Iraq. As the war moved from rapid military action to what it is now – a period of consolidation, patrol, training, information network building, and aggressive actions in urban areas against small groups of nasty thugs, the small arms preferred by the troops has changed. While guys in armor and air mobile like the M-4 because of it's small size and large amounts of short range firepower, and carry large capacity 9mm pistols as standard, the move from fast moving combat to urban patrol (military policing) has made these firarms less desirable. Examination of military blogs, e-mails, and commentaries indicate the the preferred weapons at this stage of activity (a stage more akin to a war on gangs than a war aginst other armies)include 1911 .45 pistols (7 round magazine instead of 15), the old M-14 (.308, almost always in semi-auto only, cut down to a 16 – 18 inch barrel when possible and looking a lot like the civilian offerings from Springfield Armory)and, especially, 12 guage shotguns, which are in such demand that it is not uncommon for soldiers to buy their own.

In other words, the preferred small arms for MOUT are often more like what a civilian police department might use than an airborne division. Which raises the question – why do we want our civilian police departments armed more like airborne divisions?

This also reflects the question that I asked earlier with regards to the NH shooting – if class III sub guns are not as effective as century old hunting rifles for stopping precisely the sorts of incidents that justify SWAT teams, why are we using class III sub guns?

“I do however think we should not disarm cops either.”

I have never suggested that we should disarm police. Rather, if you review what I actually said, I believe that they should be armed appropriately. If civilian firearms are better for the job than actual Class III military weapons, then they should be using civilian firearms.

Look, I come from a long line of police officers – my father and grandfather were both NYPD. My dad was there 26 years (after participating in WWII and Korea in the Marine Corp). I'm certainly not anti cop, I was raised around firearms, and I'm a collecter and shooter now. That said, most of my biases against the militarization of police forces are practical in nature and based upon my father's observations and my own take on tactical effectiveness.

While the current SWAT concept dates from the 60's and 70's, the NYPD had long run it's own Emergency Services Division. While specialized around training for the activities that SWAT performs, they never adopted the para-military styling. While they certainly had access to automatic weapons (I remember holding and aiming an unloaded Thomson sub machine gun as a 10 year old while “on the job” with my dad at E-2) few of the officers cared to use them – to much potential for collateral damage.The 12 Guage was the weapon of choice and was found to be more than adequate during the riotous 60's and high drug-related crime 70's.

My dad, by the way, never had any respect for a number of other big city departments that were early adopters of the SWAT concept – LAPD and SFPD among them. While certainly some of it was parochialism, he also thought that they were covering up their incompetence as police officers under the veneer of military technology (my words, by the way, not his – his terminology was more along the lines of “they f****d up as cops, so now they want to play soldier”)

As far as the last comment being “pedantic” – as I noted, I was simply clarifying a point so as to emphasise and not confuse. I was obviously not successful

By the way, this is a fine site with excellant articles