2y ago

Ask why the cops need this

154 comments

The cops justify needing that because you have an ar15.
- Yeah, it's really not that complicated!
- If everyone gets rid of their ar-15's, do the cops sell this vehicle?
  
  They might not sell it, but they probably wouldn't get funding for buying another one.
  
  Yes, once every person in the USA voluntarily hands in every semi-auto rifle...the cops will decommission the tanks.
  
  This is a bit more obscure than that, but mostly yes.
  The real problem is that the army doesn’t want more tanks. They’ve asked congress to stop building armored vehicles. Don’t need money for tanks, want money for R&D.
  Congress love building tanks because it falsely creates jobs in their districts. So more tanks. Most of these factories are located in red districts.
  Too many tanks and they have to sell them. That’s how police can buy tanks.
  Sell all your AR15? Most AR15 owners are in red states. There are direct correlation with voting republicans and owning firearms. So if you decide to sell you AR15 it might indicate you’d switch vote? It’s a stretch but less republicans, more jobs from other types of factories (e.g. Green energy related), less money to build tanks, less armored vehicles being auctioned off to police.
- Yes, they justify it. Do they need it? No.
  
  Your statement applies to both the ar15 and the MRAP..

I can ask more than one question. They're both valid.

I can ask both. I can even ask if maybe one of the reasons cops have that is that people are more heavily armed?
- how else are they gonna arrest shop lifters?
  
  Whoa! Great point!
- Boy, if I was a school shooter, I'd hate to see this thing parked up outside at a safe distance with the engine off.
  
  All the better to observe the children being slaughtered in their safe armored vehicle.
- Exactly. One of the big outcries to upgrade police weaponry started with the North Hollywood shootout.
- What the point if everything is lethal?
  
  The police aren't a part of the community they serve, it's explicitly trained into them to treat every situation as "us" vs "them". If "they" have rifles then "we" need armored vehicles.
  Edit: to be very clear, I am not in support of police militarization.

Because people have ar15s

No one commonly owns AR15s in Australia. None of our cops have this stupid shit.
- What's more is thanks to the gun ban there, the black market cost for a glock handgun not counting ammunition is around $12,000 cash versus what, 10x less in the US?
  Now my conservative acquaintances who adore supply-side economics should understand that increasing cost inhibits demand.
  
  You can buy a glock new for $500. In Chicago you can probably get a second hand one free off a car tire if you really need it, just don't worry about it's history

It's probably because nutters are running around with ar15s!
- They are but the bigger problem is, the cops driving the war machine are part of the nutters.
- Thank you for stating the obvious. I am not being sarcastic. There is really a need nowadays to state the obvious.

Own an ATGM for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended. Police APC column rolls toward my house. "What the devil?" As I grab my powdered wig and Stugna-P. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first car, it's dead on the spot. Draw my mortar on the second car, miss it entirely because it's smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the MT-12 mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with APFSDS, "Tally ho lads" the tungsten dart shreds two cars in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix FPV drone and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the more police to arrive since multiple fragmentation wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.

"Because you're allowed to have an AR15"
- Correct. This is one part of the price of our shit gun control.

Zero civilians need AR15s unless they're planning a mass shooting.
- Or a revolution ¯(ツ)_/¯
  (agreed we're not there but that's another use of civilians owning warfare weapons)
  
  That's exactly the argument that conservatives always give for gun ownership. But like, how would they possibly overrun the largest military in the world with their personal arsenals?
  Maybe they could take a city but I can't see it being a long lasting victory.
  
  Meal team 6 ain't going to put up a fight lmao. There is zero chance these dumb random civilians have the ability or desire to kill all the cops. These are the same chuds that want police more heavily armed too and "back the blue". It would literally never happen.
  
  Lol. Try to shoot the hellfire missile with your AR 15
- I've got no horse in this race, but I'll tell you, the amount of time people spend fixating on AR-15s, when rifles in general (including AR-15s) are only responsible for 3% of gun deaths...it really doesn't give the impression that people are in command of the facts. And it doesn't seem like pretty much any characteristic of a gun being effective for a mass shooting doesn't also carry over to the gun being effective for self-defense against more than a single person. Or even a single person, for that matter. I feel like people just kind of dug their trenches on this one and nobody's really thinking too hard about it.
  
  What's a good reason why anyone needs one of these killing devices
  Nukes are also incredibly safe you look at the total amount out there and the percentage that actually blow up on cities
- Clearly you feel that way but you definitely don't speak for everyone.

Because you have an AR15.
- I feel like this is the logical next response. Shit meme.
- Yes, but they use these in Europe as well.
  
  In which country?

Seems fair to ask both questions.
- Why I need an AR-15? Because I want one.
  Why the cops need tanks? They don't.
  
  IMO "they don't" is an answer to both.
  
  I actually prefer my police able to neutralize people who have AR-15s, thanks.

They probably need it because you have an AR15.

But why do you need an AR-15? That wouldn't do much against a tank. Why not get artillery instead? 🤔
- You've got a good head on your shoulders friend.
- Yeah like a literal civil war cannon, or a modern missile system.
- The fat fucks parading around in their plate carriers frothily screaming "shall not be infringed" at traumatised school children aren't going to fire on a tank.
  Most of them won't even wear a mask in a pandemic to protect their countrymen, they're definitely not going to die in battle for them. It's who they want to be in their fantasies, not who they actually are.
  You know what a lot of them would do though? Enthusiastically vote a fascist and then fire into crowds of people protesting fascist policies.

I think it was in California in the 90s that some guys tried to rob a bank, but they had full body armour and helmets, and were armed with assault rifles and high capacity magazines. The cops were useless against them as all they had were squad cars, pistols, and a few shotguns. It was a huge wake up call for police forces across America and it didn't take long for them to start acquiring better equipment.
If you don't like the militarization of your police, then you need to do something about the militarization of your general populace.
- It was North Hollywood, with illegally modified weapons and home made body armor
  
  Thnx for the link. Didn't know their body armour was home made. That's some pretty good dedication to one's trade. Too bad they couldn't have put that talent into something constructive.
  
  How dare you point out that this is an example of weapons that have been federally prohibited for a century! Now how can people moderation fallacy their way into sounding reasonable?
  
  illegally modified
  So let's make more things illegal because it will fix everything for sure
  
  What point are you trying to draw, here?
  Taking reliable existing semi-automatic firearms and modifying to fully automatic still would not be feasible for these dunces if they were starting out from scratch (at least not with any semblance of reliability from an engineer's standpoint). Finally, should be noted that there's little reason the outcome would've been different had they been semi-automatic, considering ammunition waste and less attention to accuracy. If their goals were that of the Aurora shooter, then that would be different.
  "home made body armor" implies they made it from scratch. No. They used several vests worth of manufactured body armor to make full body armor.
- This is the stupidest thing I've ever read on the internet. Sure give up all your rights as a citizen based on one (probably fake, but either way) story about a single supposed situation where someone outgunned the police
  Fucking bootlicker
  
  Ah yeah, I remember giving up my rights as a citizen in 1996 when Thomas Hamilton outgunned a bunch of children in a primary school
  We seem to be doing just fine here without our rights, oddly enough, along with the rest of modernity
  
  I think having some higher power weapons for law enforcement in case it ever comes to that is (while related) a different problem than police militarization. I think the best bet would to be have specialized units for those extreme cases they could reasonably deploy in a timely/effective manner. Every cop having access to surplus military gear is a huge problem and I wish weren't to a point where having specific units was even a necessity.
  
  Pointing out the likely catalyst that triggered all of the police militarization makes me a bootlicker?
  Well that's one way to missinterpret things!

Why not ask both?
- The person who made the meme can only think of one thing at a time. Probably hormones.

I mean… “¿Porque no los dos?” Neither should exist in civilian hands. A MRAP has no use for civilian police nor does an AR15 have any use for a civilian.

Maybe because of people like you, armed to the teeth for no rational reason whatsoever?
- Yes, cops need tanks to beat AR-15s, not because they're an occupation force that exists to ensure the oligarchy can't be threatened.

This highlights a weird side effect of weapons rights. The right to own weapons by the citizens to protect themselves from government tyranny, combined with the need for law enforcement to arm themselves adequately against heavily armed citizens breaking the law, becomes an arms race between the citizens and their country, with whoever is better funded being the winner.
Telling the citizens to drop their weapons doesn't mean the cops drop theirs. Telling the cops to stop arming themselves against citizens just sends them to their death during confrontations.
I suggest we all go play video games instead
- But didn't you hear? Video games is the root cause of all of this!
  
  Yep there were never shootings before violent video games.
  
  Most of that hysteria was about GTA, which in hindsight is really a pretty deep satire of the violent American mentality. Kinda the classic "freaking out about how we should censor a creative work we don't understand" thing.
- arms race between the citizens and their country, with whoever is better funded being the winner.
  The real winner, are weapon manufacturers.

Pretty sure the answer to both is little peepees.
- Cool it with the toxic masculinity

Neither is needed. Fuck.

Wasn't these basically donated because the military had too many? I understand them completely. The SWAT units needs armored trucks, even in Sweden they have Sandcats. The options were these extremely cheap former military MRAPs that are bulletproof, or buy armored civilian vehicles which costs multiple hundreds of thousands.
I'd bark up the tree of military spending rather than the police accepting hand-me-downs.

why not both?

As others have said, both questions are completely valid. However- at this point- no one should expect a reasonable answer to either from anyone that is asked.

Probably one is because of the other, dontcha think?
- Police militarization is not because of citizens having arms. Rather, overproduction by the military trickles down into surplus sales to domestic police, and they eagerly gobble it up for various reasons such as "they like power", "they like to feel like big men", etc. They aren't outgunned against anything besides a civilian uprising.

My best guess is that this is just one of many things they were able to grt acceas to using federal subsidy programs. The very famous Obama-era 1033, but also The Department of Homeland Security's "Urban Areas Security Initiative".
We all know that they can be used by SWAT, ATF, etc. When it may be needed - but they also get used to intimidate protestors and violate their rights.

Okay, but why do you need an AR-15?

The wildest thing the police in Denmark have is a slightly modified old mercedes minibus or something with bullet proof windows and tough tyres etc
https://blog.bilbasen.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/MIK-Sikret-indsatsk%C3%B8ret%C3%B8j-Mandskabsvogn.HOLL%C3%86NDER1-1-1024x683.jpg
Apart from that one vehicle they have some mini busses and such for transporting. But they arent really special, or built specifically for the police or whatever.
- Det altid spændende når salatfadet sendes ud
- That would make a great camper conversion.

Something something Killdozer something something...
https://youtu.be/8OzKxKdsBq8

We want an APC but can't you make it look like 40% more Mad Max?
- I'm probably wrong, I thought this was an MRAP.

A false dilemma crossed with whataboutisms and cherry-picking.
Did I get it right? There's a lot of bad-faith arguments going on there so I may have missed one.

So Steven Seagal can run over your dog, next question.

lol, I got a tank
- Get out of the tank!

they get it for free once the military is not using it anymore
- 1033 program. Because I guess the police unions weren't acting enough like local occupational juntas, apparently

itt: those in the priveledged position to rely on the state for defense of self and community would rob others of the ability to enforce their bodily autonomy and community defense.
'only the [fascist] cops should be armed' brain worms,
enforcing the capital owning class' monopoly of violence (against ourselves),
a negative peace at the expense of justice.
you know-- bootlickers.

To defend against the tools with arsenals of weapons based on military ones? I mean, neither should be a thing in this society, but here we are.

The only thing keeping the American government from full on tyrany is the first amendment. The only thing keeping the American government from abolishing the first amendment is the second.

Mexico?
- That's from Pulaski County Arkansas. Former Confederate State just doing former Confederate State things.

154 comments