Thirded. Please make it stop.
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At the bottom of the linked article, they gave a list of the surplus military items in each county. 4,404 items in total (seems to be mostly rifles). In Indiana, population 6.5 million. Thatâs one military item per 1,476 residents. Are they planning on gunning down the entire state?
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I wasnât able to tell from the article if those were removed or not. The BAE Systems Caiman MRAP definitely comes with a turret(not fully enclosed; but with armor panels to protect the gunner) and a 7.62 or 12.7mm machine gun by default, other packages available.
Iâd hope that theyâd be smart enough not to let the warlords of hickistan run around with that sort of gear; but it didnât say.
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The fuel economy leaves something to be desired as well. Single-digit MPG numbers are definitely a possibility with the heavier ones.
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Now all we have to do is remedy the its/itâs situation, and weâre golden.
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It does have a turret.
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So do battleships and castles.
You are missing the point. This is a personnel carrier. It is not a front-line tracked attack machine designed to kill other armored units or pummel bunkers with an actual cannon. Therefore, it is not a tank. It is simply an armored car that has a protected machine gun turret so that it can survive an ambush. It is designed to move troops from point A to point B and survive ambushes. This is almost as bad as confusing an armed merchant marine troop transport vessel with a battleship. They are built for different missions.
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In any case, I think perhaps the most troubling part of this acquisition is that now that they have this piece of military hardware, they are going to try to justify it. People are going to die when the sheriffâs office decides to try to treat domestic confrontations as if they are a military battle.
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When I reload the http://boingboing.net/page/1 this video is auto playing.
Why do you need to do this?
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How long before it escalates, you ask?
Well, machine guns are over a century old, and RPGs are about sixty or seventy years old depending on how you define them. These things been around and available for many decades now, and we have yet to see their adoption in criminal enterprises, largely for the reasons I mentioned.
Criminals simply donât have easy enough and cheap enough access to these weapons, and the weapons themselves arenât actually useful for criminal acts - theyâre well suited to a battlefield in open warfare, but ill suited to robbing people and getting away with it.
Hell, even with the AK-47 and the RPG-7 being two of the single most numerous weapons on the planet, you simply donât see them in the hands of people who trying to make money rather than war.
But there actually is a historical precedent for military grade weapons entering into criminal usage - quite a famous precedent, actually. The Thompson submachine gun, arriving too late to be of use in the first World War, became the notorious weapon of choice for gangsters during the age of Prohibition, and later the Great Depression. Of course, the police themselves also used the gun extensively, and it would later play a massive role in the second World WarâŚ
To be fair, the adoption of the Thompson as weapon of choice for gang violence did cause something of an arms race between the criminal world and the authorities, but we all know how it ended. The mob proved quite readily that even in an atmosphere of rampant corruption, and at the height of their power, they couldnât hope to win a prolonged conflict against the government.
In fact, the chief downfall of figures like Al Capone was their hubris and over-confidence. Organized crime could have made a quiet killing, just kept their heads down and slowly gotten rich, but they got cocky and they paid for it in the end. They didnât quite learn their lesson either - they made similar mistakes later on in the 50s and 60s that cost them dearly.
Thereâs one simple, incontrovertible lesson for criminals - donât rock the boat. The quieter you are, the fewer important or powerful people you piss off, the more you can profit and get away with it. Itâs just good business sense, and at the end of the day, crime is about money.
This is why handguns are so popular. Theyâre cheap, concealable, and readily available. Theyâre useful for intimidation and self defense alike, theyâre easy to maintain, you can carry them everywhere, and (thanks to groups like the NRA championing an armed society) they donât arouse suspicion even when seen. Theyâre even so ubiquitous as to be disposeable. Itâs not at all uncommon to simply destroy a handgun after it has been used in a crime so that it canât possibly be used as evidence.
Simply put, handguns are a criminalâs best friend - so why in the world would they want bigger, heavier, more expensive, harder to find, harder to carry and use weapons that will attract way more attention?
Huh, I thought about meth labs as well. So I looked up some numbers.
I get the feeling that people read âruralâ and think there are only cows to watch out for, but this map from HuffPost shows the âMethiestâ states in our union.
Check out Indiana - 1,429 meth âincidentsâ leaves them ranked as one of the worst in the nation. As the officer noted, rural stations donât get much backup when they need it. They need to have equipment on hand. The MRAP is an armored vehicle, and it looks like a justified purchase (remember, police budgets have shrunk across the country, and theyâre hunting deals, $5000 wouldnât buy you a Honda Civic). I wouldnât be supporting the purchase of rocket launchers, but the fact is that this item may realistically be needed.
Right - letâs knock this one on the head straight away. THAT is NOT a TANK! Itâs not even, in the conventional sense, an âarmoured carâ. Itâs what the British Army would call a PROTECTED SUPPORT VEHICLE. We used similar vehicles - like the Humber âPigâ - regularly for Policing in Ulster. They are simply designed to PROTECT police officers where there is the likelihood of coming under small arms fire.
The fact that this is a hulking metal box is neither here nor there. Itâs STILL not a TANK!
I agree that this may be perceived to be âoverkillâ (forgive the psudo-pun), but itâs necessity appears less to be because of fear that America is becoming a âmilitarised stateâ but more that YOU HAVE STUPID BLOODY GUN LAWS THAT ALLOW ITâS CITIZENS TO BE AS WELL ARMED - IF NOT BETTER ARMED - THAN THE POLICE.
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Honestly, if they were giving these things away for $5000⌠I kinda want to buy one.
I wonder what the fuel economy is like.
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Cory says âtankâ. Other people say âarmored personnel carrierâ or âprotected support vehicleâ.
I say âwhite elephantâ.
If youâre an averagely-testosterone-charged rural sheriff who has watched too many Bruce Willis movies, $5000 down from $750,000 looks like a bargain. On the other hand, with 3-6mpg gas mileage, itâs going to be expensive to run, and Iâll be willing to bet that maintenance doesnât come free (PoliceOne has an article describing some of the other problems with MRAPs, including a tendency to roll over, a tendency to crush small bridges, and the need for special training just to get in and out of the damn thing). My bet is that in a yearâs time his shiny new MRAP is going to be on blocks in someoneâs front yard, not having moved for months, and heâll be shopping around for something else.
Also, one correction: the sheriff didnât buy this vehicle. We did, where âweâ is the US taxpayer. We all paid so that the military could acquire these things in quantity (once it became clear that bolting Kevlar panels onto Humvees didnât do much except give soldiers a heavier vehicle to die in), to have them shipped FedEx 2nd-day to war zones, and then home again to be sold off to local LEAs. That $745,000 difference between the original sticker price and the bargain deal that Sheriff Numbnuts got? We ate that.
So much to be happy about all round.
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Culture War? WTF does that even mean? Do you mean like dubstep?
Come on dude, âtankâ is way more click baity and BB has server bill etc to pay. Maggieâs baby needs a new pair of shoes. Would you deny a baby shoes, you monster?
The gov. didnât beat the mob. Prohibition ended and the need for violence protecting territory and running illegal goods dried up. They were forced to move into other, less profitable, but also lower profile rackets.
LOL - dude - we have been as well armed - if not better armed - than the police since 1776. (You may remember private citizens sending you guys guns on the onset of WWII. Youâre welcome.)
Back in the day the rich actually had canons that they loaned out for wars. (Actually canons are still legal to own and fire with out a license.) If anything has changes, itâs that America is actually safer than in the past in many regards. Fear mongering, media hype, and the average personâs experiences with violence being what they see on the ânewsâ and âentertainmentâ is where this silly notion of a militarized police force is needed comes from.
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The culture war represented by, say, Fox News vs. CNN vs. Democracy Now. Billionaires vs. the poor. Gun nuts vs. âliberals.â Etc. That culture war.
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Meth labs are way more of a problem in rural areas than urban ones, even in your rural Southern states. Sure from time to time there is some bust or raid that makes the news because it happened in or near a major city, but the highest number of meth houses are typically in the lower income counties.
Look at it realistically, meth is fairly easy to make and it can be done, concealed indoors. Growing the same amount of street value in marijuana isnât something you can do in a 1000 sq ft. house.
But honestly Iâm not sure you need one of these or a full Hazmat crew to deal with meth. Itâs just above asbestos in dealing with it, not like you can torch the place.
Combine the notion of tracks=tank and that previous story could have been titled âLondonâs housing bubble built upon a graveyard of tanks.â 
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Yeah, this is out of order. Please let us decide if we want a video to play or not. If the video service hosting the file is to blame by making the file autoplay then just post a link instead.
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