With the possibility of arming Boston Police with semiautomatic assault rifles back in the news (Boston police firepower lacking, says city’s top FBI agent), we need to ask some serious questions.
In the piece, Warren T. Bamford (Boston’s “top FBI agent”) says that Boston is more vulnerable to terrorist attacks (such as the massacre in Mumbai last year) since our forces are apparently lacking in heavy firepower.
From the article:
“‘All things being equal, if a terrorist decides, ‘OK, we’re going to do something like what took place in Mumbai,’ well, where would you go?” Bamford said. “If you have a choice of a metropolitan city, would I go to New York, with 40,000 police officers, would I go to Los Angeles, with 8,000, or would I go to Boston, with 3,500?… And I know there’s no assault rifles in the Boston Police Department?”’
There is, in fact, a plan to arm certain divisions of the BPD with the guns, bringing up a cavalcade of issues regarding the use of said weapons.
There could be circumstances in which the use of these weapons is called for, and nobody one wants to see the police outgunned in those situations. The oft-cited tragedy in Mumbai is, of course, a noteworthy example. However, the analogy fails to acknowledge that Pakistan and India are warring nations separated only by motorboat ride – and Bamford admits that Boston faces no similar threat.
Moreover, the article suggests that Bamford wants to hand out the guns to local police, enabling them to patrol the city’s neighborhoods outfitted with military assault rifles.
Finally, it is worth exploring whether these kinds of arms encourage excessive use of force, or whether the cause-effect relationship Bamford is implying is truly sound – the presence of sophisticated weaponry has not always proven the best measure against terrorists, as 9/11 taught us.
As with any issue regarding lethal force, we need to ask questions. What are these guns truly capable of? Who will get to use them, and under what circumstances – and who will be in charge of making those decisions?
Questions like these have come up before with far less-lethal weapons than military assault rifles. Consider the case of Victoria Snelgrove, who died in Boston in 2004 after a Boston Police officer shot her in the eye with a pepper spray bullet. At the time, the ACLU provided recommendations for “less lethal force” policies. If even weapons like this can cause problems, we should be much more careful when talking about semiautomatic assault rifles.
Discuss
6 Comments . Comments are closed.$quot;semiautomatic assault rifles$quot;
is such an oxymoron.
Pretend that not everyone knows about guns.
Explain why it is an oxymoron.
It's because
to most people familiar with firearms, assault weapons are fully-automatic - you hold the trigger back and it fires multiple rounds. Semiautomatic weapons fire only one round each time you pull the trigger. There are lots of weapons that are semiautomatic that no one would call an assault weapon. The Ruger Mini-14 fires the same round as the M-16, is about the same size, and can be used with a 30-round clip, but because it looks more like a hunting rifle, it's not an assault weapon. Congress adopted a definition that included a bunch of peripheral characteristics: bayonet mount, folding stock, pistol grip, etc. If you fitted a Mini-14 with a folding stock and a pistol grip, it would suddenly be an assault rifle, even though it would be otherwise the same rifle.
I have no problem with the BPD having some assault weapons. I do not think it's a remotely good idea to have patrol officers routinely carrying them around. I would be surprised o learn that the BPD SWAT team doesn't already have military weapons, even if they are semiautomatic.
I do not believe it's the possession of lethal firearms that leads to excessive use of force. It seems obvious that it's possession of supposedly non-lethal devices such as Tasers and rubber bullets that does. Giving the police the ability to compel obedience by administering pain is a bad approach to policing.
Boston, or at least Winter Hill
has been well-served by the FBI in the past. Agent Bamford should be given all the consideration his office deserves.
Besides, if some sort of Mumbai attack were anticipated, wouldn't the governor could work out some sort of response plan with the National Guard?
I think for speed reasons
they would have rather have such a plan be on the BPD's shoulders. The Nat. Guard is certainly well armed and trained, but the BPD can get to whatever is happening with much greater alacrity. Those minutes could equal a lot of lives if something mumbai-style was going on.
And when thugs know the weapons are in Boston, so move on to Worcester?
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