Police With Military Weapons? Mass. Halts the Insanity.

Good for Massachusetts: governor Deval Patrick has ordered the suspension of a program that

...distributes high-powered US military weapons to police departments across the state, amid growing concerns with the scale of guns handed out and the lack of oversight involved. Terrel Harris, spokesman for the department [of Public Safety], said yesterday that the program will remain suspended until the completion of a thorough review looking at the way it is run, the weapons involved, and the communities that get them.

[A Boston] Globe review has found that even the most quiet of hamlets have received high-powered weaponry, including M-16 fully automatic machine guns and M-14 semiautomatic rifles. In West Springfield, police received two military issue M-79 grenade launchers. [emphasis mine, RvB] In most cases, the departments obtained the weaponry without any type of community or legislative input.

Comments

[hermesten]

I wouldn't worry too much about the grenade launchers. What with all the dangerous "terrorists" running wild in this country and planning extreme terrorist acts like auditing the Federal Reserve, we might see predator drone strikes --so the lives of police aren't put at risk launching grenades.

If we can launch cruise missiles at people's homes in Pakistan, don't see why we can't do it here in the Fatherland --cause, after all, a "terrorist" is an "enemy combatant," and we're at "War" --in perpetuity now.

[Stick]

Grenade launchers don't only fire HE grenades. They can also be used to launch 'Bean Bag' and 'CS gas' rounds.
(Not that I think the boys in blue would want to play with sissy stuff like that.)

[Phelps]

Ditto Stick. I'm more worried about the armored personnel carriers that seem to be popping up everywhere.

I just wish that my first instinct wasn't, "well of course Mass has to try gun control on cops now."