Why don't they just roll over and fscking die already.
From Officer.com:
Boston Mayor Says No to M-16s on Officers
The Boston Police Department wants to arm neighborhood patrol officers with high-powered military assault weapons, but the mayor doesn't think it's such a good idea.
Boston Mayor Tom Menino said Friday he will not approve a police department plan to put semiautomatic M-16 rifles in the hands of regular patrol officers. But Menino says he's open to giving them to "specialized units."
The police recently obtained 200 M-16s free of charge from the U.S. military and had planned to give them to dozens of officers for their patrols after training them to use the rifles.
However, some community leaders criticized the lack of public notice and questioned the reasoning behind arming district officers with M-16s when the city's SWAT team already has such weapons.
On how many levels is this just plain wrong -- not wrong, stupid! First of all, these are not: "high-powered military assault weapons", these are semi-automatic rifles that look scary to the liberal brain. The problem is that if they see something like this:
They throw up a little in their mouth but say, OK; it's a target shooting or a hunting rifle. We can allow that and look at how nice we are being to all of those bitter gun clingers out there. Then, show them one of these:
Their soft little heads implode. This is a Colt M-16 rifle.
The only differences between the two firearms are these: #1) - cosmetic -- the "scary assault weapon" has more attachments and is not as smooth a profile and #2) - the M-16 can fire more bullets than the other rifle. The first rifle takes clips of eight rounds and you can get clips of up to thirty rounds for the M-16. Otherwise, they are very similar. You get one 'bang' per trigger pull (that is what semi-automatic means).
The rounds they fire are very similar in size -- the top one is .22 Magnum and the bottom one is usually chambered in 5.56mm NATO. These are each about a quarter inch in diameter (5.56mm NATO is actually .224 caliber). For the members of the Boston Police Department to receive 200 of these from the U.S. Military is an incredible gift and to have the Mayor refuse it on such trivial and politically motivated terms is abject bullshit.
There is no real reason to refuse these, their presence would be a notable deterrent to crime and the cost would be minimal (training and maintenance).
Ah, #3) The M-16 you linked to, and probably the same rifle the .fedgov is providing are select fire and are fully automatic. That switch and the associated rapid dispensing of bullets does require some specialized training. And cops typically are not guys that prefer to spend more time on the shooting range so maybe they shouldn't be trusted with them.