When I lived over in the UK, gas cost $10 a gallon. The Land of Hope and Glory is an oil-producing nation. And yet the UK boasts the highest pump prices in Europe. That’s because all but a fraction of the cost goes straight to the Her Majesty’s Government’s Department of Inland Revenue. When I kvetched to my accountant about taking out a second mortgage to visit Scotland he laughed. “Compared to all the other ways the Exchequer drains your wallet that’s nothing.” But it wasn’t nothing. Sky-high gas prices were a personal, visible and constant reminder of the Nanny State’s commitment to socialist principles—for those who are paying attention. Kinda like an MRAP . . .
Coming soon to your local sheriff: 18-ton, armor-protected military fighting vehicles with gun turrets and bulletproof glass that were once the U.S. answer to roadside bombs during the Iraq war.
The AP story on Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles—SPOILS OF WAR: POLICE GETTING LEFTOVER IRAQ TRUCKS—quickly makes the important point: MRAPs aren’t coming soon. They’re here.
For police and sheriff’s departments, which have scooped up 165 of the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPS, since they became available this summer, the price and the ability to deliver shock and awe while serving warrants or dealing with hostage standoffs was just too good to pass up.
“It’s armored. It’s heavy. It’s intimidating. And it’s free,” said Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, among five county sheriff’s departments and three other police agencies in New York that have taken delivery of an MRAP.
In the picture at the top of this post, Warren County NY Undersheriff Shawn Lamouree poses in front of his “free” MRAP. Warren County was named after General Joseph Warren, an American Revolutionary War hero who fought against British tyranny at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Population: 65,707. Here’s a snap of downtown Lake George, one of the upstate County’s larger municipalities.
Now imagine Undersheriff Shawn Lamouree’s MRAP cruising down that street. Which, of course, it won’t. Not on a regular basis. Undersheriffs aren’t stupid. They know “intimidation” is a double-edged sword. An MRAP may strike fear into the heart of a crazed killer, but it’s also true that an American citizen watching one of these heavily armored behemoths lumbering down a road may suddenly realize that they’re living in a militarized police state.
Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of small town residents who’d contemplate an MRAP’s progress and feel a sense of security. Pride, even. But there are just as many, I hope, who would experience a sense of outrage and fear. Outrage because they know that MRAPs aren’t free; their tax dollars paid for the vehicles (approx. $500k per unit). Maintenance, gas, labor—it all adds up. Fast. Fear because what the hell is an MRAP doing in Warren County New York?
In Warren County, at the southern edge of the Adirondack Mountains, Undersheriff Shawn Lamouree said its MRAP, which can hold six people and reach 65 mph, will have its turret closed up except for a small slot, the only place to fire a gun. Its bulletproof windows don’t open. The proposed retrofit, including new seating, loudspeakers and emergency lights, would cost an estimated $70,000. The department has applied for grants.
“We have no plans of mounting a machine gun,” he said. “The whole idea is to protect the occupants.”
While Warren County’s Lamouree acknowledged the MRAP will likely spend most of its time in a heated garage, with “minimal” maintenance costs, it could be used occasionally by the emergency response team, which has used armored vehicles to serve drug warrants.
“We live in the North Country,” he said. “It’s very common for people to have high-powered hunting rifles.”
I don’t think I need to explain the inanity of that remark, save to say that Warren County isn’t home to a large number of hunting rifle-armed insurrectionist insurgents—at least not yet. And the Undersheriff’s SWAT team has to come out of the MRAP at some point. Ah yes, the SWAT team . . .
Warren County has one of those, obviously. As do thousands of American cities and towns. Just like the MRAPs, SWAT teams are kept on the DL lest they lead tax payers into wondering why they’re paying for a military-style strike force in their not-so-crime-ridden hometown. Unlike MRAPs, SWAT teams are a real and ongoing danger to personal liberty. If the cops have a SWAT team (or two or three), by God they’ll use them.
In fact, Warren County SWAT were on the job just recently . . .
It took a SWAT team and nearly seven hours of negotiations to bring a naked Aleksander Michalski out of his Glens Falls home Tuesday.
The standoff began early in the afternoon when police say the 52-year old broke into a house on Boylston Avenue and threatened a woman inside.
According to officials, Michalski smashed a window to get into the house and threatened the woman with an object similar to a hatchet or an ax, all while naked. The woman was able to escape and call police. Officers say Michalski then ran to his home, which was nearby.
Police were actually at Michalski’s house earlier in the day when he failed to show up for a scheduled court appearance. He was not there. Shortly after, they received the call of a naked man breaking into a house.
State and Warren County Sheriff’s officials joined local police at the scene and surrounded Michalski’s home for hours.
Strangely, the first 11 paragraphs of the news10.com report neglected to mention the fact that Michalski is a former New York City cop. With a “long rap sheet with local police.” Did Warren County need a SWAT team to deal with him? Did they deploy their MRAP? If so, did that help deescalate the situation (as if)? Equally, by having a SWAT team sucking up some of the County’s financial resources, did they miss an opportunity to pay for a little more old-fashioned policing that might have prevented the naked Jack Torrance routine?
Back to that hunting rifle comment for a minute . . .
Obviously, the Undersheriff knows that the greater danger to his men—should there be one—would come from Americans armed with so-called “assault rifles” intent on harming his men. I’m sure he’s also aware that New York’s SAFE Act bans “assault rifles.” He also knows that many AR-owning citizens in Warren County are thinking “cold, dead hands.” So the question becomes, will Lamouree and his SWAT homies go get them?
If so, Lamouree might very well need an MRAP with a militarized police force inside, ready to rock and roll. Of course, the mere presence of highly visible militarized police reduces the threat of armed resistance to an unconstitutional gun grab, right? In that sense, militarized police help prevent the realization of a police state. Or so the thinking goes.
Sheriff Apple rejected the idea that the nation’s police forces are becoming too militaristic.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “Our problem is we have to make sure we are prepared to respond to every type of crisis.” . . .
After the initial 165 of the MRAP trucks were distributed this year, military officials say police have requests in for 731 more, but none are available.
I say, send ’em MRAPs! And get them out on patrol ASAP. The sooner Americans see the danger of a militarized police force they sooner they’ll move to stop the SWAT team trend in its tracks. At least in theory . . . [h/t DanRRZ]
Personally, I don’t think these vehicles will last very long with a typical police department: The first serious service or repair bill will cause most of them to rethink this “free” offering. I’d love to know what a set of tires – and use of the equipment to mount them – would cost.
Not to mention the first trip to the pump. When your mileage is measured in gallons per mile, you tend to be averse to operating it.
Repairs and fuel won’t cost the department anything. The taxpayers will be footing the bill.
My god, think of the traffic tickets they’ll have to write to pay for the gas and tires. I’d guess 2 miles over the limit isn’t safe anymore if the PD has an MRAP. Taxpayers are fed up with rate raises.
Just write more parking and speeding tickets, problem solved.
MRAPs should be a real boon for community oriented policing.
And here’s another hidden cost – road repair/rebuilding.
Run that puppy up and down the road a few times, and the as[halt will begin to look like black gravel due to the GVW. After the warm weather “ruts” appear, that is. And how much pounding are the 50-year old bridges able to handle?
They’ll end up stuck with a white (well, flat dark earth) elephant, just like that Alaskan town that took that surplus military hovercraft. Last I read, they quite literally couldn’t give that thing away. That’s been a year or so since, so maybe it’s been sold for scrap by now.
Hay with MRAP they can shoot and kill EVERYBODY and let God sort it all out!
I don’t consider them threatening, I consider them a waste of money. Someone’s paying for the upkeep.
As far as I know, we don’t have one in Orlando yet, and I’m sorta surprised about that.
I wonder how they handle the soft ground of the coastal SE US…
They sink, axel deep, like all other heavy equipment.
OPD SWAT has some other giant armored monstrosity they roll around in. I saw it for the first time the other day when they were strangely parked underneath the 408 underpass at Primrose.
A waste of money, purchased by people who can put a gun to your head to get more money, is a threat.
True, I guess. I understand the concept of “all laws are enforced at the barrel of a gun” but I think you know what I meant.
I have been very lucky. I was a secondary science teacher, a commercial charter pilot when I was not teaching, and after retirement a certified state real estate appraiser. I had been around guns from day one on a family farm. As my experiences grew I was able to acquire a number of firearms including tax stamp NFA automatic firearms. I am writing this to say that do not hesitate to invest in FINE firearms and keep them in pristine condition. They are among the best financial investments one can make. If your wife or partener starts giving you any problem with your spending on firearms I suggest you do what I do. I tell her look around this house and property and pick one item she purchased that can be resold for as much as or many times more than she paid for it? I am still waiting for an answer. I have never had any further question on my firearm purchases.
“Sheriff Apple rejected the idea that the nation’s police forces are becoming too militaristic.”
I feel deeply reassured. Sheriff Apple might want to consider the possibility that when his police force starts acting like an occupying army, they may well be treated as one.
^^^^ This
With the current Regime you are spitting in the wind but just add your comment anyway.
Most of these (I hope) are going to wind up deactivated and sealed up on the town square like all of those cement filled WW-I artillery pieces that memorialize the town’s dead servicemen. Or not – it’s possible that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will go down in history as more of an embarrassing series of blunders than anything else.
I would agree that the maintenance costs are likely to be a reality check. A lot of fliers fantasize about owning a WW-II Mustang or Spitfire. In reality, there only a handful of EXTREMELY wealthy individuals who can afford to keep those things flying, on even a limited basis, and that’s because they are inherently beautiful and part of a truly glorious moment in history that makes the general public willing to pay to see them fly at air shows and the like. Military equipment is generally designed and built with absolutely NO consideration as to maintenance costs. All that matters in battle is that they WORK. For example – the planes mentioned above were designed to make swapping out a bum engine quick and easy so as to keep them in the fight. Airbases all over the world were littered with disused aircraft engines too time consuming and difficult to repair during the war.
As a guy who first worked in the defense sector right out of school, I could not agree more strongly.
Military equipment is neat to think about owning, but the cost of upkeep is ferocious. Your example of a Mustang is absolutely spot-on. Thirsty beasts, burning 60+ gallons per hour of $5/gal avgas – and if you really want to hot-rod across the sky, you won’t be burning the 100LL you find at every FBO; you’ll be burning much more expensive high octane fuel. I know a couple guys who own Mustangs – and yes, they’re very well off. They think nothing of $50K to $100K for an overhaul on those Merlins. The proverbial “$100 hamburger” for private pilots becomes a “$2500 hamburger” in a Mustang.
Even in the sector where I worked (comm radios), the costs were absurd. The commercial radio companies put in lots of interesting features and had minimal provisions for built-in test equipment. If something went wrong, you pulled the radio into the test shop, put in the wiring harnesses and started finding the problem at the component level. You’d pull the board, put in a new component, and you’d be on your way.
In the military-grade radios, fully 40% of all the circuitry in the radio was “BITE” – built-in test equipment – so that an E-3 could mash his thumb down on a button on the front panel, see a code, look up the code in a book and call the depot for a new board (cost $2K to $10K) to slap into the radio. For a private sector owner of those radios, the costs of the board(s) were prohibitive and you’d be back to component-level troubleshooting… but now you had a lot more components to troubleshoot, due to the BITE. Full of monetary tiger pits for the private owner. This is why, even tho I know those radios had superior performance to nearly all other shortwave radios, I’ll stick with the commercial sector radios.
Too many people still think that owning surplus military equipment is like the old days, where you paid $100 for an old Willys Jeep, or ordering a M1 Carbine through the Sears & Roebuck catalog. Those days are done and gone, gone, gone, folks.
Let’s get this straight – during the great ammo shortage, police departments had trouble getting ammo to train with and griped about the cost of that ammo.
What is it going to cost to run these beasts? Fuel and maintenance will be a huge budget issue.
There is no such thing as a “free” puppy – or a “free” MRAP.
Ted, please look back to a previous post. The Sheriff’s department pays for nothing. When any government agency. local, state, national, they find a way to pull more money from taxpayers. So all their toys, bloated paychecks and benefits. Not to mention day to day corruption, is on us!!
They delivered a Caiman MRAP to Culpeper County recently. The Sheriff gave a “state of the Sheriff’s office” address about it, “no it isn’t for confiscating peoples guns”. He then said it would be used by the Special Operations Division’s “operators” to keep them safe in “active shooter or high risk” situations. There have been zero of those here and zero need for “operators”. The vehicle is particularly unsuitable for this area and is essentially roadbound, with some roads off limits because the bridges won’t hold its 18 tons and septic tanks on almost every property. A giant waste of resources and just more proof that the move from peace officer to Law Enforcement has fundamentally changed the relationship between the people and the government even in rural America.
I will literally die of laughter if I see video of one of these filled with jackboots take a swim in somebody’s poo tank. Saw a tree spade that had dropped in one a few years back. Alot of crabby faces, an irate homeowner, and a wrecker driver scratching his head.
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”
— Mohandas Gandhi
all that military hardware will come in handy for the authorities if some utterly unforeseeable event comes up that causes unrest. Maybe like ….. oh……. a currency collapse of banking collapse caused by printing too much currency . I know our government would never let something like that hap[pen, but it’s interesting to speculate some times. And those million round ammo orders by DHS last year, just practice folks.
It’s not like anyone can predict the future though.
Also I thought the shooter had some elaborate spread sheet taped to his bedroom wall that outlined his entire plot.
Law Enforcement Official: Adam Lanza Planned Shooting Spree for Years
The pics of his room make it look sterile and almost setup. You don’t clean up crime scenes like that. The pics we are seeing are staged for the sake of showing something to the public. We will never know the truth.
You did know they are making thousands more M1 Abrams tanks then the Army can use or wants…..Congress just voted keep making them ! It’s good for the country and when warehouse space runs out , Wonder who gets the extra tanks ?? After all it’s only tax money ! May be they will have a public surplus sale on the M1 tank!
A lot of it is politics, but once those lines shut down the tolling is going to be destroyed, and we won’t have a capability to produce heavy armor at all. There’s a valid strategic reason to keep it running at a minimum rate and putting the vehicles into war stock.
It’s just like what happened with the F-22. If we needed to make more tomorrow, we couldn’t. The tooling is gone, the engineers and line workers have moved onto other projects. We’d be starting over from scratch.
This is my new nomination for the FNS-40. Good article and great discussion. It makes a powerful point that is often overlooked.
Why just last June while traveling in Western China I saw a couple of hardened vehicles tooling down the highway beside our bus. There were some ethnic groups in a nearby city that were making noises the government didn’t like. I’m sure our government would never respond that way. Right?
I think about the same thing, A LOT. I only own a long barrel shotgun right now, 28″, which is not good for a close quarters shootout, so I keep it locked in the safe. But I do sleep with a Glock 19 for myself, and if things hit the fan, the backup M&P Shield 9mm in the room for wife to protect the kids if I get dropped. Hopefully it never comes to that. But I do agree, shotgun is the best. I need to buy a shorter barreled shotgun, maybe 18″. I thought about using the using the AK for home defense, but not sure how the prosecutor would view me, a home defender or a over-killing Rambo gun nut who shot a bad guy 7 times with an AK 47. The shotgun is better, more politically correct.
This is seriously criminal mismanagement. You should be kicked out of office for saying “it’s free” then lining up 70k freaking dollars to tool it up for you. >: |
When will this nonsense STOP?
1jx-88yh-fj1s
As if it will do anything.
So, the grabber argument will be: the fact that NFA items aren’t used in crime is proof the regulations work.
Because correlation implies causation.
The mind of a grabber is a scary place….
Sorry, way off topic, but this is just the greatest thing I’ve ever seen and I had to share it.
(Note, this video is not racist by liberal standards because the narrator is also black.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo_FYVwIeaY
That was some seriously raw sh1t.
But it was worth the watch, though, right?
http://youtu.be/76dLvF2EZRA
Just a few days later. Love it.
A core tenet of pacifism is active promotion of the ideal. There is a point at which peaceful methods will no longer work. You can’t just use nonviolence as a response to threats as you might use force. It must be applied to preempt the situation. This makes nonviolent resistance difficult. It is true, by the time hitler came to power, it was already too late for nonviolent means.
Isn’t Yale on vacation all this week—the way they are every year for the week of Thanksgiving?
Surprised that you included Cheaper than Dirt after all the crap they did earlier in the year. Still, thanks for the review.
I know it’s been a while for this thread, but I’m a noob that was looking for Ballistics data on Independence 5.56 (the only 5.56 ammo I could find locally) in hopes of assigning a reasonably close profile into my Bushnell Scout 1000 ARC rangefinder (it suggests drop compensation in inches for common factory rounds based on range and angle). I see now I may have the wrong round for any long range shots.
Three questions:
1) If I’m reading your data correctly, Independence 5.56 has a very high IQR and is thus VERY INCONSISTENT at long range?
2) Based on your tests does the Winchester / Olin M855 62gr Penetrator have the most predictable point of impact on follow up shots?
3) Is that the same round that I commonly see referred to as 62gr “green tip” penetrator available in bulk and manufactured by Lake City or Federal?
If it matters, I am using a Ruger SR-556 Piston AR with a 16″ barrel and 1:9 twist.
Thanks in advance… like I said, I’m fairly new to outdoor rifle shooting.
Look on the bright side. If we’re ever invaded by North Korea every podunk town and backwater will have military equipment.
Nothing a little iron-oxide and aluminum powder can’t take care of.
Gents and Ladies- well, I figured I should step up and take my own suggestion to start a forum on this- “best semi hog gun in .308” whilst waiting for Nick to check with the Intelligentsia, and hopefully act on my secret agenda- take Robert hog hunting. (Hey! If a jewish east coast noob to hunting guy can do it, then I can!)
Seriously theres a lot of good info there already, including different takes on which way to approach this-
Caliber first- best round: by Kirsten, whose opinion I respect – she’s not exactly a FUDD, so maybe some of you COD ninjas* will read it too:
http://ffz.thetruthaboutguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=199&p=1150&hilit=ar+308+hunting#p1150
Best .308 Battle Rifle
http://ffz.thetruthaboutguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=168
Best out of the box bolt rifle
http://ffz.thetruthaboutguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=487&p=2951&hilit=ar+308+hunting#p2951
What does more money get you in a rifle
http://ffz.thetruthaboutguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=957
Oops. Forgot the link to the forum:
http://ffz.thetruthaboutguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=962#p5535
and the asterisk:
* hey, game boys- just a gentle poke in the ribs to get you fired up to respond.
BTW, even tho you might THINK I am a FUDD, I am also practicing and learning handgun self-defence, mixing with past martial arts and some KravMaga for in close, and aiming toward IPDA 3 gun, when budget allows.
And I love playing games, have for years on PC, and the XBOX. Even at my advanced age, and even if my teenaged son can kick my butt on pretty much everything. COD, Battlefield, MW.
So, label me as you see fit if it makes you feel better! I am a noob, after all!
For $10.00, I’m in!
“HOT ZONE CP. Dave K. notes that the CP was set up in a lobby area of the mall–just inside the doorway the gunman used when he entered. “In my opinion, that was in the hot zone, and it was packed with brass,” Dave says. “The shooter could easily have come back there. Yet except for a mall security guard, there was no perimeter protection.” ”
“Hot zone” my butt. That’s part of the crime scene! You can’t setup a CP inside a crime scene. You end up obliterating evidence there.
Great “lessons learned” in the AAR. I’m sure that the findings for this event will be disseminated around the world to help officers deal with these situations in the future.
Theres a mutual fund called the VICE fund that does somethign similar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_Fund
Basically they invest in tobacco, gambling, defense/weapons, and alcohol industries.
Regulations.gov is garbage.
When you comment – they want all your information. First and last name and home address. That is really all they need to identify everything about you (cross referrenced from the FBI records). Funny we go to regulations.gov to complain about excessive tracking and traceability of items that we otherwise have a “right” to keep and bear but also have to fill out excessive information for the use of tracking and traceablity to make the comment itself. Better be careful what you say there – or there could be agents kicking down your door at 3AM for a charge they could otherwise make up.
I especially enjoyed this:
Your comment will be viewable on Regulations.gov after the agency has reviewed it, which may be an indefinite amount of time. Use your tracking number to find out the status of your comment.
The range was there before you, if you dont like it GTFO.
Same thing with airports. Kinda hard to hide airplanes taking off and landing but some morons will buy the house then immediately sue to shut it down. Sheesh!
What would you say if there was a shooting range next door to your high school?
If I was still in school, I’d ask my teach if I could go next door for some practice after I was finished with my work… wait – that would be a age long passed by. If I said that in today’s time I would be detained by school security, my lockers and vehicle searched, and I would discuss disciplinary action while waiting for the parents to arrive.
Not counting the headline, the article mentions “Magpul” or “PMAG” or both not less than five times
I think that Magpul should retaliate by leaving Colorado.
Which will happen in the reign of Queen Dick.
“It looks like something that’d be as likely to kill you as anyone else”
What? Do? You? Mean?….?
There’s a lot of piston envy out there if you ask me! I love real rifles and have personally disliked ar’s my whole life. For some silly reason this gun convinced me to pre order as soon as I saw it. I ordered all the necessary upgrades, timney trigger, magpul stock…pretty sure it will be a legit rifle…I’ll be the first to talk shit if it’s a pos, but this is my first post ever, just tired of hearing people talking down on things and reviews, honestly if you have enough time to blog about a gun you don’t like out of principal you need to spend more time at the range!
The answer is – http://www.ammoland.com/2013/11/strategic-armory-corps-acquires-mcmillan-firearms/#axzz2lqRcuP77
Um… Wouldn’t a few well placed shots to the tires stop it dead? They’re pointless and expensive to run stateside. Again, shoot the tires out from a block or two down. Its a sitting duck as would be all inside. Shoot the tires then a homemade grenade launcher via a shotgun. Dumb, dumb, dumb cops to think these things are worth having.
Actually fire is your friend when dealing with such as this, get it burning and pick them off as they try to escape.
The grenade would get it on fire from a distance which is ideal when dealing any enemy in any form. Bring it to a stop, get the oven going and yes pick off any that escape or attempt to.
Sorry, wrong thread.
OK, to this thread! Grenades, usually, don’t set stuff on fire. Unless you got your hands on some incendiary “grenades”, which unless you have white phosphorus are hard to get anymore, pretty sure USG does not carry any thermite charges under 10 pounds anymore. So you gonna have to make your own, a rather involved process, unless you are making “napalm”, which is rather simple and self-explanatory when you think on it a while.