Neil Ignorant Again

Does this guy do any basic research? He published this one last week:

• Mayor Daley and Police Supt. Jody Weis say the police need assault rifles because they're out-gunned by gang-bangers. And since they say it, I assume it must be true, though I can't remember a story in which police officers suffered after facing superior firepower.

Um, North Hollywood for starters. Then there was the guy in 010 who caught a rifle round through his hand back in the late 1990's - they made him a sergeant after that. A sergeant in 010 who lost most of the meat in his left arm after being sniped from a rooftop. The hit team intercepted on the way to a murder in 011 or 013 two years ago - cop wounded. TRU sergeant killed some guy a year or two ago who had a machine pistol.

The point is, those guns are out there. We need to match them. Unfortunately, we probably never will. This article puts it in perspective:

• After a recent outbreak of gun-related violence, Mayor Richard Daley is now pushed into supporting a plan by new Police Superintendent Jody Weis to arm 13,000 Chicago police officers with assault rifles. Depending on how many weapons are eventually deployed, this may develop into the largest militarization of police patrol officers in United States history. If the department arms 10,000 of their officers with M4s, the police will have 9,900 more assault rifles in Chicago than the U.S. Marines presently have in Fallujah, Iraq.
• Even the most basic rifle training is going to cost a day’s pay per officer, range staff, targets, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and cleaning costs. Estimate the salary costs conservatively at $160 per officer per day, and you’re looking at salary training costs of over $2 million just for introductory familiarization with the weapons system and another $338,000 in ammunition costs (based upon a bare minimum of 200 rounds per officer at a cost of $130/1000 rounds and 13,000 officers). As ammunition prices continue to go upward, due in part to increased police demand, the cost of rifle ammunition in periodic weapons recertification will continue to rise.

Daley will never spend that type of money on training and the regular street cops will never see these rifles. This is most likely another smoke screen put up by J-Fed in a series of smoke screens that do nothing but keep coppers hoping for a professional force, but resigning themselves to something on the order of Mayberry.