What a joke? WHo do they think they are kidding?

The other day I saw another one of those "Look at the collection of deadly weapons we took away from such and such a drug dealer" displays.

Before I go anywhere with this, the cops took out another meth lab or busted a dealer or something. Good work. Some more of the forces of evil have been removed from society and that is a good thing.

Of course, with our present 'catch and release' system, the thugs will be back on the streets shortly after the bust, but thaat is yet another issue.

Let's look at the display.

At first it looked like a pretty good collection of hardware until you looked at it with a bit more of a trained eye than somebody's grandmother has. Great! Looks like some serious hardware there the Joe Citizen.

Here's what I see.

Two of the rifles are Arisakas, GI bringbacks from WW2. Ammunition for those is not all that easy to come by unless you are willing to either chase all over hell or special order it. In short, these really are not the weapons of choice of drug dealers.

Two of the pistols are airsoft, meaning they are nothing more than kids toys that shoot little soft plastic pellets the length of a garage. These are hardly a menace to society.

There are also two more pistols there, one is a single shot flint lock muzzle loader, the other is an 1851 New Model Army revolver. Both of these fire black powder and load from the muzzle. These are not really the choice of any criminal.

There are a couple of what looked to be serviceable handguns there, a revolver, a Glock and another automatic pistol that looks servicible, I can't tell the make.

The numbchucks look to be the decorative kind that would probably break if you tried to fight with them and the machete looks like it came out of a garage where it had spent its life whacking weeds in the backyard.

The three hand grenades are obviously inert They are training aids; they are incapable of doing any more damage to a person than a rock of similar size. The pair of Claymore mines are also inert. They are nothing more than pieces of molded resin and contain no explosives or projectiles. My friend in the National Guard gave a couple of these to the local kids to play with.

Of the pair of hunting rifles shown, one of them looks to be in pretty good shape, while the other had a missing bolt and trigger. It is incapable of firing anything.

The knives came straight out of the kitchen and are spread out between the firearms. If you look at them you can see thet it looks like most of a set of Gunsu knives straight off of a Billy Mays pitch. Everybody that cooks anything has a similar set.

The 1903 Springfield rifle there isn't a rifle at all. It is a kids toy made about 30 or 40 years ago. Right now a pair of them are selling on eBay for $12.01 with five bids showing.

The AK-47 isn't one at all. It is nothing more than a molded piece of solid rubber that could easily go through a metal detector and could really only be used as a clumsy club.

Of the two shotguns there, one of them is a black powder muzzle loader which takes forever to relaod and really isn't a drug lords weapon of choice. The other looks to be a common hunting shotgun and probably does work. At range it is deadly.

So now we have two tables side by side covered with this display and the final tally is that the police did in fact sieze a meth lab. From a practical standpoint they took a trio of modern pistols, a shotgun and a hunting rifle off the streets.

That in itself is not really a bad haul by and in itself. Fair enough. The streets are now a little safer and four crooks are out of the meth business for a while.

Why not just go with that? It's the truth and certainly nothng to be ashamed about.

The bust itself went down fairly smooth, too. The police showed up, assembled their assets and crashed in and took the lab without a shot being fired. That is a good thing, too.

Of course, the police want the public to believe that they charged down the guns through withering automatic weapons fire and persevered over the forces of evil, but that is a crock. They didn't. They out foxed the druggies, which is what they were supposed to do in the firt place.

Granted, a trio of pistols, a shotgun and a hunting rifle are serious deadly weapons and if the bust had gone sour, there easily could have been a bunch of dead policemen. I'm certainly not denying that at all.

Setting that table up with all of the stuff you collected doesn't make you look like conquering heroes to anyone but the most naive of people. Anyone with any background can see just what you did with your display and it only serves to cheapen the deeds of the officers that were involved in the bust.

Ever see a kid fresh out of basic go into the PX and buy a couple of rows of ribbons he didn't earn to make the girl back home think he was a hero?

Well, with that display you did just that. It cheapened the deed and the credibility of the police force itself.

And that IS a shame.






I have edited this post to add one thing. I really don't think this display I mentioned was the idea of the working cop. I'd just bet that it's the brain child of some higher-up that hasn't worked the streets in a couple of decades.




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