A Free Press review of items transferred from the military since 2006 shows Michigan law enforcement agencies have received 17 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles or MRAPs, built to counter roadside bombs; 1,795 M16 rifles, the U.S. military\u2019s combat weapon of choice; 696 M14 rifles; 530 bayonet and scabbards; 165 utility trucks; 32 12-gauge, riot-type shotguns; nine grenade launchers; and three observation helicopters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The part that got me, though, was bayonets. What in the name of all that is good are they doing with bayonets? I know it’s probably the cheapest thing on their list, but did anyone really think about it? I’ve never used a bayonet on a person in combat, but I’ve thought about it a lot. I own a few bayonets, but just to complete a rifle, from a collector’s standpoint – and I adhere to the “Spirit of the Bayonet”. It’s a last resort weapon, and probably the most terrifying to use, from both the viewpoint of the guy trying to use it as well as the fellow on the receiving end.<\/p>\n
It takes a lot of training to use a bayonet, but since there’s no noise or big explosion, I’m guessing not too many police departments spend much time training with it. But I’m concerned that some police units out there thought that having a few hundred bayonets in their inventory would be a good idea.<\/p>\n
I know that the original rifles had bayonets as it’s primary function – a pike that also occasionally fired a bullet – but I can’t think of any situation in which a police department would tell it’s officers to “fix bayonets” like they are the 20th Maine on Little Round Top.<\/p>\n
If they decide to begin divesting themselves of some of that equipment, I’ll take an M14 off their hands. I’ve always wanted one of those. There are no Garands on the list, but I’d like one of those, too. But I have just enough bayonets, thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There has been a lot of talk about the militarization of the law enforcement community and … Bayonets? Really?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[227],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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