Police Continue Militarization Amid Disarmament of Citizens

Militarized police force coupled with disarmed citizens flies in the face of the attitude of the Founding Fathers

by Thomas R. Eddlem | The New American | January 2, 2015

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The Washington Times published two news stories December 30 in which America’s Founding Fathers would have seen as a disturbing pattern.

The paper reported that the pace of military-grade shipments to police stations has accelerated in the wake of the Ferguson, Missouri riots and that Maryland State Police have been targeting out-of-state handgun owners on highways for technical violations of state gun control laws.
The Times noted that the federal Law Enforcement Support Office sent nearly 4,000 automatic weapons to local police agencies in just the last three months:

The 3,879 rifles the Pentagon shipped was an astronomical increase over the dozen rifles shipped during the same three-month period in 2013, with several police agencies taking delivery of hundreds of rifles soon after the Ferguson riots.

Armored vehicles, which drew particular scrutiny in the riots in Ferguson and other cities, were less popular in the aftermath. The Pentagon shipped just 11 mine-resistant vehicles, or MRAPs, from Aug. 15 through Nov. 14, compared to nearly 180 in the same time period a year earlier. One of the recipients of the federal government largesse was the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, which received 415 M-16 automatic rifles, more than one for every one of their 256 officers. “They all work in pretty remote locations out of their homes, so that’s why they would each be outfitted with a rifle,” a spokesman for the Michigan DNR told the Washington Times, adding that the weapons would be able to fire only on semi-automatic once modified.
So much for the leftist slogan that one does not need an “assault weapon” to go hunting.
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