Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Why didn't LEO's carry semi-autos before the 90's?

You didn't need a cleaning kit because the M16 was a self-cleaning rifle.

Of course, that was a joke. But that's what the early users were told.

The AK's were reliable. The M-16's should have been made by Daisy - they would have been much better - couldn't have been worse. But the Vietnamese didn't use the spray technique. They actually had rifles they could trust, and they aimed them. When shooting my M-16 at night with tracers, I could see the bullets tumbling - it begged the spray option. There was no faith in our rifles or the ability to hit anything.

There were some made by Matel, if I recall correctly. "Brrrrrrrr, brrrrrr, brrrrrr".
I remember getting issued an M-16 during basic training at West Point in 1985 and saying "Damn, this is exactly like the p.o.s. plastic rifle my 7 yr old brother was playing with when I left home last Tuesday - it just weighs more".

I have read about the total nightmare that was the XM16, the feud between MacNamara and Army Ordnance, the shenanigans, and the stupid orders that soldiers got, that did get many Americans killed. Criminal behavior, to say the least. There was even a congressional hearing in 1968, and heads should have rolled... but, of course, didn't.... It's pretty maddening, really, and I have no personal axe to grind in the situation.

They did, however, finally get the gun worked out. The M16 of 1967 is not quite the same thing as the AR today.

There were some made by Matel, if I recall correctly. "Brrrrrrrr, brrrrrr, brrrrrr".
I remember getting issued an M-16 during basic training at West Point in 1985 and saying "Damn, this is exactly like the p.o.s. plastic rifle my 7 yr old brother was playing with when I left home last Tuesday - it just weighs more".

This^^^^.
Not to mention the powder type change, against the rifle makers objections.

Yeah, I remember reading the articles about Super-Vel in the 1970s.

Me and my brother had one of those each back in the 1960s or early 1970s. Looked just like the real ones. Made a machinegun sound, too.

Back in the day, I had upper brass ask why we needed hollow point ammo, when 158gr LRN worked just fine for all these years...

Ignorance is the hardest thing to overcome. That and ignorance in training.

Everyone shot at the police range with 30spl. It was hammered into them to never let the brass hit the ground when reloading. Either put it in your pocket, or dump it in the brass can by your firing station.

Then a couple of cops were found dead with their empty brass in the pants pockets. Sometimes it takes a graphic example like that to sink the lessons in.

Those of us who carried rifles usually had to get special permission to do so.

Most semi autos were not designed to feed anything but FMJ (ball) ammunition, which had long been known to have a very poor track record for stopping people. Revolver ammo was not limited to FMJ and even using older designs such as the +P 38 Special 158-grain LSWC-HP ammunition produced much better results in the field.

That in addition to the fact that departments were dealing with institutionalized thinking. Change is incredibly slow. Most people that are in charge of policy change are older and have been in a position or on a department for a long time and suffer from the "Well if it was good enough for me" syndrome and confirmation bias. Look how long it took to get things like night sights or flashlights on handguns. Today there are still a great many agencies that will not allow police officers to have a flashlight on a handgun or a rifle.

I worked for an agency that had a dumbfugg of an uneducated twit in charge of the firearms program that was adamant about never having lights on rifles or handguns. It took me being involved in a shootout in a darkened building where the badguy had knocked out the lights and I was trying to balance a light in one hand and a rifle in the other to cause the department to change.

Consider the liability of trying to take a hostage rescue shot with an iron sighted rifle in the dark, holding it one handed, while balancing a flashlight, hoping you don't shoot the hostage. All because the guy in charge is stuck in the 1980s and has deliberately handicapped you.

Change is slow. Not due to technology, but due to incompetence of those in charge. That is why change is so slow in law enforcement.

Damn.