A one-day gun buyback event in Los Angeles on Wednesday gathered 2,037 firearms, including 75 assault weapons and two rocket launchers, officials said.
A friend who is in a position to know (Army 11B) has informed me that the "rocket launcher" the cop is holding is the tube from an AT-4 antitank rocket. The AT-4 is a single-use system-- once the rocket is launched, the launching tube itself is useless and is tossed away.
In other words, that tube the cop is holding is about as deadly as an empty 2-liter soda bottle, and is arguably less useful. As far as Federal law goes, I believe that an AT-4 tube is considered to be as lethal as a similarly-sized length of PVC pipe.
But hey, it was a weapon, once. And that's good enough for the idiots at the LAPD and the imbeciles in the press.
UPDATE: That launcher was a training simulator. In other words, it was never a weapon and it always was as deadly as what it is: A tricked-out piece of plastic sewer pipe.
Spot on. Add to this however, these were never even actual AT-4's. These were the simulators, as evidenced by TRAINING stenciled on them. They were produced inert. Never were an actual weapon, never could be.....unless one wanted to club somebody with it.
ReplyDeleteYou can find these in surplus stores.
I missed the "training" stencil". Good catch.
DeleteI looked at that and laughed when I originally saw it... stoopid is as stoopid does...
ReplyDeleteBut as a propaganda tool, it was priceless.
ReplyDelete99.9% of the population, including me, didn't catch that.
Mainly because I didn't look at it for more than 0.2 seconds and it wouldn't have surprised me in the least if it had been a real rocket launcher.
Wonder what you could get from the LAPD for an old potato gun?
ReplyDeleteWonder if ya coulda got a hunnderd bucks for a starter's pistol ???
ReplyDeleteI did a check and here in Volksrepublik I'm sure some "respect my autoritah" cop might go for the two words, ammunition component, because he can.
ReplyDeleteIt might cause laughter in court, but after a few months in jail with a high bail it will not be funny. Ask the kid in the western part of the state that got busted for a fake ammo on his belt.
Eck!