- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
"The police officer that wrote my accident report had an M-16 assault rifle in his passenger seat. I guess so."
1) This has nothing to do with 'bad' traffic and is a weird way to insert extraneous information
2) No he fucking didn't.
Wu, who sometimes claims bona fides as a 'gun grl' because he was born in the South and supposedly knows how to field strip a Glock (omg such tacticool, much operator) is- again- confusing a two entirely different classes of firearms. Patrol cops who are taking traffic crash reports are not driving around with an NFA regulated rifle (i.e. an M16) sitting there. And most likely the regular, semi-automatic rifle was locked in an upright gun-rack. I understand how someone with little or no knowledge of police or guns would make these mistakes but I have zero doubt that Wu would happily opine and bloviate about such issues despite knowing nothing.
Shotguns have been falling out of favor with police departments as long arms because they don't have the capacity, fast reload or easy recoil of an AR-15. Boston, along with many if not most departments, has been equipping its patrol officers with rifles or carbines instead of shotguns- or, in some cases, in addition to shotguns- in the face of terrorist threats or active shooter situations. It's still not a fucking M-16 though (autos are sometimes used by tactical teams, but that's not this situation).
As much as this pains me, John likely called this (nearly) correctly. Its highly unlikely he had an M-16, but much more likely he had an M-4 (which is what most people would call an M-16). It was most likely Military Surplus through the DoD program that sells military hardware to police departments
As others said, its highly unlikely it was the seat, it was probably in a lock rack between the driver and passenger.
:autism:
There are real super spergy differences between the M-16 and the M-4 but the key one is the M-4 is burst fire, the M-16 is full auto. He may have had what we called a "restamped" M-16 lower (the lower is the part that contains the trigger, selector switch, serial number and magazine/magazine release; as far as the ATF is concerned, this is the gun the rest is replaceable parts) which is the lower from an M-16 that had been changed from full auto to burst, and the "Auto" label on the selector switch pin-stamped to now read "Burst".