John Timoney seems to think the federal assault weapons ban actually accomplished something:
Miami Police Chief John Timoney said the 2004 expiration of the federal ban on assault weapons has triggered an “arms race” in his city.
A pity there’s never been one study that showed that. Presumably there’s been more bayonetings and fewer flash blinded shooters in Miami, but I doubt Timoney could confirm that.
“The whole thing is a friggin’ disgrace,” said Timoney, a longtime advocate of tighter gun control who has authorized patrol officers to carry high-powered, semiautomatic assault rifles like the one used Thursday to kill Miami-Dade County police Sgt. Jose Somohano.
What he won’t tell you is that police should have had access to AR-15s in their patrol cars all along, and that his department was negligent in this regard. It’s my opinion that all patrol cars need some type of center fire self-loading rifle. The AR-15 is as good a choice as any. That’s not a guarantee though. Pistols are carried because they are convenient, and work most of the time, not because they are great fight stoppers.
Twenty percent of the homicides in Miami this year have been committed with assault weapons. The number was 18 percent in 2006, up from just 4 percent in 2004, The Herald reported.
Someone who lives in Florida needs to file a request to find out how it was determined the homicide involved an “assault weapon”. Want my guess? They are counting any pistols with a magazine capacity greater than 10 as a high-powered assault weapon. We know from FBI statistics that all long gun use doesn’t even account for 2% of gun use in crime, so something is very fishy here. Get to work Florida gunnies! You can bet the press won’t bother to do their jobs.
I’m positive they were including lots of things that didn’t fit either the legal term “assault weapon” or the common use term “assault rifle”. In fact, to be included, the firearm in question doesn’t have to have a capacity larger than 10… they’ve called SKSs “assault weapons”, even with the fixed 10-rd magazine. I think they pretty much call any semi-automatic firearm either an assault weapon, or a saturdaynight special. There is no in-between. They probably include shotguns too for that matter, since they are “street sweepers”.
as someone that moved out of Orlando last year, i can tell you that the guns aren’t the problem… the massive un-checked immigration from the Caribbean is… the Puerto-Ricans are just as bad as the Mexicans are in the SW, the Cubans, Haitians, Jamaicans, Dominicans and all the others are 3rd world citizens that refuse to actually become decient citizens… I watched one of the towns in the area go from 30% Hispanic to 95% Hispanic in a matter of 8 years… The entire stretch of SR 436 from Colonial Drive South to the Orlando Airport is now called “heroin alley” by the sheriffs department… hell the other day my father was talking to me about what type of handgun would be best for he and my mother to keep in their nightstand for defense… i would have been less shocked to hear that he had gotten a tattoo and a Harley… The motto of Orlando is “the city Beautiful” but as someone that grew up there, it is anything but…at least half the city is territory that you aren’t welcome in if you are white… Miami is even worse… frankly im surprised that it doesn’t get more attention nationally, as it is quickly getting more out of control than any state ive ever seen… you can blame guns if you want, but i would blame the drugs and the lack of law enforcement… after watching one of my friends go through the revolving door for over a decade with a rap sheet literally longer than i am tall, i have zero faith in the Florida judicial system… me, im glad that me and my family are not in that hellhole any more, becus it was only a matter of time before my family was the victim of a violent crime….