Via Benn Swann comes this charming tale of SWAT team overkill. The Columbia, South Carolina police department - along with 499 other municipalities across this sweet land of liberty - received a "free" MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle featuring bullet-proof skin and a rack capable of holidng a 50 caliber machine gun. Such vehicles cost about $658,000 but this one was gifted to the police by the Department of Defense.
Swann notes:
Though the vehicle was “free” to the citizens of Columbia, they were purchased by taxpayer money. 500 surplus military vehicles costing $658,000 each adds up to $329 million dollars of surplus DoD spending (and therefore taxing) on vehicles which are so unnecessary to the military they are being given away to American cities. Though this wouldn’t fix the debt, it is yet another multi-million dollar piece of wasteful spending by the American federal government."...
Why are we giving away vehicles that might be useful for Hillary's invasion of Egypt. In Afghanistan we are just blowing up US equipment rather than let the Afghani's use it.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
It's nice to know that my local PD, Sheriff, and State Patrol now have vehicles just like the DoD troops have to fight wars because fighting wars is what we pay our law enforcement personnel to do, isn't it?
War is expensive and it's not like the Iraqis or the Afghans are strapped with cash to buy the military hardware that would be twice as expensive to bring home and then mothball only to sell off as scrap ten years later. De-mil it in place and walk away from it, the locals will find a way to use the parts that didn't get destroyed anyway.
I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.
"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian." - Henry Ford
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges; When the Republic is at its most corrupt the laws are most numerous. - Publius Cornelius Tacitus
You guys seem to be missing the point. Have you not seen the levels of crime and the rate at which we criminalize things. Surely they are just looking to future demand.
It is odd to make fun of this action and not make fun of the rate at which we give justification to use these things. Connect the dots.
We should be doing something about whatever is making this acceptable, but we will not.
I have run over a few cow chips and horse apples up here over the years but so far I haven't run over an IED or a genuine anti personnel or anti tank mine. On the other hand, I have lost a couple of wheels and tires to the canyons and caverns that Park and Jeffco road and bridge call "potholes." I bet an MWRP that gets a mile to a couple of gallons would probably fair well on our public roads.
I can't find the logic in handing MWRPs over to law enforcement, it's the wrong tool for the job that LE is supposed to be doing for us. Instead the DHS and the DoD are spreading around tools to LE across our nation as if they expect that local LE will be called upon to suppress wide spread civil unrest and violence. Hey, wait...
I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.
"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian." - Henry Ford
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges; When the Republic is at its most corrupt the laws are most numerous. - Publius Cornelius Tacitus
LE is going to need it for all the meth and hash labs that will be springing up. They can bulldoze their way in after they get their warrant signed by a judge based on they think something is going on there, considering the way the judges hand out warrants based on worthless information.
And of course for all those gun toting residents who believe in multiple weapons.
All kinds of ways to use it. That's if the ParkCO Sheriff doesn't wreck it first.
