When you read something in the paper with which you have some familiarity, and you see what is blatantly false, you expect the source to be someone for who the information is not necessarily part of their main body of knowledge. One thing you would not expect is a statement about “assault weapons” not to be confused with machine guns (fully automatic weapons) from a police officer. Machine guns are not legal to manufacture or import. The only people that can legally buy or transfer them are the military and people that have a very tightly controlled license (collectors) from the federal government, and they may only have those that were registered prior to May 1986 (FOPA). A link to the report:

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/14941809/detail.html

The totally inaccurate statement in reference to “assault weapons” is here:

“You just pull a trigger and 20 or 30 rounds come in a second and in those 20 rounds you’re sure to hit your intended target and some innocent bystanders, totally unlike a firearm that is just one bullet every time you pull the trigger,” Miami Police spokesman Willie Moreno said.

Misinformation coming from a police spokesperson about something they should know (and I have to believe do know … it is incredulous that a police officer would not know that fully automatic weapons, machine guns, are not the cause of increases in murders). They know better. Even though the average police officer might not know the rate of fire for a fully automatic weapon (even at 600 rounds per minute, that only is 10 per second) and even the military no longer issues fully automatic M16s. Even the MAC-10 only has a 1000 rounds per minute, or 16.7 rounds per second, not even at the lower end of the range of “20 – 30 round a second” — and again, they are neither manufactured or imported, they cannot be bought new or even replaced if they break.

There is no excuse for this. I cannot believe it is just a mistake. The best I can hope is the person making the report took the statement completely out of context. The next best thing to hope is that the police spokesperson is grossly incompetent. The alternative of the Miami police department purposely lying about what they know to be true would put in doubt the concept that any police officer anywhere could be trusted to tell the truth — even in court.

Those willing to give up liberty to obtain security deserve neither and will lose both. (B.F.)