The incident was one more chapter in the escalating arms race between police and criminals. Until recently, felons favored cheap, small-caliber six-shot revolvers; now, Saturday-night specials are outnumbered by semiautomatic pistols that quickly fire 15 to 20 rounds. Police are finding the weapons, available for $600 or so, not only on seasoned drug dealers, but on teenagers. Last year 10 percent of the guns traced by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were paramilitary weapons like the AK-47 assault rifle or the MAC-11 pistol, which can shoot a 32-round clip in five to seven seconds.
In response, nearly half the nation’s police have ditched the six-shot revolver–standard since the days of Wyatt Earp–for more potent firearms. While some critics question whether new guns will do any good, John Dineen, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, says: “Our people are outgunned every day. We need to move from the 1880s to the 1990s.”
When they rearm, most police, including those in Boston, Washington and Los Angeles, have chosen 9-mm pistols. Some big-city departments are putting shotguns in patrol cars; rural officers, who have long had old-fashioned pump shotguns, are switching to new, fast-firing models. Last year police in the affluent Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Ill., even proposed–to the horror of the village board–that officers start carrying Uzi submachine guns.
Automatic pistols have several advantages over traditional .38-caliber police revolvers. Firing a pistol repeatedly requires much less pressure on the trigger. Reloading is faster; a good shooter can empty a clip, slap in another and start all over again in seven seconds. And recent advances in design have made pistols less likely to jam.
Police say there is more to 9-mms than added firepower. “The primary thing is that they’re easy for most people to shoot well,” asserts Special Agent John Hall, chief of the firearms branch at the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Va. Some smaller officers have trouble gripping and aiming the .38. New York City Transit Police Chief William Bratton, who wants to arm his officers with 9-mms, says, “If you have to shoot more than once or twice, you could hit a bystander. The pistol is safer.”
Not everyone agrees. “If you’ve got more rounds, there’s a temptation to use them. The capacity to shoot innocent people is greater,” says Chicago Police Superintendent Leroy Martin whose officers are lobbying for pistols. According to a study by the Los Angeles police, when the department switched to 9-mms in 1986, police did squeeze off more rounds: one more per exchange.
The chance that an officer will ever use his or her gun–much less be helped by extra ammo–is small. James Fyfe, a firearms expert who is a professor at American University, estimates the average big-city cop is involved in a fatal shooting every 450 years; most, he says. never fire their guns. And although the bad guys have fancier weapons, the number of police murdered on the job (66 in 1989) has dropped in recent years, a fact researchers attribute to beefed-up officer training and the increased use of bullet-resistant vests–not heavier weaponry.
Skill or surprise are most often the deciding factors in a gunfight. Experts say most confrontations take place at a range of five or 10 feet, involve just two or three shots and are over in a few seconds. Says Ma;. Jimmy Hall, chief of training for the Atlanta Police Department: “Most of our officers who have been killed never got off a round. If you have a pistol, it’s there more for confidence than anything.” Exactly, says Larry Lonis, chief of the Marceline, Mo., Police Department. “I hope we never have to use them, but if we do, we have them.” His six officers have not fired a shot in his memory but have started carrying semiautomatics and 50 rounds of ammo.
For Tallahassee, Fla., police officer Greg Armstrong, these issues are real. He fought off three heavily armed opponents in a wild, 60-round gunfight with his revolver in 1988. His backup–who was carrying a 9-mm–was killed before he got a chance to draw. Armstrong survived by emptying his gun repeatedly, then diving for cover where he reloaded. Now he carries a 16-shot Sig-Sauer 9-mm semiautomatic and two extra magazines. “Things might have happened very differently that day,” he says. “I’m more comfortable having 16 to start with.”
Police are opting not only for more bullets, but more powerful ones, to stop assailants faster. Most departments, whether armed with pistols or revolvers, have already switched to hollow-point dumdum bullets that mushroom on impact, thus causing more injury. In a 1986 shoot-out, FBI agents with 9-mms fatally wounded a Miami gunman armed with an assault rifie–but he lived long enough to kill two of them and wound five. So this year the FBI began issuing pistols that shoot 10-mm rounds, designed to create greater “tissue displacement”–4.11 cubic inches per shot, measured in ballistic gelatin, versus 2.82 for a 9-mm. The FBI is a trendsetter; already at least three state agencies have bought new 10-mms.
As for the ultimate firepower–fully automatic weapons–most police departments keep a few, but allow SWAT teams to take them out only in extraordinary situations. The sole civilian agency routinely using them is the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which, faced with heavily armed dealers, has issued all agents 9-mm Colt submachine guns that fire 800 rounds a minute. Some gunmakers say police sales are growing as more departments develop tactical teams, but few predict that U.S. cities will start resembling Europe or Latin America, where machine-gun-toting cops are common. “The minute we start looking like an occupying army, we lose our public support,” said Bud Meeks, executive director of the National Sheriffs Association. “You can’t set a guy on the corner with an M-16 and expect people to feel like he’s protecting them. It’s threatening.”
For the gunmakers, the domestic arms race has been a bonanza. Nine-mm pistol sales at Glock, Inc., one of the leading police suppliers, have doubled every year since 1986. However, most of the gunmakers’ high-powered merchandise goes to private citizens, who, in many states, can buy legally, with few questions asked. Domestic gun-runners regularly fill their trunks with weapons in states such as Georgia, Texas and Florida. Then they lug them home and sell their caches on the streets–a black market that supplies criminals with much of their firepower. Legislation that would make some weapons more difficult to obtain from dealers was foiled in Congress this year, and probably will be reintroduced next session. But millions of powerful guns are already in circulation. Absent the invention of an airborne gun-seeking magnet, these deadly weapons will continue to end up in the wrong hands. And that will leave police–and civilians–at the wrong end of the barrel.
The revolver dates back to Wyatt Earp. In the age of “Miami Vice, weapons are faster and more lethal.
Ruger .38 Beretta Revolver 9-mm Pistol Weight: 41 ounces 34 ounces Length: 9.3 inches 8.5 inches Capacity: 6 rounds 15 rounds Features: Reliable; Fast shooting requires requires moderate light trigger pressure trigger pressure; after first shot; one one round per pull; round per pull; available in gun sold in stores stores
JACQUES CHENET–NEWSWEEK (3), DAVID N. BERKWITZ–NEWSWEEK
Uzi Colt Submachine Gun Submachine Gun Weight: 95.04 ounces 92 ounces Length: 14.17 inches 26-29 inches Capacity: 20-32 rounds 32 rounds Features: Fully Fully automatic;fires automatic;fires 900 800 per minute (excluding rounds per minute reloading); availability (excluding reloading); restricted avalailability restricted
COURTESY OF JOHN JOVING GUN SHOP, NEW YORK CITY
