Police illegally sell restricted weapons, supplying crime

Exaggerated Weapon Claims & Media Credibility

• Many commenters fixate on the article’s dramatic line about ammo “blowing through a tank and concrete and exploding 18 football fields away,” calling it physically impossible or cartoonish.
• This hyperbole leads some to question the article’s overall reliability, despite acknowledging the underlying issue is serious.
• Others suggest journalists may be parroting exaggerated claims from police, or padding stories with “macho” descriptions of weapons, undermining trust in the reporting.

Police Weapons Trafficking & Moral Hazard

• Core concern: police and small departments allegedly buying restricted or discounted weapons and reselling them (sometimes to criminals or cartels).
• ATF is portrayed as reluctant to prosecute “fellow law enforcement,” preferring “education,” which commenters see as a huge moral hazard.
• Multiple cases cited (New Mexico ring, multistate conspiracy with police chiefs and an arms dealer) suggest a pattern rather than isolated incidents.

California & Other Legal Loopholes

• California’s handgun “roster” and police exemptions are highlighted: officers can buy off-roster guns and then sell them to civilians, creating a gray-market profit opportunity.
• Some argue that laws creating artificial scarcity and government exemptions virtually guarantee such arbitrage.

Machine Guns, NFA, and “Assault Weapons” Debate

• Detailed discussions distinguish:
  • Cops flipping ordinary guns with LE discounts.
  • Off-roster handguns.
  • “Assault weapons” resold illegally.
  • Post‑1986 NFA “post-sample” machine guns acquired via law-enforcement demo letters.
• Several posters claim NFA‑registered post-1986 machine guns have never been used in violent crime; others note rare NFA crimes but agree the rate is extremely low.
• Long, contentious subthread over whether “assault weapons” are uniquely dangerous:
  • One side: category is mostly cosmetic (pistol grips, barrel shrouds, etc.) and politically constructed.
  • Other side: semi‑auto/select‑fire long guns with detachable magazines are inherently “weapons of war” and more relevant for mass shootings, even if handguns dominate overall gun deaths.
  • Consensus: the term is legally and politically muddled, and the question is unsettled.

Federal vs Local Policing & Oversight

• Some argue for more federalized or external oversight to avoid local cronyism and reluctance to charge cops.
• Others warn a national police force or expanded federal power is a dystopian “single point of failure,” citing examples like DC and former communist states.
• Middle-ground view: keep local community policing but add strong, randomized, external auditing/investigation.

Justice, Sentencing, and NRA Politics

• Commenters contrast relatively light sentences (e.g., 5 years) for arms trafficking with historically harsh treatment of drug offenses.
• Debate over whether people are actually imprisoned for simple marijuana possession; data cited that numbers have fallen but are not zero.
• Some criticize gun-rights organizations for not defending civilians who use firearms in apparent self-defense against police, seeing this as evidence that gun control often exempts the state itself.

Broader Context & Culture

• Several posts argue that US gun culture and constitutional framing of gun rights are unique but intertwined with both civilian and military power.
• Others note minorities have long understood police corruption and weapons abuse; the article simply exposes it to a wider audience.
• Meta-comments accuse both the article and parts of the thread of misunderstanding firearms and displaying Dunning–Kruger effects.