Years ago, he argued that law enforcement agencies were adding tactical weapons unnecessarily. “Police academies often aren’t well equipped to train with long guns,” said Pete Kraska, a professor of justice studies at Eastern Kentucky University who studies police militarization. Those potentially conflicting impulses reflect a policing paradox deepened by America’s obsession with the AR-15: The weapon can, depending on the circumstances, be an officer’s greatest threat or a potentially lifesaving tool. But police often say they still feel outgunned and ill-prepared - struggling to balance demands that they avoid using force against the knowledge that at any moment they could be called to stop a mass killing in progress.

Many officers welcomed the change, some even buying their own AR-15s and using them for sport or hunting when not on duty. Police departments that once deferred to SWAT teams wielding military-style rifles for active-shooter situations have in recent years started equipping the rank and file with AR-15s and other long guns, as those weapons have flooded neighborhoods and communities. “We might as well have been naked,” he said, recalling that crisp day in April 2021.

Burns didn’t know if anyone was inside the vehicle.įor Burns, it was the nightmare scenario: Hefting the weapon of war he’d started carrying after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, hoping for a fighting chance as he confronted a suspect, knowing the bullet-resistant vests he and his fellow officers were wearing would fail if the man sent a fusillade of high-speed bullets their way. The man had stopped outside a car parked at a gas station fuel pump. He was training his weapon on a suspect who had leaped from a wrecked stolen car and appeared to be carrying a tactical rifle of his own.

For this reason, we refer to the rifle broadly as the AR-15 in this series.ĬOLORADO SPRINGS - Chris Burns tore the AR-15 out of his patrol cruiser, wrapping the rifle sling around his body, feeling he might be forced to shoot a man for the first time in more than two decades as a police officer. While Colt still holds the trademark, “AR-15” has become a ubiquitous term for a popular style of gas-operated, magazine-fed semiautomatic rifles. The patent expired, leaving many companies to produce their own weapons, commonly called AR-style rifles. Colt acquired the AR-15 patent and trademark from Armalite in 1959.

Tony carter photography flickr