Maybe they should get their story straight

The AP on April 25th :

Expiration Of Ban Pushes Police To Get Assault Rifles. ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The expiration of the nation's ban on the sale of assault rifles and the appearance of more heavily armed criminals have pushed more than 100 St. Petersburg police officers to order assault rifles of their own for official duty.

OK. Except here is Deborah Sontag in the New York Times on April 24th:

Despite dire predictions that the streets would be awash in military-style guns, the expiration of the decade-long assault weapons ban last September...has not caused any noticeable increase in gun crime in the past seven months, according to several metropolitan police departments.

The uneventful expiration of the assault weapons ban did not surprise gun owners, nor did it surprise some advocates of gun control.

So, which is it? A wave of assault weapons in crime, or no noticable increase? The NYT again:

What's more, law enforcement officials say that military-style weapons, which were never used in many gun crimes but did enjoy some vogue in the years before the ban took effect, seem to have gone out of style in criminal circles.

Bad guys with guns over running the country? NYT once more:

Gun crime has plummeted since the early 1990's. But a study for the National Institute of Justice said that it could not "clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence."

I have no problem with cops buying their own guns, but these particular guns seem inadequate for the some of the reported purposes:

The rifles may be used only in "a high-risk situation, such as...when confronted by barricaded subjects,...for felony vehicle stops."

These guns (AR-15s) fire .223 cartridges, and those are awful for penetrating barricades and cars bodies. Still, if the cops want to shell out $1100 of their own money, that's fine- so long as the rest of us can buy them too.