[Double Naught Spy]

Cowled-Wolfe, if they could not hit the bad guys in the head, what makes you think they could hit the AK47s, or you for that matter?

I did like the part about giving the bad guys concussions. I didn't know you had that sort of control on your ammo. Yes, that is pretty naive.

I'd have done what the officers present did. They did everything they could given the situation, their training, and the emotional impact of having ineffective weaponry against such a superior force.

I didn't comment on it earlier, but I will here. I also liked the notion of the ineffective weaponry against such a superior force. At the height of battle, there were somewhere between 300 and 400 LAPD officers (depending on sources) involved against 2 guys. LAPD has SWAT units (with full auto as noted on a recent remake documentary, but the full auto are MP5s, I believe, not .5.56), radios, and helicopters. Plus, the PD had all the advantages of various news organizations providing live feeds. They even had their own armored vehicle and commandeered another. Tell me again, why two guys in body armor with full auto rifles with extremely limited mobility, no intel, no access to backup, and no com systems are superior to hundreds of officers? They were not a superior force. They simply did not have the hangups LAPD had. They did not have to worry about collateral damage. They did not have a command structure break down that slowed implementation of weaponry and people. The robbers came prepared for battle. LAPD did not. The robbers wore armor that would stop most rounds used by the LAPD, mixing hard and soft body armor over large areas of their bodies. LAPD had on soft armor only that covered limited areas.

Two guys are not a superior force over the entire LAPD. They were simply better able to make do with the circumstances than LAPD. Maybe you can come up with the data on this, but with the downed officers and bystanders, LAPD invested a lot of time and people into trying to effect rescues. That is very noble, but not necessarily strategically smart. Resources that could have been used to stop the gunmen were used to try to effect the rescues. The result? The gunmen were able to battle longer because many of the combatants that would have been involved in trying to stop them were doing rescue. Time that should have been used to figure out how to stop the bad guys by the commanders was put into trying to figure out how to implement rescues. It sucks from a strategic perspective, but our society puts more into saving good people than killing bad people. This incident was a classic example.

Danindetroit, Yes, FMJ maybe new to the forums. So he got a full metal response. New or not, he has access to the same search key we all do.

I thought Phillips was American. That is not ethnicity, but country. We are not talking genetics. I have no idea of either man's actual ethnicity. Location of birth does not determine ethnicity. If he isn't American, I haven't seen it posted anywhere else. Me, I don't care what ethnicity he was or was not. My statements were as to the robbers' background and military training. These guys were not military trained.

I did not answer as I thought somebody else had, but both were arrested previously, at least in AZ, and managed to petition the court to get back their weapons (which apparently were not illegal Class III).

Emil? Did you read the link I posted? I stated his background as I knew it. If you don't like the lectures, then look up the information yourself. While this was meant was an informative thread, what I saw was some fact being intermingled with a lot of garbage about the event. People were posting supposedly as to answer questions, but when stuff is just being made up or thrown out without verification, things go south really quick.

As for addressing you as if you had diminished capacity, I did not, but I will leave you with this example of yours that made no sense. You appear to be linking a series of pseudo-related answers into one lot, but the punctuation doesn't jive.

Are you sure the criminals were ex-military, I thought they were eastern europeans, they might have had citizenship, but they had lengthy criminal records.

I have no idea what being ex-military has to do with being eastern european. I have no idea why you are asking me again in your last post as to whether or not the guys had criminal records when you already stated previously that they had lengthy criminal records as noted in the quote above.

I have no idea about your comments on .50 BMG penetrating an engine block. .50 BMG wasn't in play during the incident. My comments pertained to using an armored truck to run down the back guys. It does not take a whole lot to seize and engine and you don't have to use a .50 BMG to penetrate the block to do it. Once seized, you aren't running down anyone. You can stop an armored truck with a lot of calibers of gun. All that is necessary is penetration of the engine compartment and then damage to some of the key systems such as electrical and cooling. The little computers that run the engines don't stand up to much abuse at all.