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spacecoast · January 9, 2013, 10:04 AM

Not picking on law officers, but this is an example of exaggeration gone wild in the current environment...

My wife is an elementary school teacher and on Monday, the first day back after the holidays, the teachers and administrators had a "code red" planning meeting which included a local law enforcement officer. The subject of the meeting was, of course, what to do in a Sandy Hook-like situation where gunfire can be heard in the building and a "code red" alert is issued.

I'm not sure why, but the LEO for some reason said "With an AR, a bad guy can fire 1,000 rounds in two minutes". Two minutes was mentioned as the time needed for the police to arrive (highly optimistic IMHO).

Maybe this rate of fire claim was made just to impress the teachers (the vast majority of which are young females), but as I told my wife later this claim was ludicrous for a number of reasons - the number of full magazines it would require one to carry, the rate of fire needed, the number of magazine changes, etc. Anything approaching 1,000 rounds in two minutes would require a belt-fed full auto machine gun with a sophisticated feeding mechanism. Even a skilled rifleman would be hard pressed to do anything more than 100 rounds per minute using a semi-auto AR with any kind of aiming at multiple targets involved (just my rough estimate). It may be lower than that, not sure.

I hope this anecdote is just an outlier on the spectrum of truth and that the LEOs talking and working in our schools are a little more realistic about what they are saying.

January 9, 2013, 10:04 AM	#1
spacecoast Senior Member Join Date: October 14, 2009 Location: Sunshine and Keystone States Posts: 4,461	Are cops saying silly things? Not picking on law officers, but this is an example of exaggeration gone wild in the current environment... My wife is an elementary school teacher and on Monday, the first day back after the holidays, the teachers and administrators had a "code red" planning meeting which included a local law enforcement officer. The subject of the meeting was, of course, what to do in a Sandy Hook-like situation where gunfire can be heard in the building and a "code red" alert is issued. I'm not sure why, but the LEO for some reason said "With an AR, a bad guy can fire 1,000 rounds in two minutes". Two minutes was mentioned as the time needed for the police to arrive (highly optimistic IMHO). Maybe this rate of fire claim was made just to impress the teachers (the vast majority of which are young females), but as I told my wife later this claim was ludicrous for a number of reasons - the number of full magazines it would require one to carry, the rate of fire needed, the number of magazine changes, etc. Anything approaching 1,000 rounds in two minutes would require a belt-fed full auto machine gun with a sophisticated feeding mechanism. Even a skilled rifleman would be hard pressed to do anything more than 100 rounds per minute using a semi-auto AR with any kind of aiming at multiple targets involved (just my rough estimate). It may be lower than that, not sure. I hope this anecdote is just an outlier on the spectrum of truth and that the LEOs talking and working in our schools are a little more realistic about what they are saying.