The NJ Police Chief Magazine Volume 24, Number 7 | Page 13

The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | October 2018
Rifle Logic: As semi-automatic rifles continue to grow in popularity,
officers are increasingly facing a threat they’re ill-equipped to handle
By Keith A. Germain, Chief of Police, Barnegat Police Department
There’s a saying in the business world that if you’re not evolving, you’re dying. That concept translates very well to
the world of law enforcement-- only the death we face for failing to evolve is not figurative, but tragically literal.
We’ve evolved in response to a myriad of new threats throughout our history resulting in many of the tactics and
tools we use today.
Ballistic vests are one of the easily identifiable examples of this evolution. For many years now we’ve been wearing
ballistic vests as a regular course of business. Concealable body armor has been the equivalent of the law
enforcement seat belt for most of my career-- you just don’t go to work without it. But just as the automobile
industry came to understand that seatbelts weren’t enough and further evolved to develop airbags, law enforcement
is starting to wake up to the fact that the concealable body armor we’ve counted on to keep us alive for the last 30+
years is no longer sufficient to keep us safe in a gunfight.
Something has changed over the past decade that presents one of the deadliest threats that we’ve faced as a
profession. That change is the proliferation and availability of the semi-automatic rifle. Being a strong proponent of
the Second Amendment does not alter this reality.
The NRA estimates that there are 8.5 to 15 million semi-automatic rifles in circulation in the United States. According
to McClatchy, 1.6 million rifles were made and distributed in the US in 2007. By 2016, the number of US made and
distributed rifles more than doubled to 4.2 million. It follows that officers will be increasingly likely to face these
weapons in their daily mission as the torchbearers of democracy and safe keepers of society.
And face them in increasing numbers we have. In 2016 there was a significant spike visible in the data-- a 400%
increase in the number of officers killed with a rifle versus 2015. Nearly 40% of all LEOs killed by gunfire in 2016
were killed with a rifle. We’ve had high-profile, multiple-officer murder-by-rifle incidents like Dallas and Baton Rouge,
and we’ve had many lesser-known incidents where officers have been killed or severely injured by rifles.
The most recent high-profile example of this threat comes from South Carolina where seven police officers were shot
on one call for service, with Sergeant Terrence Carraway being mortally wounded.
If you step back to look at the big picture, you’ll see that 23% of all officers killed by gunfire since 2008-- nearly one
in four-- have been killed by rifles. The data and reality presents an uncomfortable question: how much longer can
we afford to send our officers to work without the tools necessary to be successful when confronting those who
would do harm with rifles?
The Rifle Response Triad
There are a number of things that set rifle bullets apart from the comparatively anemic handgun rounds that officers
have typically faced. Chief among these is the tremendous amount of energy that rifle projectiles can deliver to their
target. That dramatically increased energy (55 grain .223 ammunition carries almost four times more energy out of
the barrel than a 124 grain 9mm round), assures the projectile can defeat typical soft body armor and results in a
much more severe wound profile.
This propensity to cause more severe injury reduces both officer and victim survivability. This is especially apparent
in an active killer situation where officer survivability directly impacts the timeline and severity of the event. If the
responding officers are wounded and unable to engage the killer(s), it can trigger a cascading fault tree of resource
redirection and depletion that results in more victims being injured, killed, or not medically treated in a timely
manner.
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