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?
Now assuming I can play 'what if' scenarios which ignore the fact that I'd have been scared s***less... I'd have started trying to hit their AKs or their heads in order to disable their arms or give them concussions...
I never said I'd be able to hit either target. I did say I'd try to, though.
Excerpt from definitions of 'try':
5 : to make an attempt at
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.
Yeah, the idea of having control over a bullet in flight is pretty naive... But I do have a few questions. I'll even answer them for you!
Would a standard 9mm round penetrate a helmet at that range? No.
Would a standard 9mm round give the guy in the helmet a pretty hard knock? Yes.
Would that knock be enough to give him a concussion? Probably.
I think naive would be thinking a round's going to go right through his helmet and blow his brains out.
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.
I consider weapons to be ineffective when a BG is hit 10 or more times and is still standing, don't you?
At the height of battle, there were somewhere between 300 and 400 LAPD officers (depending on sources) involved against 2 guys.
Earlier you mentioned watching all the bullets pinging in news footage. Watch that footage, then tell me how many officers you see actively involved.
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.
And when the SWAT units finally arrived, it didn't take long to end the conflict. The officers there for the bulk of the time didn't have MP5s or ARs.
Plus, the PD had all the advantages of various news organizations providing live feeds. They even had their own armored vehicle and commandeered another.
Live feeds to whichever call center, perhaps, but I don't think the officers on the scene were able to watch a TV -- at the most, I can see some descriptions of what's on TV via radio, which probably weren't fast enough to stay caught up in the confusion of the fight. The armored vehicles sure didn't help much... In fact, you seemed to make a point earlier that the BGs could have stopped an armored vehicle.
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?
Because the BGs had armor which protected them from the weapos available to the officers they were fighting (untill the end when SWAT arrived), because they had automatic weapons which could penetrate the police body armor as well as some of their cover. Because they were heavily armored enough that moving around wasn't very neccessary (they had the police pinned, and therefore didn't need to move quickly). They didn't have intel, but all else was in their favor for the bulk of the fight. When you're that well armed and armored, and you're fighting police who don't have the arms or armor to protect themselves/hurt you, you don't need much backup, do you? They weren't far enough apart to need a com system, and there were only two of them in the first place. Yelling woulda worked. I already addressed your claims of hundreds of officers.
They were not a superior force.
Read the above.
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 BGs had that in their favor too.
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.
So why did you argue that the police had MP5s and ARs? Right here, you're acknowledging that they didn't have an advantage in arms or armor. Also, I don't think the police were too worried about collateral damage: You described all the police bullets hitting the building behind the BGs; also, the SWAT officers who approached the BG by the disabled brownish truck shot back through the truck and the car next to it -- without showing much regard for the condition of the vehicles.
Simply put, the police only gained the upper hand at the end of the fight (hence it being the end), but they were vastly incapable of overcoming the BGs' force for almost all of the conflict.