I think ditching both the UMP .40 and the M4 makes sense. With regards to what agents in the field are saying, the guys (double digits) I have heard from that gave me the raw data for this second article, range from New York to California to Arizona and in between. I just got a word of thanks on this second article from a field agent, not 15 minutes ago.
#RESIST
The whole bent barrel thing is pegging my "full retard" meter.
How in the hell do they have that many bent barrels, and if they don't then how in the hell is their armorer program so inept that they are deadlining barrels as bent that ain't bent?
After talking things over with Sully and many agents, it sounds like the inspectors were looking for reasons to deadline barrels. Also, remember that if the barrel isn't squeaky clean, it will read as bent.Originally Posted by Chuck Haggard
#RESIST
Glad they are so free with taking working guns out of the field, and throwing my taxpayer money around for no good reason.
Yeah, it would be different if they were actually.....replacing the rifles they took right then and there.
#RESIST
My question woulda been, assuming my carbine had just passed a qual and was holding decent groups at the 100, who gives a shit if the gauge says the barrel is "bent"?
That happened to quite a few agents.
#RESIST
Often when dealing when governmental organizations, embarrassment is one of the few catalyst for change. Seemingly straight forward issues have to be escalated to the point of a full blown crisis to fix minor problems.
It would seem pretty straight forward, that agents in the field need to be assigned their own rifles, that the rifles need to be inspected on at least an annual basis and replaced/rebuilt at regular intervals. These are some of the few guys in law enforcement that have a high probability of being in a long range gunfight. There also some of the few guys that have a reasonable expectation of confronting a foreign military. Yet, look at the situation they were in before this hit the news, pooled rifles of dubious quality. The real story IMO, was for an agency as large as ICE and with a $5.5ish billion budget, why was fielding enough rifles an issue in the first place? I'm not even going to say leadership, but there's a serious management break down, when the stakes for the guys in the field are as high as they, and they don't have the basic equipment they need.
Unfortunately guys in the field may have to take a short term screwing, in order to sufficiently embarrass the management in Washington and get a fire lit under their butts to do the right thing. Sometimes it as simple as, if you stick with the status quo, nothing changes until someone dies.
Edited: If the way agents treat their vehicles is any indication of a general attitude towards pooled equipment, bent barrels and other damage from abuse/neglect wouldn't surprise me in the least.
<---Hates smart phones and kids on his lawn.
Czech, are you talking about ICE or CBP?
I did some pretty atrocious things, and saw some pretty atrocious things, performed to the AR15 platform when I was in the military. Dudes falling on top of them, rifles dropped from 6 feet onto concrete, ect. They're very robust rifles, unlike the popular opinion among fudds would have anyone believe. From my experience, I really can't imagine a bent barrel coming from an agent being careless, unless he/she was careless about letting the carbine be used as a brace for heavy equipment.
Also, IME from emergency services and the military, pooled equipment just about never gets the respect that personally owned equipment would. Well, except for firetrucks. Firemen don't really have any work to do like the other public services or military, so their day is usually spent as a massive oogie-cookie over the maltese cross and ludicrously expensive apparatus.
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
The barrel straightness guage is .219 OD and it takes a very nasty barrel to stop one. I've seen one (last year) and it had over 20K rounds down the bore and hadn't ever been bore cleaned (!!!) according to the owner. 15-20 strokes of a solvent soaked bronze brush and a patch out job and it passed. I don't know what's happening with the BP guns but I'd guess there are multiple factors of stupid involved. As an armorer trainer for Colt, I see lots of this in microcosm in my travels of organizations just not doing the simplest PM routines that would prevent this kind of mess.
Regional Government Sales Manager for Aimpoint, Inc. USA
Co-owner Hardwired Tactical Shooting (HiTS)
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