I found this report of suicide-by-cop interesting:
A Frankfort man was fatally shot by police Tuesday after he pointed a rifle at an officer during a standoff.
The shooting ended a nearly five-hour-long standoff between Mark Bustamante, 28, 1205 Milroy St., and members of the Clinton County Emergency Response Team. Bustamante was fatally shot in the upper left chest at 1:20 a.m. today. He was pronounced dead shortly after at St. Vincent Frankfort Hospital.
A member of Kirklin Police Department fired a single shot from his .223-caliber rifle after Bustamante pointed an assault rifle at the officer. The policeman is now on administrative leave pending review by the firearms review board.
Now, there’s a chance that the “.223-caliber rifle” used by the officer was a bolt-action “sniper-gun,” but the overwhelming probability is that it was an AR-15 – an assault rifle itself. In fact, it’s even possible that it was an M-16, the real select-fire assault rifle, rather than the semi-auto AR-15. The article isn’t clear. Many departments are now issuing AR-15 rifles to their patrol officers rather than the traditional riot shotgun, and AR-15’s are common for SWAT teams these days. Fully-automatic M-16’s are available to police departments through the Federal government. I would be interested in knowing whether the officers on the scene were armed with “assault rifles.”
You know, guns that are only good for “killing and wounding as many people as possible at relatively short range as quickly as possible, without the need for carefully aimed fire.”