Maschinenpistole Fünf

Ah, yes, the glorious MP.5

Tam and Sebastian have recently mentioned the most popular submachinegun ever made.

I have an MP.5 story too!

I used to live in Ames, Iowa.

Ames is the home of Iowa State University.  It's not the happiest of marriages at times.

Ames has a police force.

They gained a less than stellar reputation for accuracy after an ISU basketball player held up and took over the local Burger King.  No hostages by the time the police arrived, but he'd barricaded himself in the restaurant.  The cops fired over two hundred rounds at the restaurant and the perp surrendered during the lull where the cops were presumably waiting for someone to get back from buying more ammo.  He was uninjured.

Iowa State University has an annual celebration of education known as VEISHA.

VEISHA has more than once descended into riotous behavior.  Mostly of the property-damage variety from underage drinking and youthful exuberance.  But a rioting mob nonetheless.

Shortly after the 1992 riots the Gendarmes de Ames decided the needed more firepower to quell such uprisings.  Especially after they found themselves in the embarrassing position of having fired tear-gas PAST the riot which caused the rioters to flee the gas STRAIGHT AT THEM.

They decided on Heckler And Koch's MP.5.

It probably would have been done swiftly and quietly but...  You see the City of Ames has rules for buying police equipment.  Rules like a quorum of the city council, vote must happen during a regular council meeting, must be on the published agenda...  Complicated stuff.

A local person was perusing the City Council minutes and noticed the authorization of several MP.5 SMG's.  "Odd," he thought, "I don't recall seeing that come to a vote at the last meeting."  He did some more research and discovered the vote was made during a special session created just to vote on the acquisition.  "Foul!" he cried!

At the very next meeting he demanded to know why the Ames Police, with their aforementioned problem with accuracy, needed machine guns.  Further he discovered that there had not been an Ames police officer killed in the line of duty by any means, let alone shot since prohibition.  He made quite a stink about it and I even joined in with making the stink at the council meetings until they finally decided that they would also get semi-auto trigger packs for them and place the select-fire packs into the armory where they could only be removed  in the event of a declared emergency (which required the Governor).

It should have ended there.  I mentioned my involvement?  Yeah, suddenly everyone who spoke up at those meetings suddenly had a great deal of difficulty keeping below the speed limit, finding a parking place, keeping their grass cut to code...  All manner of petty harassment.  It was enough that I gave up on Ames and decided to off myself.  The Lovely Harvey changed my mind and convinced me to merely move to Florida.