Arizona Campus Police Getting Assault Rifles

(Phoenix, Arizona) When warranted, Arizona college campus officers are going to have the firepower needed to take down a heavily-armed perpetrator.

Police departments at Arizona's three universities plan to arm their officers with military-style assault rifles within the next year, officials said Tuesday.

The new rifles would give campus police officers long-range shooting capabilities, allowing them to hit targets at the end of long hallways or atop tall buildings, officials said.

Arizona State University will be the first of the three schools to use the weapons. Officers there will be trained to use the rifles in the next few months, said ASU police spokesman Cmdr. Jim Hardina.

The assault weapons are expected to be valuable in "active shooting" situations in which a SWAT team is unable to respond quickly enough.

On the street, one campus officer was overheard to welcome the new weapons by exclaiming, "Yee-ha! Now I can really blow apart one of them stinkin' college perverts."

Uh, not really. I made that last part up.

Companion post at The Jawa Report.