Wired asks a good question in light of the Fort Hood massacre: “What, Exactly, Is A ‘Cop-Killer’ Gun?”

Even when the media go for defending firearms, they louse it up because they do not actually answer the question. There is a very nice discussion of Hasan’s firearm of choice: the FN Herstal 5.7mm pistol, as well as its funkier 5.7 x 28mm round, but the author restricts his analysis to a different weapon, the H&K MP7, which he deems is similar to the FN P90… a weapon itself similar to the FN Herstal 5.7mm. He chooses the MP7 because he’d seen a range demo of that weapon.

And that is about where Wired ends it. The Czar does not.

The P90 is a very different weapon that fires the same 5.7mm round as the Herstal. It size, shape, handling, and functionality—and intended use as a backup weapon to crew-served weapons—is vastly different from the Herstal, which is a pistol. The H&K MP7 is a small submachine gun intended to compete with the P90, but is otherwise quite a different weapon as well. For one thing, the P90 is a bullpup; the MP7 is a smaller rotating bolt weapon familiar to H&K folks everywhere. The P90 does not use the same ammunition as the MP7, so using the MP7 to describe a pistol is pretty far off base, in the Czar’s opinion. In fairness, the Czar has never fired an MP7, but he has spent enough time with its bigger cousins, the UMP and MP5, and thinks extremely highly of them.* The Czar has further experienced a consumer version of the P90, and thought the reticle system very cool, but did not think the ammunition worth the cost.

The FN Herstal is not a cop-killer weapon. It is not commonly found on the streets, or indeed even in the military. It is a boutique weapon that is ultimately just a semiautomatic pistol designed to fire the rarer 5.7 x 28mm round. The 5.7mm is half the weight of a more familiar 9mm round, and offers less recoil and smaller size—meaning that police or the military (if they ever adopted the weapon) could carry a lot more ammunition without weighing themselves down.

Even when the media go for defending firearms, they louse it up. That last sentence is also valid for a person looking to do as much damage on unarmed personnel in as short a time as possible with no hope of getting out alive. Hasan did not have time to stop and refill magazines out of a box; he could pack a few extra mags on him and just keep going. And that is why he chose it.

So what makes this a cop-killer weapon in the eyes of the MSM? Easy enough. The bullets are different. That’s it: they are small, sharp-looking, and often feature a blue tip. This alone was enough to fool the Brady Campaign, who wanted them outlawed for their obvious ability to punch straight through Kevlar body armor. The problem is that the ammunition available to the public cannot do so, as confirmed the the ATF. But the blue, sleek bullets do not kill any more or less than regular bullets do.

The Czar advises that rather than focusing on the weapon used, the press should be asking how and why a guy dressed as a cliché of a terrorist can stroll so deeply into a base with weaponry. Except they will not like the answer they get. Neither will you.

*The Mandarin and Volgi have also worked with the UMP and MP5; the Czar does not know if they think as highly of those weapons as the Czar, but suspects they think higher of those weapons than they do the Czar. The Czar had a nice picture of Mrs. Volgi shredding a silhouette with the UMP, but he lost it.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.