Guns of police chiefs - Cop talk: opinion and facts from the mean streets

American Handgunner, May-June, 2004 by Massad Ayoob

In his recent book "Three Weeks in October," former police chief Charles Moose tells the inside story of what it was like when he coordinated the hunt for the Maryland Sniper in 2002; leading to the capture of John Muhammad and Lee Malvo. They were later sentenced to death and life without parole respectively for their serial murders. But the book is at its best when Moose talks about his law enforcement career.

Let me say up front Chief Moose is probably never going to be invited to address an NRA banquet. "He was not good on gun rights, not good at all," says my old friend Neal Knox, the high profile gun fights activist who watched the investigation closely, since it happened near him. The almost random confiscation of citizens' .223 rifles liar testing was one thing that left a bad taste in Neal's mouth. I agree.

Still, there are some chiefs who have been anti-gun as far as citizen gun owners' rights, but good on firearms and training as it impacted their troops. Moose appears to have been one such. He emphasized training throughout his career as a chief of big departments, remembering his own start. "In my time, there wasn't much instruction at all. You arrived in Portland, and you were sent to qualify for your weapon, and once they knew you could shoot a little they let you borrow $110 from a police fund and sold you a Model 10 Smith & Wesson gun," he writes.

Moose, correctly, considered himself a role model for his officers. He writes he always wore his ballistic vest when in uniform, to set an example, and was never without an off duty gun. "I always wear a weapon, no matter what clothes I'm wearing," he says. "That morning, I put my Smith & Wesson 9mm into a belt holster. For the regular uniform, I'd carry the standard Berreta (sic) 9mm, which is a little bigger and bulkier than the Smith & Wesson."

A standard Beretta 92F with double action first shot and slide-mounted safety/decock lever will operate exactly like a Smith & Wesson slim-line Model 3913. Moose's choice was a sensible one. Another police executive who favored the 3913 was Louis Freeh. Perhaps the most anti-gun director in the FBI's history, Freeh was nonetheless aware of instances where agents had been caught unarmed and murdered, and always set the example of carrying his own little Smith, stuffed with issue 147 grain subsonic Federal HydraShok 9mm.