Statesman:

Continuing his efforts to champion law enforcement since five Dallas officers were shot to death in July, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Wednesday that he will press legislators to provide all 59,000 Texas patrol officers with a bulletproof vest capable of stopping high-caliber rifle rounds.

Early estimates place the cost at $15 million to $20 million, Patrick said, vowing to fight for the money in the 2017 legislative session despite a tight budget thanks to depressed oil and gas prices.

Oh my.  Do you think he understands that he’s talking about sending every cop out every day with hard shell SAPI plates and tactical vest plate carriers?  Wouldn’t that be a sight in Texas heat?  Sort of like it was with Marines running around Fallujah in 120 degree weather with full body armor on.  We’d have officers passing out everywhere, unable to get into and out of their patrol vehicles, knees crumbling from the stress, and unable to pass the physical with the additional weight of the vests.

Do you think someone needs to talk to him in private?  Or perhaps not.  Let’s see how this little experiment goes, shall we?  Everyone in favor, say aye?

News from California:

A gang member used armor piercing-bullets and an AR-15 to kill two Palm Springs police officers in a planned “ambush” on Saturday, said Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin in a press conference Wednesday.

John Felix, 26, shot an assault rifle through the front door of his house, killing Officers Jose “Gil” Vega and Lesley Zerebny and wounding a third officer – all of whom were wearing bulletproof vests. Felix was captured early Sunday morning after a 12-hour standoff with police and SWAT teams.

Felix has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder, with enhancement filed on each charge for the use of body armor and armor-piercing bullets.

Because most journalists write at the fifth grade level (intentionally and by design), we don’t know what this means.  I suppose it means that he used green tip ammunition.

But it really doesn’t matter.  I’ll wager that the cops were using SAPI plates, and so Kevlar won’t stop either green tip or frangible 5.56 mm ammunition.  But leave it to the police to make it sound like something other than what it is.  Someone killed cops.  The ammunition he used is irrelevant, and the cops know that.  This event was used to make an unrelated point.

And what’s the issue with the use of “body armor?”  What was he wearing – Kevlar or hard shell armor?  Is that illegal in California?

Fellow gun blogger Mike Vanderboegh gives us a link to Strategy Page on the various issues surrounding quality with SAPI plates.  As I’ve said before, my own son was saved by a SAPI plate.

I usually don’t like citing Strategy Page for anything.  They don’t provide sources, and if it’s public domain (as it is from time to time), they don’t supply URLs.  I also think that this particular Strategy Page article spends too much effort to explain something fairly simple.  SAPI plates are for 5.56 mm rounds, while ESAPI plates are designed for 7.62 X 39.  Troops generally train with SAPI plates, and get issued ESAPI plates in theater.

But this little tease at the end of the article is worth some thought.

All these plates are made of boron carbide ceramic with a spectra shield backing. This combination causes bullets to fragment and slow down before getting through the plate. Occasionally, some fragments will get through, but these are stopped by the layers of Kevlar that make up the flak jackets. The ceramic plates require a manufacturing process that uses, and produces, a lot of toxic chemicals. As a result of this, much of the production has moved to China.

Did you get that?  Much of the production has moved to China.  Ponder that statement for a moment.

China is the land of counterfeit parts, and not just any counterfeit parts, but ones intended for our military.  But there is another dirty little secret that most engineers know.  The Far East (China, and to some extent Japan) doesn’t do QA.  Engineers who have components fabricated in Japan must travel there extensively and repeatedly to ensure that they get what they’ve ordered.  Then usually they still don’t.

China is even worse.  The concept of QA isn’t part of the cultural or social fabric of the country.  They don’t understand it, don’t live it, don’t abide by its principles, and don’t have any conceptual understanding of it.  Nuclear power plants are forbidden by federal orders from installing parts fabricated in China.

Here is a note to my readers.  Procure anything that must be reliable in America.  Do not purchase guns, ammunition, tactical equipment, important products and supplies, body armor (soft or hard plate) or anything else from China.  Don’t do it.  Just say no.

As for the ESAPI plates being made there, it’s just a little hypocritical to claim that our EPA is trying to protect the environment while in fact we just ship our “pollution” overseas.  This isn’t the only product with which this kind of thing is done.

Ah.  Hypocrisy.  Rather like the ATF claiming to enforce gun laws while shipping thousands of rifles and handguns into the hands of Mexican cartels, no?