why do American cops have bayonets??

Hey yo, why does um your local cops have bayonets? Um between 2006 and 2014, the US military gave local police departments 79,000 assault rifles, 205 grenade launchers, and I you not 11,959 bayonets for cops in case you know traffic stops get a little Napoleonic. So here's how this works. after the US invaded Iraq and the Pentagon basically had a surplus problem. They had extra M wraps which were like mine resistant protected vehicles uh designed to survive like IEDs and Fallujah and they needed to put them somewhere. So they made something called the 1033 program uh where the Department of Defense just kind of gave them away to your local police. Over 600 armored vehicles plus rifles, grenade launchers, and then you know the bayonets. The cost of the police department was literally nothing except for shipping. So that was 5. 1 billion dollars in military gear handed out. Uh over 8,000 police departments, almost 23 of every law enforcement agency in the United States. And you know it get there's like a supply chain now. The M wraps will get built. They go to Fuja in 2004. MRAPs go into surplus. 1033 ships them to a department in Missouri in 2014 like in Ferguson. uh and they're now assaulting civilians on a street or at least American civilians instead of opting for Iraqi ones. And that's also how they wound up in Minneapolis. Um so the program started as a kind of war on drugs type thing. Uh in 1990 it was counter narcotics. By 1997 uh they called it counterterrorism. And then in 2020, it was pointed at people who were protesting police violence at Standing Rock, at Occupy, and every city that had said enough. They built a machine to fight foreign wars. Then the wars ended, but the machines persisted and it just came home and found new people to point the weapons at. So now it's parked on a residential street looking as out of place as a, as I say in my video, a tank at a bake sale. So if you want to see the full story about how military expositions uh you know military adventures abroad by the United States and other empires end up coming home and being the source of dissent you know crushing and fascism abroad then you can watch my latest video.