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“It's a rich man's game no matter what they call it and you spend your life puttin' money in his wallet 9 to 5” (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 94 points 1 week ago* (5 children)

I'm not OP, but the Maglite was originally developed for use by American police in the late 1970s. They made it long and heavy so that it could be used as a club (sorry, "impact tool"). Like most things that the police did during that time, these were mostly purchased with the intent of providing plausible deniability about racial profiling and police brutality (and if they weren't purchased with that intent, they were often used for that purpose anyway).

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  • [–] 68 points 1 week ago* (3 children)

    (You've gotten them conflated with Kel-lights; Maglites were a knockoff improvement of the kel lights, and were widely available to non-LEO buyers. They were also a good deal less effective as a bludgeon, but far superior flashlights, which is why they became popular. Plausible deniability isn't worth squat if you can't find what you want to hit)

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  • [–] 30 points 1 week ago

    Oh, interesting. I know that the Maglite was intentionally targeting law enforcement, but I didn't know that they were actually the second generation of club-flashlight. I just looked up the Kel-light and discovered that they were about a decade earlier, which frankly makes it even clearer what (or rather who) the "impact tool" was for.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Keller paid a commission of $1 to each police officer that convinced another to purchase a light.

    After Keller left in 1972, he continued designing lights for a new company (Pro-Light, 1973), later moving on to Maglite (1979), Brinkmann, and ASP.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    My grandad was a sheriff during the civil rights movement for some time after.

    He just put a lead core in a baton and called it a day. He had two, one for black folk and one to show the prosecutor if it ever came up. Spoiler: it never came up.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    At the same time it was a top of the line flashlight. We used them a lot looking for crabs.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    Oh, it was definitely the brightest commercially-available flashlight of the pre-LED era. If I recall correctly, they sold a much smaller-sized flashlight that was just as bright; some of my friends' dads had that one hanging around. I remember being amazed.

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