Op-Ed: Federal agencies arming at alarming rate

Editor's Note: The following article was originally published in the Lima News. Republished with permission.

There was another mass shooting.

This was, predictably, followed by calls from the gun-grabbers to disarm law-abiding citizens and the penning of another ill-informed but sanctimonious column from Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald who once said, I kid you not, that blacks can’t be racists.

That gun-grabbers such as Pitts never propose measures to disarm criminals is a good indicator that they have no intention of stopping crime, they merely want to exercise more control over our lives.

That is, after all, the whole point of modern-day leftists — I refuse to call them liberals because I am a liberal, a believer in liberty. Today’s leftists are not liberals, they are socialists, communists, fascists who think they know better than you how you should live your life. Or, as President Bill Clinton said many times, and I am paraphrasing here, the average American is too stupid to know how to spend his or her own money. Rather than civil rights, equal protection of the law, etc., today’s leftists only care about class warfare and the redistribution of wealth from the makers to the takers.

The proof the gun-grabbing liberals care more about control than they do about reducing guns and violence is their utter silence on the arming of America’s government agencies, from the overt and unwise militarization of our local police departments to the paramilitary units and snipers who work for federal regulatory agencies.

This should alarm every peace-loving and liberty-minded American.

The most recent example of this was the armed agents from the Bureau of Land Management who surrounded Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s property earlier this year.

“There are lots of people who are really concerned when the BLM shows up with its own SWAT team,” U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, told The Washington Times. “They’re regulatory agencies. They’re not paramilitary units.”

This is the natural evolution of the regulatory state. Congress has essentially created a network of regulatory agencies, which are the real power in this country. Contained in many of these agencies are the three powers that our Founders so wisely separated in our government, the legislative, executive and judicial powers. These agencies make law, enforce the law, and then judge the lawbreakers. And not a single one of them is elected by the people. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Congress passed 72 laws in 2013 but unelected bureaucrats issued 3,659 regulations that carry the force of law.

Now these agencies are arming themselves. Heavily.

The most recent example is the Department of Agriculture, which is in the market for body armor and submachine guns.

What is going on?

Mike Hammond, legislative counsel to Gun Owners of America, has an idea: “We suspect that the federal government is anticipating and preparing for confrontation with American citizens.”

In other words, the government is preparing for war against the people.

Some might say that sounds conspiratorial. Yet, the evidence is there.

Two years ago, the National Weather Service advertised for bids to purchase 46,000 rounds of .40-caliber hollow-point ammunition. The weather service! Then the Social Security Administration purchased 174,000 rounds of .357 hollow-point pistol ammunition and the Department of Homeland Security purchased 450 million rounds of .40-caliber hollow-point ammunition.

Hollow-point ammunition has been illegal in international warfare since the 1899 Hague Convention and is illegal for civilians to own in many jurisdictions.

In 2010, the Department of Education bought a number of 12-gauge shotguns to add to its existing shotgun inventory and is compatible with its combat training. Why are Department of Education employees undergoing combat training? Even the financially strapped U.S. Postal Service has purchased thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Indeed, nearly every federal government agency now includes heavily armed thugs to enforce the will of unelected bureaucrats who are creating thousands of new regulations every year without any meaningful oversight.

As these agencies stock up on weapons and ammunition, the federal government is trying to make it harder for law-abiding citizens to obtain weapons and ammunition.

Do the math. If you don’t find this problematic, then you are a slave to the state.