“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.” — Declaration of Independence
The IRS, the U.S. Postal Service, the EPA, the Department of Health and Human Services, and more than 100 other federal agencies (none of which operate under the aegis of the Department of Defense) have “spent $3.7 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment,” according to a new report on the arming of the bureaucracy.
The report was compiled by Open the Books, and discloses an astonishing amount of ammunition and war-fighting equipment being procured by these alphabet agencies. Here’s a brief synopsis of the report published by Reason:
The report alleges that since 2006, 103 federal agencies not contained within the Department of Defense (DOD) have collectively “spent $3.7 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment” (all numbers adjusted for inflation). Of those 103 agencies, 27 are “traditional law enforcement [entities] under the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).”
That leaves 76 agencies—including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—without a direct law enforcement purview.
Of particular note, the report reveals that “There are now more federal agents with arrest and firearm authority (200,000) than U.S. Marines (186,000).”
These agents — all of whom are beyond the reach of the American people and are completely unaccountable to them — are armed and have been given authority to use those weapons, and they outnumber the Marine Corps! Think about that.
What could be the purpose for the equipping of IRS and EPA agents — none of whom have even nominally a law enforcement mission — with such firepower and such, albeit unconstitutional, authority to use their military-grade guns and gear?
Take the Department of Health and Human Services. Consider this synopsis of the report published by Reason:
Since 2006, it has spent $154 million on “guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment.” According to a spreadsheet that [Adam] Andrzejewski [CEO of Open the Books] provided to Reason, since 2020, the HHS has spent over $427,000 on “tactical combat gear,” $247,000 on ammunition, $100,000 on “law enforcement weapons,” and $99,450 on a “virtual reality weapons simulator,” among other expenditures. This is all in addition to a $685,000 line item simply listed as “law enforcement equipment.”
With all that in materiel in mind, consider the mission statement as declared on the HHS website:
Fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services….
It seems contrary to reason that an agency with such a benign purpose would need to equip its agents with firepower and equipment that belongs in a battlefield, rather than a laboratory.
The question remains: Why?
When questioned by Congress or the press, officials of these agencies respond that such purchases are necessary for training purposes, as well as for responding to potential threats.
Potential threats from whom? The American people?
Why would the American people pose a threat to these agencies, unless these agencies were themselves a threat to the American people? And is government truly government by the consent of the governed if agents of the government are being armed and trained to force the people to obey their tyrannical will?
It is important to remember that every one of these agencies is part of the executive branch, of which the president is the head. Ultimately, then, it is Joe Biden who has signed off on the remarkable ramp-up in firearms, ammunition, and military-grade equipment.
Ironic that at the same time he’s overseeing the arming of the bureaucracy, Joe Biden is overseeing the disarming of the American people.
Furthermore, in light of all the unconstitutional uses he’s made of executive orders, as the head of the executive branch, Joe Biden could constitutionally issue an executive order abolishing these branches. Admittedly, Congress would have to stop funding them or creating new branches to take their place, but the president has the authority to abolish all of these alphabet agencies.
Rather than abolish them, however, he’s decided to turn them into a sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces.
And that, I believe, is the purpose for the procuring of such an arsenal for these agencies.
Since the earliest days of Anglo-American history, since the days the Angles and the Saxons lived in Germany, the men of a community have been responsible for the defense of that community. This is the militia that our own Founding Fathers warned us was “necessary to the security of a free State.”
One of the things most dangerous to the security of a free state, however, is a standing army. A standing army is a professional, permanent corps of soldiers who are employed and commanded by government. Since the earliest days in England, the existence of a standing army has signaled the end of liberty and the rise of tyranny, tyranny protected and preserved by the well-armed standing army.
Forgotten Founding Father and hero of Yorktown St. George Tucker explained the threat this way:
Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.
Most Americans, if they were asked to describe “the army,” would describe the U.S. Army: uniforms, salutes, patches, chain of command, war, etc. Putting squads of regular army soldiers on every corner in the United States, equipped with firepower and gear sufficient to invade a country, would likely draw attention and the resistance of many Americans.
So, rather than erect a standing army or station the standing army that already exists among the people, why not hide these new “soldiers” in plain sight? Rather than camouflage fatigues with patches and medals, these “soldiers” wear blazers and carry badges.
If there were a plan to eradicate the liberty of the United States, then the arming of thousands of federal agents with an arsenal capable of enforcing the will of their “commanders” in D.C. is the perfect strategy. No one will suspect the IRS, the EPA, or the HHS to be capable of carrying out operations with military equipment and weapons. No one would describe these “pencil pushers” as soldiers — and that makes arming them the perfect plan.
Add to this surreptitious plan of arming agents the plan of disarming Americans, and you have the perfect pincers strategy, one that could lead to war between the American people and the government they created to serve them.
As Founding Father Tench Coxe warned in 1789:
Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.
