In fact, all the while gun critics continue to clamor for bans on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and armor-piercing bullets, the U.S. military is passing them out to domestic police forces.
There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines.
While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, the government is arming its own civilian employees to the hilt with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorizing them to make arrests, and training them in military tactics.
Seriously, why do IRS agents need AR-15 rifles?
For that matter, why do police need armored personnel carriers with gun ports, compact submachine guns with 30-round magazines, precision battlefield sniper rifles, and military-grade assault-style rifles and carbines?
Short answer: they don't.
In the hands of government agents, whether they are members of the military, law enforcement or some other government agency, these weapons have become routine parts of America's day-to-day life, a byproduct of the rapid militarization of law enforcement over the past several decades.
Over the course of 30 years, police officers in jack boots holding assault rifles have become fairly common in small town communities across the country. As investigative journalists Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz reveal, "Many police, including beat cops, now look more and more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Does this sound like a country under martial law?
You want to talk about gun violence? While it still technically remains legal for the average citizen to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at and killed by police.
You don't even have to have a gun or a look-alike gun, such as a BB gun, in your possession to be singled out and killed by police.
There are countless incidents that happen every day in which Americans are shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, or challenge an order.
Growing numbers of unarmed people are being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding somethinganythingthat police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer's mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.
With alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by twitchy, hyper-sensitive, easily-spooked police officers who shoot first and ask questions later, and all the government does is shrug, and promise to do better, all the while the cops are granted qualified immunity.
This is what passes for policing in America today, folks, and it's only getting worse.
Remember, to a hammer, all the world looks like a nail.
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