Sell IRS Guns and Ammo to the People – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

In 2023, the Criminal Investigation Division (CI) of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sought to hire special agents deploying firearms who “must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force.” Rep. Barry Moore thinks that was a bad idea. 

The congressman’s “Why Does the IRS Need Guns Act” prohibits the IRS from using federal funds “to buy, receive or store firearms and ammo” and requires “the transfer of IRS firearms and ammunition to the Administrator of General Services. The firearms and ammunition would then be auctioned to licensed dealers, put on sale to the public, and the proceeds used “for the sole purpose of deficit reduction.” 

For another reason the IRS should not have guns, taxpayers might recall the hearings on the “Taxpayers Bill of Rights” by the Senate Finance Committee in 1987. As testimony revealed, IRS bosses posted signs reading “seizure fever, catch it!” and rewarded agents who confiscated the most property. 

Whistleblowers testifying behind a screen, a Newsweek report noted, “told of an IRS that is a virtual police state within a democracy, a Borgia-like fiefdom of tax terror at the heart of the U.S. economy.” Unlike other government agencies, the IRS “wields vast power with wide discretion in every American’s life, yet it endures no regular oversight.”

With a predatory, unaccountable enforcement division deploying firearms, the IRS could easily shoot first and avoid questions later, like the FBI in the case of Craig Robertson, gunned down in 2023 for threats against Joe Biden he allegedly made online. Selling off IRS guns and ammo could prevent such an outcome, but the measure might need fine-tuning. 

All sales should be final, with no buybacks at any level, and not limited to the IRS. As the people should know, the federal Department of Education (ED), a legacy of the Carter administration, deploys an enforcement division armed with Remington Model 870 shotguns. Those guns would be better off in the hands of hunters and skeet shooters. 

The federal government might also look to sell off surplus military firearms, altered for civilian use where necessary. As the U.S. Constitution makes clear, the people have the right to keep and bear arms, but why should an act aimed at deficit reduction be limited to guns and ammunition?  The people also have a right to property, but the federal government owns 80.1 percent of Nevada, 63.1 percent of Utah, 60.9 percent of Alaska, 52.3 percent of Oregon, and 45.4 percent of California. 

The sale of federal land could help settle America’s debt obligations, as my colleagues, William Shughart and Carl Close explain, now “so huge that traditional methods for improving the government’s fiscal stance — namely, by raising more tax revenue, printing more money, or refinancing/reissuing government debt — are inadequate to the task and would create a host of major problems.” 

The sale of federal government assets avoids these problems and offers advantages. “Asset liquidation could be better tied to debt reduction so that the revenues are not diverted to other government programs.” As ownership and control of the formerly government-owned assets move to the private sector, “profit-motivated business owners and entrepreneurs gain incentives to employ those assets in ways that maximize their economic value.” 

For their part, non-profits would gain the ability to manage resources “in a manner consistent with their missions, rather than relying on the indirect method of lobbying the government.” It’s a win-win situation.

“The road to national solvency is paved with sales receipts from the U.S. government’s vast property holdings,” the authors contend, “particularly its untapped treasure trove of energy deposits. The time has come to take that road and enlist others for the journey. The public debt clock is ticking. Let’s get started.”  

Perhaps with a bill titled, “Why Does the Federal Government Need so Much Land?”

READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley:

Tulsi’s Task Force: From the CIA to EIS and Beyond

Militarizing Misery: LA Enlists NeverTrumper in Recovery Effort

Karen Bass Fails to ‘Build Back Better’

Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.