This topic is one which has been discussed on the Internet for a while, but only recently has it been increasingly covered in the mainstream media and it has now even drawn the serious attention of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. Therefore, I will comment on this controversial topic. You may want to get a cup of coffee. This may take a while to read, and its subject matter is serious. I will discuss openly what I think tens of millions of Americans are now thinking, and discuss it in a biblical context.
It concerns a reported “buy” of 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the USA. The first link, from Forbes.com ( a mainstream media source), reports that the DHS intends to buy 1.6 bllion rounds of ammunition and that this very strange action by the DHS should stimulate “a national conversation.” Forbes.com is right. This post is intended to participate and help stimulate such a national debate, especially from a Christian point of view. This first link is dated 3/11/13 and it states the issue had “little notice” at that time. That is no longer the case as it is becoming a hot topic now, as it should. The Forbes article reports that the DHS is not only buying 1.6 billion rounds of ammo, but it is also buying hollow-point rounds—which are forbidden by international law for use in warfare as the rounds are so destructive. Question: if these rounds are so destructive they are outlawed in foreign wars, why is the DHS buying them for domestic use? Who is the DHS intending to kill? These rounds are not suitable for training purposes. This article also warns the DHS is buying 2,717 armored personnel carriers (MRAPS like thosre used in Afghanistan vs. the Taliban). Apparently, the DHS also intends to use these armored vehicles against someone in the domestic USA as the DHS has no role in foreign wars. The story begs the question: What Americans are they intending to use these armored vehicles against? What threat does the DHS see that requires them to have more armored vehicles than exist in the entire armies of most foreign nations? The Forbes issue states that “there…are real signs that the Department bureaucrats are running amok.” It also notes that spending so large an amount of money on a century’s worth of ammo “is way beyond absurd well into perverse,” and further cites the sequestration process which requires all federal government agencies to cut spending as making this kind of wild spending on creating a DHS army rather ridiculous.
The second link, from Fox News, points out the shocking statistic that the DHS is “using roughly 1000 rounds of ammunition more per person than the US army [emphasis added].” The DHS even has its agents using up bullets at a rate of 1300-1600 per officer, even thought the US army only uses about 350 rounds per soldier. How can this federal agency’s spending for such excessive use of ammo be so out of control and not have been reigned in? This article notes that members of Congress “sharply questioned DHS officials on their ‘massive’ bullet buys.” Under questioning, a DHS bureaucrat scaled back the intended size of DHS’s ammo buy to only 750,000,000 rounds (as if that should reassure anyone).
The above paragraphs questioned who the DHS’s targets are in their massive stockpiling of ammo, armored vehicles, etc. The third through fifth links make that answer very clear…from Secretary Napolitano’s own words and the DHS’ actions. The third link reports the very disturbing news that DHS Secretary Napolitano has “labeled law-abiding citizens as ‘right-wing extremists’ and potential ‘terrorists’…” Groups she identifies as being dangerous terrorists-types are Christians who believe in the Bible or its end-time prophecies, military veterans, those who purchase legal firearms or ammo, those who oppose the UN, the NAU or RFID chips, those who have a Ron Paul bumper sticker, etc. In other words, the article indicates that Napilitano labels anyone who is a patriotic, Constitutionalist or Libertarian American as a potential terrorist.
This would be denounced as utterly crazy if the shoe was on the other foot. If we had a far-right president and a far-right DHS Secretary instead of the far-left president and DHS Secrteary we now have? What if a far-right DHS Secretary labeled Muslims, anyone belonging to the ACLU, environmental rights groups, the Audubon Society, homosexuals and all pro-gay activists and all pro-abortionists and anyone who has ever worked for Planned Parenthood as “potential terrorists?” Can you imagine the outcry the left-wing press would unleash demanding the resignation (if not the outright criminal prosecution and/or psychiatric evaluation) of any such far-right DHS Secretary? However, Napolitano’s statements are just as outlandishly ridiculous as the supposed statements of a right-wing DHS Secretary would be! Some of Napolitano’s statements clearly attack Constitutional freedoms. The US Constitution forbids Congress from making any law that restricts freedom of religious expression. That certainly applies to the entire federal government agencies who “legislate laws” via their rule-making authority. Napolitano has just declared all the above categories (likely a majority of the entire US population) as her enemies? Her action is so extreme that one wonders if she is off her meds or determined to make sure the Democrats are clobbered in the next election?
If Congress had any backbone, they would demand Obama fire Napolitano immediately. That he has not done so strongly indicates he shares her radical, anti-Constitutional viewpoints. The fourth link reports that when given a chance to back off her radically-extremist statements, Napolitano refused to do so. This means she really is a radically mixed-up bureaucrat re: who the real potential terrorists are. As these links note, her warnings refuse to name Islamic radicals and Jihadis as terrorist threats although they are clearly from past experience one of the most likely source of potential terrorists (as were the recent Boston Marathon terrorists). The fourth link also reports that the Senior Democrat on a House Congressional Committee overseeing the DHS was “dumbfounded’ at Napolitano’s weird identification about potential terrorists. Napolitano’s suspicions that veterans are potential terrorists is particular wacky. US military veterans who have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to defend the USA against Islamic terrorists and Islamic Jihadi groups overseas are a terrorist danger themselves once they return to US soil? By what twisted logic can this be asserted? Her utterly-misguided animus against Veterans has surely been noticed by all active-duty members of the US military—who will be veterans themselves someday. I can’t help but think all active-duty military personnel must be wondering if Napolitano (and her boss) secretly regard US military members as their enemies as well. This whole thing would be utterly surreal if it wasn’t really happening.
The fifth link, from Glenn Beck’s website, is equally disturbing. A seminar in Colorado, according to a Colorado Undersheriff who attended the meeting, reported that the DHS and the Colorado Police authorities trained Colorado law enforcement personnel to regard Christians who take the Bible literally to be regarded with “intense skepticism.” Again, this is a gross violation of the US Consitution’s langauge that permits the free expression of religious beliefs without government interference. I wonder if this seminar also warned that anyone who takes the Koran literally should be regarded with “intense skepticism.” If not, the whole seminar (like Napolitano’s bizarre Nixonian “enemies list” of potential terrorists), sounds “Christianity-phobic.” One thing I will note about this link. It brings up the subject of “sovereign citizens.” As some readers likely recall, I did a post on the sovereign citizen movement and warned against anyone getting involved with it. I did so because I believe in the Bible literally and documented that anyone who believes the Bible literally would not get involved with such a movement. Someone in the DHS must mistakenly belive that a literal belief in the Bible could lead to one joining the radical sovereign citizen movement. The truth is precisely the opposite (as anyone who has read my article, Christian Rights and Citizenship Responsibilities, would know).
This brings us, inevitably, to the gun-control issue. Why is the Obama administration trying to “gun up” the DHS beyond any defensible measure at precisely the same time they are trying to take away (or prevent from owning) certain guns from America citizens in gun-control legislation? Many in America (and Congress) oppose Obama’s gun-control legislation because they believe that it would only be an incremental first-step in a plan to take all guns away from Americans (which would be a total repudiation of the US Constitution and its 2nd Amendment). Such a move would be an attempt to impose an utterly-illegal coup against American Constitutional government. A discussion of this possibility occurred on a popular TV panel and when the moderator asked what an effort to seize all guns from Americans would mean, a panel participant, the well-known Pat Buchanan, interjected without pause that it would cause a “civil war” (see sixth link). He is, no doubt, correct. If such an unlikely scenario unfolded, it would also not be a war exclusively between the people and the government.
Think this is all too alarmist? A Nobel Peace prize nominee has warned that the Obama administration is making efforts to see who in the military is willing to open fire on American civilians if given orders to do so (see seventh link). This ought to give you some serious things to consider as the DHS apparently is trying to build a domestic “army” of its own.
All US military personnel swear an oath to defend the US Constitution (including the 2nd Amendment), but they have taken no oath that I know of to obey illegal or unconstitutional orders from the president. I think their oath includes a phrase to defend the Constitution from “all enemies foreign and domestic” [emphasis added]. If any president or federal agency tried to seize Americans’ guns and, in so doing, brazenly attacked the US Constitution, all military personnel who take their solemn oath seriously would see any president or federal agency attempting such an action as “a domestic enemy” of the Constitution and they would need to openly resist such efforts. There is actually a website of uniformed and retired law-enforcement and military members who have already declared their loyalty to the Second Amendment (and all the rest of the US Constitution) against any US president or agency that seeks to destroy US Constitutional rights. One of their links is the eighth link in which a retired US army captain calls on the DHS to surrender its military-style weaponry to the Department of Defense. I think vast numbers of veterans still take their military oath seriously. Is that why Secretary Napolitano regards veterans as dangerous to her goals? I also think many loyal patriotic federal agents would not only refuse to obey any unconstitutional (i.e., illegal) order from the president or their agency heads to seize Americans’ weapons, but would actively oppose them. The ninth link lists that about 400 County Sheriffs across the nation have publicly declared they will not obey or implement any unconstitutional laws passed by the federal government in their jurisdictions. If about 400 have publicly taken such a stand, I think it safe to say thousands of others secretly agree with them. There are also reports of a variety of US states who are considering or passing legislation to “nullify” any federal law that attacks the Constitution.
So far, I have given you information from mainstream media souces. The tenth link is from Alex Jones’ website. I don’t listen to his broadcasts, but I understand he is a late-night talk-show host who represents a very right-wing viewpoint. If you thought the above was scary, read his link. The eleventh link purports to identify the specific locations of over 200 secret “detention” camps now located “secretly” in the USA, and the more alarmist Internet sites believe that Napolitano’s targeted groups are intended to be interned in these camps some day. You can check on your state’s list on this roster and map). A word about these camps.
The alarmist websites and links may be right, but there is one other possibility I’d like to point out for balance. I was employed in municipal and metropolitan government positions for almost a decade. All government agencies make all kinds of emergency plans for every kind of emergency scenario. For example, when I was working at a large metro hub airport, my normal position would have been changed to a press liason if our airport had experienced a jet crash, and I’d have had to give releases to the press re: accident details, casualty lists, etc. Federal agencies surely have all kinds of emergency plans. We live in an age where there is a real possibility of radioactive dirty bombs being set off in a city, an EMP blast by an enemy or via solar surges, earthquakes which could make a city (or cities) uninhabitable, etc. In such events, there could be millions or hundreds of thousands of American civilian refugees. Given this fact, the US government would be derelict in their duty if they did not build large refugee resettlement camps to house such refugees—especially if such disasters happened in winter. If such events happened, having such refugee camps would be a Godsend and their existence would largely be kept secret in order to avoid panicking people. I am not a “knee-jerk'” anti-government type and I think that such a benign explanation for such camps could be possible. However, Secretary Napolitano’s threatening and nonsensical terrorist watch list announcements fuel the fires of the alarmists’ interpretation of the purpose of these camps.
I’ll have more to say on the “blow back” that Napolitano’s bizarre pronouncements have created, but that will have to wait for another day. This post is long enough. I’d like to conclude that Congress needs to de-fund the DHS’s vast ammo buys, its massive buys of armored vehicles, etc. They also should demand Napolitano’s resignation for insulting and impugning vast swaths of the mainstream American populace. You may wish to contact your Senators and Congressional representatives about this “hot” issue.
One last item for you to consider: the last link is a commentary from the Russian media re: Napolitano’s enemies lists and related topics. I thought you might find it interesting what the Russians have to say about these bizarre events in our own nation. The article from the Russia Times makes some interesting points and reveals additional information on this topic not found in the American media links.
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/
- http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/26/reps-challenge-dhs-ammo-buys-say-agency-using-1000-more-rounds-per-person-than/
- http://www.wnd.com/2009/04/95619/
- http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/16/napolitano-stands-rightwing-extremism/?page=all
- http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/04/09/colorado-state-police-homeland-security-target-christians/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-04-13_211627&utm_content=4666054&utm_term=_211627_211634
- http://www.examiner.com/article/pat-buchanan-warns-of-revolution-if-government-tries-to-confiscate-weapons
- http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-asking-military-leaders-to-fire-on-americans-says-nobel-prize-nominee
- http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2013/03/24/retired-army-officer-dhs-must-surrender-their-war-weapons-to-dept-of-defense/
- http://cspoa.org/sheriffs-gun-rights/
- http://www.infowars.com/government-cover-up-of-ammo-buys-implodes/
- http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&gl=us&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=118135173934136151745.00045bc25ee928a8872d0http://rt.com/usa/dhs-ammo-investigation-napolitano-645/
- http://rt.com/usa/dhs-ammo-investigation-napolitano-645/
