Category: Good News for a change!
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It’s not every day that you hear about the IRS packing heat. But that’s exactly what’s been happening, to the tune of $35.2 million. Iowa’s Senator Joni Ernst is saying enough is enough.
Ernst, the straight-shooting Republican, is spearheading a move to disarm the IRS. Yes, you heard it right. She’s calling out the tax agency for splurging taxpayer dollars on weapons, ammunition, and military-grade gear.
Since 2006, the IRS has been spending wildly. They’ve spent over $35.2 MILLION on an arsenal that would make some small countries blush. They’ve dropped $10 million on weaponry and gear since 2020 alone.
Sen. Ernst Calls ‘Em Out
“The taxman is fully loaded at the expense of the taxpayer,” Ernst said in a press release obtained by GunsAmerica. “As the Biden administration has worked to expand the size of the IRS, any further weaponization of this federal agency against hardworking Americans and small businesses is a grave concern.”
“I’m working to disarm the IRS and return these dollars to address reckless spending in Washington,” she added.
Those Hilarious Training Videos From Last Year
Why Is the IRS Playing War
The question that’s tickling everyone’s mind is, why is the IRS playing at war?
According to Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of Open the Books, the IRS isn’t just buying handguns for self-defense. They’ve been stocking AR-style rifles, semi-automatic shotguns, and even submachine guns. They’ve also stockpiled 5 million rounds.
“The IRS special agent is starting to look less like a desk worker or rule maker and more like a SWAT team from a Hollywood thriller. It’s the blurring of the lines between a tax agency and traditional law enforcement,” observed Andrzejewski.
The Why Does the IRS Have Guns Act Would:
- Prohibit the IRS from buying, receiving, or storing guns and ammo,
- Transfer all guns and ammo currently in the IRS’ possession to the General Services Administration,
- Auction off these guns and ammo to Federal Firearms License owners and devote proceeds to deficit reduction, and
- Relocate the IRS Criminal Investigation Division within the Justice Department.
Ernst is doing more than just talking. She’s proposed the ‘Why Does the IRS Have Guns Act.’ The act would prohibit the IRS from buying, receiving, or storing guns and ammo. It would also force the IRS to offload its existing arsenal.
But here’s the kicker. The act stipulates that all this weaponry should be auctioned off to Federal Firearms License owners. And the money raised? It’ll be used for deficit reduction. A classic two-birds-one-stone move.
Furthermore, Ernst wants to relocate the IRS Criminal Investigation Division. She wants it under the Justice Department, where traditional law enforcement belongs.
This move is a stand against wasteful spending and overreach. Ernst is making a clear point: the IRS is a tax agency, not a paramilitary organization. The time has come to ask ourselves, why does the IRS need guns?
And, Ernst isn’t just demanding answers, she’s making moves and leading the charge for change – it’s high time someone stepped up to the plate.
Fox News Video
The Supreme Court Will Decide Whether You Have a Right to a Prompt Hearing After Cops Seize Your Property
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two consolidated cases by Alabama women whose cars were both seized for more than a year before courts found they were innocent owners.
Do you have a right to a prompt hearing after the government seizes your property? The U.S. Supreme Court will consider the question in its upcoming term.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Culley v. Attorney General of Alabama, two consolidated cases concerning whether property owners have a due process right to a hearing to determine if police had probable cause to seize their property.
The issue may seem esoteric, but it’s hugely important to people who have their property seized by police under civil asset forfeiture laws. Under civil asset forfeiture laws, police can take property suspected of being connected to criminal activity even if the owner hasn’t been charged with a crime. Property owners then often have the burden of going to court and proving their innocence, a process that can take months and sometimes years.
Take the two cases at issue: In the first, Halima Culley’s son was pulled over by police in Satsuma, Alabama, while driving Culley’s car. He was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. The City of Satsuma also seized Culley’s car. It took 20 months, during all of which Culley was bereft of her vehicle, before a state court ruled that she was entitled to the return of her car under Alabama’s innocent-owner defense.
In the second case, a friend of Lena Sutton took her car to run an errand in 2019. He was pulled over by police in Leesburg, Alabama, who found methamphetamine in the car and seized it. Sutton also eventually was granted summary judgment on an innocent-owner defense, but not until more than a year after the initial seizure of her car.
These sorts of long delays have been documented elsewhere around the country. In 2018, three Detroit residents filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Wayne County police and prosecutors seized their cars and forced them to wait months, sometimes years, for a hearing. Two years later, the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm, filed another class-action lawsuit challenging Wayne County’s asset forfeiture program, including its practice of not providing defendants with prompt post-seizure hearings.
“The government should not be able to take your car without providing you with a prompt opportunity to challenge the seizure,” Dan Alban, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, said in a statement. “In criminal cases, after the government arrests you, it must hold a probable cause hearing shortly after the arrest so that a judge can make a preliminary determination about whether the arrest was legitimate. The government should provide the same kind of prompt hearing after it takes your property.”
The specific question before the Supreme Court is which test district courts should apply when determining if someone’s 14th Amendment right to due process was violated by being deprived of a prompt hearing.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Alabama, has held that the “speedy trial” test, a particularly vague balancing test created to resolve allegations of Sixth Amendment violations, applies and that due process is satisfied by the civil forfeiture process itself. However, every other circuit that has weighed in on the issue uses a different balancing test established in the 1976 Supreme Court case Mathews v. Eldridge to determine due process violations.
Culley and Sutton both filed lawsuits claiming that the towns violated their Eighth and 14th Amendment rights by depriving them of their cars for months when a pretrial hearing to establish probable cause for the seizures could have quickly determined that they were innocent owners under Alabama law.
The 11th Circuit rejected their claims, finding the state’s civil forfeiture process satisfied the requirements for a timely hearing under the speedy trial test.
Alabama Attorney General Steven Marshall filed a brief opposing Culley and Sutton’s Supreme Court petition, arguing there is no circuit split on the issue and that the women had no constitutional right to an additional hearing.
“As an initial matter, petitioners’ ‘innocent owner’ status does not entitle them to special solicitude under either test,” Marshall wrote. “For centuries, this court has confirmed that in rem civil forfeitures need not inquire into the guilt or innocence of the property’s owner—only the use of the property itself in a prohibited act. That Alabama chose to enact statutory protections for innocent owners thus does not entitle those owners to heightened constitutional protections.”
It’s a trope of pirate movies everywhere. Two massive galleons slug it out with their long nines before heaving alongside battered and broken. With masts shattered and rigging in disarray, the two mighty vessels collide like punch-drunk fighters, grapnels spanning the gap as soon as they come within range. Marines, stewards, and able seamen crouch behind the heavy oak with cutlasses and pistols in hand, ready to go. At the Captain’s command, the melee begins.
There’s always somebody who swings Tarzan-fashion from one ship to another amidst sleeting musket fire. As these are movies the injured do not scream for their mothers and those destined to die just fall over without a great deal of fuss. As a species, we have forgotten the details of what happens when two groups of desperate men go at each other with blades. The end result in the real world, particularly onboard an 18th-century Man-o-War with no medical facilities beyond a near-sighted cook with a dirty bone saw, would be gruesome beyond imagining.
The recent Tom Holland epic Uncharted had a variation on that theme that made me want to hurl. In this case, two 16th-century derelict treasure ships once helmed by Ferdinand Magellan are rigged as sling loads beneath these weird twin-rotor Chinook/Skycrane cyborg helicopters. Forget for a moment that the smallest of Magellan’s carracks, the Victoria, weighed 85 tons or 170,000 pounds. Two matching helicopters nonetheless hoist the two supposedly-fragile antique ships out of the Filipino jungle and fly off with them.
There results that same basic ship-to-ship combat set piece only this time it is executed while both vessels are suspended underneath helicopters in flight. Eventually, the Good Guys even use the 500-year-old cannon on one of the ships to shoot down a helicopter. I thought I would be sick. However, it seems not everybody agreed with me. The movie returned $401 million on a $120 million investment and was the fifth-highest-grossing video game movie adaptation of all time. I’m sure we will see sequels until the sun burns out.
While the repel boarders scene in Uncharted indeed savaged credulity, there was an actual exchange on the high seas off the Cape Verde Islands on the evening of May 5, 1943, that was itself pretty darn weird. The epic fight between DE-51, the destroyer escort USS Buckley, and the German U-boat U-66 involved, believe it or not, the weaponization of coffee mugs, empty brass from the American destroyer escort’s deck guns, and a coffee pot. The end result was the last ship-to-ship close-quarters fight in American naval history.
The evening was clear with a bright moon. U-66 was a Type IXC U-boat and the seventh most successful German submarine of the war, having sunk 33 Allied merchant vessels. U-66 was on her ninth war cruise. She had been at sea for four months and was perilously low on fuel. The skipper was Oberleutnant Gehard Seehausen.
Unknown to the Captain and crew of U-66, a US Navy TBM Avenger launched from the American escort carrier USS Block Island on antisubmarine patrol had picked up her radar return and pinpointed the boat’s location some 20 miles from the USS Buckley. The German Kriegsmarine used massive replenishment U-boats called Milk Cows as well as dedicated submarine tenders to resupply their tactical subs with fuel and ordnance while patrolling downrange. On this crisp clear night, U-66 was desperate for a nocturnal rendezvous.
The Buckley’s skipper, Lieutenant Commander Brent Able, headed toward the boat’s location at his best possible speed–around 23 knots. It was LCDR Able’s 28th birthday. Seven miles out he picked up the U-boat on his own radar. Presuming a stationary German submarine on the surface was waiting for resupply, LCDR Able took a gamble and approached the German boat boldly hoping the enemy Captain might mistake him for the expected sub tender.
Once within range, the U-boat skipper fired three red flares, the prearranged signal between his boat and their supply ship while under radio silence. Able closed the distance to 4,000 yards before Seehausen realized his mistake. In desperation, the German skipper ordered a torpedo snapshot in the darkness. The crew of the Buckley was not aware of this until they noticed the German fish passing harmlessly off their starboard side. In response, LCDR Able positioned his ship such that the U-boat was silhouetted in the moonlight and opened fire with everything he had.
For the next two minutes, the American destroyer pummeled the surfaced U-boat with withering fire from her 3-inch deck guns, 40mm Bofors, 20mm Oerlikons, and .50-caliber machine guns. High explosive rounds were observed tearing into the conning tower and superstructure of the boat. Seehausen fired another ineffectual torpedo before beginning to maneuver randomly. By now the Buckley had pulled to within twenty yards of the stricken boat. When the geometry was perfect, LCDR Able gave his vessel a hard right rudder and rode the nimble warship up onto the deck of the U-boat. At this point things got real.
The Close Fight
Now realizing their dire straits, the German skipper ordered his men up and on deck. Some attempted to surrender, while others continued the fight. In the bright moonlight, the next ten minutes were unfettered chaos.
The crew of the Buckley had time to prepare for this moment, and the small arms lockers had been emptied. Under the immediate command of the U-boat’s First Officer Klaus Herbig, German sailors began swarming up and onto the forecastle of the destroyer escort. Pintle-mounted .50-calibers and Thompson submachine guns exacted a horrible butcher’s bill, yet the desperate Germans pushed forward still. When the enemy sailors started clambering onto the deck the Americans took it personally.
Two of the attacking enemy were struck in the head with thrown coffee mugs. The crew of the second 3-inch gun was unable to depress the weapon sufficiently to bring effective fire onto the U-boat so they began throwing the heavy empty cases down on the swarming Kriegsmariners. Despite their valiant efforts, five German sailors still managed to make it onboard the American vessel.
The boatswain’s mate responsible for the forward ammunition party came face to face with a German sailor heaving himself over the deck coaming. The American sailor pulled his 1911 pistol and shot the man dead, his body pitching backward and falling into the sea. The Chief Fire Controlman’s duty station was on the bridge, and he had a Thompson. With a clear view of the chaos below he swept the deck of the German boat with long bursts of automatic fire, obtaining what the skipper later described as, “Excellent results.”
One of the rampaging Germans did manage to make it into the wardroom. He was then confronted by a ship’s cook who doused him in hot coffee. The steward proceeded to give the guy a proper pummeling with the coffee pot. At this point, five Germans have accessed the American vessel and LCDR Able wanted some breathing room. He ordered reverse screws and pulled his destroyer escort off of the ventilated U-boat. The five Germans were captured in short order and then escorted below by a sailor armed with a hammer.
The damaged U-boat was still making turns for about 18 knots, so the fight immediately became dynamic yet again. One German attempted to unlimber the U-boat’s main deck gun. Once again per LCDR Able’s after-action report, his body, “disintegrated when struck by four 40mm shells.” As the U-boat scraped along the Buckley’s starboard side a dead-eyed American torpedo man lobbed an armed hand grenade through the open hatch to the U-boat’s conning tower. The Buckley’s gunners continued to rake the enemy ship with quarter-pound high explosive 20mm rounds. Then the GI grenade detonated with a sickening crump within the bowels of the German vessel.
Before the Americans could react, the U-boat veered into the side of the Buckley near the stern. The crushing impact tore a hole in the engine room and sheared off the starboard screw. With flames spouting from the conning tower and multiple cannon holes, the Germans abandoned ship.
The Aftermath
The entire engagement spanned some sixteen minutes. During the course of the fight, the crew of the Buckley expended 300 rounds of .45ACP, sixty rounds of .30-06, thirty rounds of 12-gauge 00 buckshot, and a pair of fragmentation grenades. This is obviously in addition to the dinnerware and coffeepot.
Over the next half hour, the Buckley recovered 36 German sailors, roughly half of the U-boat’s crew. Oberleutnant Seehausen went down with his ship. Despite some not inconsiderable damage, the Buckley returned to Boston under her own power. She was refit and returned to active service in June of 1944. After 23 years on the reserve list, the Buckley was scrapped in 1969.
Oberleutnant Seehausen was posthumously promoted to Kapitainleutnant and awarded the German Cross in Gold in 1944. He already held the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd classes. He was 26 at the time of his death. U-boat service was the most hazardous posting in the German military. Roughly 75% of U-boat crewmen perished before the end of hostilities.
The USS Buckley earned a Navy Unit Citation for the action. LCDR Brent Able was awarded the Navy Cross, the Navy’s second-highest award for valor. Because of the intimate nature of the engagement, the crew of the Buckley was authorized to wear a combat star on their European-African Theater ribbons. The sinking of the German U-boat U-66 was likely the only naval engagement in history to be waged with ammunition drawn from the ship’s galley.
The heroes who terminated the gunman at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee last week are speaking out.
Officer Rex Engelbert of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department led the charge.
Upon entry, it took him approximately 2 minutes and 15 seconds to engage the 28-year-old shooter.
“I really had no business being where I was,” Engelbert said after he responded to the call of an “active shooter” while en route to the Police Academy for routine administrative tasks.
“You can call it fate or God or whatever you want. I can’t count on my hands the irregularities that put me in that position when the call for service went out for an active deadly aggressor at a school,” he said.
Engelbert was joined by Detective Sgt. Jeff Mathes. The two men had never met before. But along with several others, they answered the call to go inside the private Christian school to stop the shooter.
“I had never seen Rex in my life,” Mathes explained, as reported by WSMV. “When we got there, he had already unlocked the door. Not knowing what I was going into, I walked through that door without hesitation.”
The responding officers immediately ran toward the gunfire.
“I looked for the nearest staircase I could find, because I could tell [the gunfire] was above my head,” said Englebert, who added, “I couldn’t get to it fast enough.”
Police Chief John Drake applauded the actions of his men.
“They did what we were trained to do,” Drake said. “They got prepared and went right in – knowing that every moment wasted could cost lives.”
“Their efforts also saved lives,” he continued. “They were able to protect these kids as well.”
“No one ever said it would be easy,” Drake said. “But they said it would be worth it. I’m totally proud of my men for what they did.”