M-16 with select fire, set for fully automatic operation
It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. – George Orwell, 1984
Waco – While Americans slept in 1997, oblivious to the danger, Congress and the defense establishment quietly undermined a key foundation stone of the U.S. Constitution.
America acquired a standing Army, equipped with armored vehicles, aircraft, weapons of all descriptions – including fully automatic rifles – all of which are “loaned” to civil police forces for nominal fees in a program overseen by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (BATFE).
With one master stroke, Congress converted a Republic into a dictatorship – a banana republic – by enacting the entirely routine, ordinary – massively dull – National Defense Authorization Act of 1997, a document thousands of pages in length.
It’s the kind of law once described by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in these terms.
You have to pass the law to find out what’s in the law.
The founders of the United States of America wrote a guarantee into the Constitution of 1790 that there could be no standing Army operating within the borders of the nation. They inserted language in Article One, Section Eight, Clause Eleven requiring the reauthorization of funding for the national defense with each biennial setting of the House of Representatives.
Section 8. The Congress shall have the power…To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
And then some bright men with global experience in third world toilets everywhere reacted to a lust for power; they moved the entire operation to state and local cop shops with what is called the “1033 program.”
That law provides for the use of “surplus” weaponry by law enforcement agencies that consist of at least one sworn peace officer with the power to arrest those suspected of breaking the law.
Chief among the goodies offered in the program are firearms – rifles and pistols – which are handled by an Army weapons depot at Anniston, Alabama.
We are talking M-16 rifles, the completely modularized military version of the full-auto Armalite AR-15 that fires the ultra-supersonic 5.56 millimeter round at a muzzle velocity that causes the quarter-inch bullets to hit flesh, tumble and rip off the copper jacketing, then explode into thousands upon thousands of tiny pieces of lead shrapnel that renders entire limbs useless, fit only for the amputation knife, thoracic cavities laid to devastating waste, abdominal organs turned to massive hemorrhaging quantities of dying flesh.
The rounds have the power to penetrate a steel helmet at 500 meters.
There are M-14 rifles available, the hefty magazine-fed powerhouse that fires the .308 round, deemed obsolete for use in the sweltering jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia.
The 1911 ACP .45 Caliber pistol is an item that will knock a human being completely off his feet if its nearly half-inch in diameter round strikes so much as a hand or a finger. Colonel John Browning developed the weapon for use in the the Spanish American War against Fillippino tribesmen who were so pumped up in battles to defend their homes that .38 caliber revolver rounds made only a slight impression on them when fired point blank. They just kept on fighting, got up and kept on charging straight ahead, rice flails at the ready to kick any Marine or dog face dead in his ass.
Though it’s been years since the Army actually issued any weapons from its depot in Anniston, the items are available upon application through state agencies such as the Texas Department of Public Safety following allocation limits of 100 percent for M-16 rifles and 1911 .45 Cal. pistols, and 50 percent for M-14 rifles.
Here’s the catch. When a law enforcement agency turns in damaged or serviceable weapons for which it no longer has a use, other agencies may apply for the loan of those weapons – and get them – simply by filling out some ATF forms available on-line.
Have you heard the one about the rural Tennessee Chief of Police who runs a department of 31 sworn officers? He asked for and received 161 firearms through the 1033 program. Said there was a little error in the paperwork.
True story.
This is Texas; home of the art of the possible, known as local politics.
There is a place in Hill County, Texas, known as Carl’s Corner; there is a place by the Rio Bravo, located in west Hell and Jesus, far out back of beyond and bide a wee forever and ever, Texas, known as Langtry, the “law west of the Pecos.” At both of these places, highly civilized bastions of law and order, a man could drink a cold beer in peace and dignity, a high priority for life in this lovely corner of the world.
We will pause here for our Prayer for Relief, as our choir sings…
Comes now McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara, who reportedly learned that a police agency in south Texas turned in their machine guns, applied for their loan under the 1033 program, and got them.
Asked through a Public Information Act request to tell what kind of weapons they are, their caliber and capability for select fire, he declined, citing the exception in the Open Records Act that allows law enforcement agencies to decline to answer any questions or reveal any records that could possibly put the officers in a position of being vulnerable to attack by terrorists or crooks of any description.
Loose lips sink ships and all that, you know, according to Records and Warrants Division Chief Tamma Willis.
The Open Records Division of the Office of the Attorney General responded to her appeal by agreeing that no, Parnell doesn’t have to tell us anything about how many, or what kind of guns he got from the Army – ATF – or anyone else.
None of our business. He, Parnell McNamara, the Lord High Sheriff of McLennan County, Texas, will determine what is good for us to know, and what we should not know.
This is a beginning of the balkanization of the United States, a world of taxes and tariffs, rules both written and unwritten, codes and criminal statutes to be interpreted by psychos with guns and ammunition, kith and kin standing by to prove with the flick of a finger that blood is just another stinking commodity.
Avanti; the Rubicon awaits hobnails and horse shit, boots and saddles.
C’est la guerre.
So mote it be.
- The Legendary
