…in so many ways.
Well, there’s this thought, as April 15th is also National Buy-A-Gun Day (link in pic):
…wherein all sorts of shooty goodness is on display.
And a closing thought:
Author: Kim du Toit
Timely Law, Catchy Title
From the U.S. Senate comes this little bit of commonsense:
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) on Monday introduced legislation that would sell off millions of dollars of the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) firearms to pay for the national debt.
As America approaches Tax Day on Tuesday, Ernst introduced the Why Does the IRS Needs Guns Act to reform how the agency handles firearms. The Iowa senator introduced the legislation after reports from Open the Books have suggested the IRS would one of the top 50 largest police departments based on its headcount and stockpiling of firearms and ammunition.
“Since 2006, the IRS spent $35.2 million on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment (CPI adjusted). The years 2020 and 2021 were peak years at the IRS for purchasing weaponry and gear. Just since the pandemic started, the IRS has purchased $10 million in weaponry and gear,” Open the Books wrote.
Since 2020, the IRS has spent at least $10 million on firearms and ammunition for its roughly 2,100 special agents.
Here’s Joni, outside D.C.:
And Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) introduced the House companion legislation:
“Arming these agents does not make the American public safer. My legislation, the Why Does the IRS Need Guns Act, would disarm these agents, auction off their guns to Federal Firearms License Owners, and sell their ammunition to the public.”
Moore takes the cake with this exit quote:
“The only thing IRS agents should be armed with are calculators.”
As the old (and bitter) joke goes:
“Taxes are funds taken from citizens at gunpoint.”
“No, they aren’t!”
“Really? Try refusing to pay them.”
Bastards. Disarm them. All of them. Perhaps they’d be a lot less arrogant towards us if they were unarmed.
Nazzo Fast, Guido
I’m truly enjoying the havoc and chaos that Musk and his DOGE squad are inflicting on the Gummint.
I’m not so sure about this one, though:
Acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause felt slighted after Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem struck a deal for the tax agency to share data with DHS on illegal aliens. She decided to resign and take the government buyout that Trump offered.
Sources told the Washington Post that disagreements over the agency’s direction also factored into Krause’s decision to leave.
To be sure, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Krause — or pretty much any IRS apparatchik, fuck ’em all — but on reading further, her reason for quitting stuck with me:
Trump and Musk want to overturn the entire privacy regime that prevents the IRS from sharing data with other government agencies. They’re contemplating building a “cross-government data-sharing system,” reports the Post, “that would allow agencies to use personal tax information to hunt for fraud in social safety net programs.”
Nice goal, but I’m not so sure about that “cross-government data-sharing system” thing — most of all when it comes to tax-related data.
Remember the immortal words of John Cowperthwaite: “If I let them compute those statistics, they’ll want to use them for planning.” And no “statistics” are more deadly in government hands than financial ones.
I’m against giving government personal data, even in that most innocuous of functions, the decennial census. Financial data, that could be shared between government agencies (such as, for example, the FBI and ATF and not just Social Security)?
I don’t fucking think so.
The old joke was that the IRS didn’t care if you were a citizen or an illegal alien, as long as you paid taxes on your wages and earnings; while the INS didn’t care if you paid your taxes or not, as long as you were a legal resident. It was a joke back then, but it’s going to stop being a joke, in every way possible, if this “cross-government data-sharing system” becomes a reality.
And remember, while I may — may — trust that this Republican government is going to do The Right Thing with all this data that’s going to be shared (and that’s not a sure thing, by any means), I have no illusions about how this data is going to be used by any future government, no matter what its label may be.
It’s going to be used against us — you and me — for whatever purpose they may dream up.
The only way I might agree to this fuckery is if there’s an absolutely cast-iron guarantee that the IRS is going to disappear altogether in the (very) near future, to be replaced by a National Excise Office that would collect taxes exclusively from foreign governments (tariff fees) and merchants (end-user sales taxes) — i.e. when the godless 16th Amendment is nullified — and we all know that none of that is going to happen anytime soon.
I would stipulate that this sharing of tax data be limited strictly to root out corruption in the SocSec network — i.e. it’s a one-time, one-function application — but we all know that this stipulation would be ignored before the ink was dry on the paper, to await the arrival of a future government or government department which would use it as a tool to oppress and destroy our freedoms.
No, this data-sharing thing is a bridge too far, and I don’t care how badly it’s needed — Musk has yet to prove that to me or anyone else — or how much easier it would make DOGE’s job.
My personal data doesn’t exist in order to make anyone’s job easier or more convenient. So leave it the fuck alone.
Pax For Cornyn?
Well now, this is interesting:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday he is running to unseat Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s midterm elections.
“We have a great U.S. Senator, Ted Cruz, and it’s time we have another great senator that will actually stand up for Republican values, fight for the values of the people of Texas, and also support Donald Trump in the areas he’s focused on, in a very significant way,” Paxton told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “That’s what I plan on doing.”
Hoo boy: if the Lefties think that Ted Cruz is a bad boy, wait till Paxton gets to the Senate. (For those unfamiliar with Texas senators, John Cornyn is the Lone Star equivalent of South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham — occasionally on the side of the angels, but more than often not.) Predictably, Cornyn’s staff has gone negative, which alone should disqualify the asshole. But despite that:
Internal polls show Paxton leading by more than 20 percentage points over Cornyn.
Can’t wait for the primary later this year so I can do my civic duty and get the ever-unreliable Cornyn outta there.
My only regret is that Texas will be losing a kick-ass Attorney General, and maybe also (if she goes to D.C. with him) a fine state senator in his wife Angie, who represents District 8 in far northeast Texas.
Quote Of The Day
From Reader Mike L., in response to this article‘s headline:
Toy prices in the US could increase by ‘high double digits’ because of tariffs on China | CNN Business
“Oh no! I can’t buy plastic toys with lead paint on them from China cheaply anymore??? Oh, the humanity!”
That Ammo Thing – Part 1
In a Dead Tree magazine (ergo no link, sorry), I remember reading that Tami Keel talked about ammo shortages and one’s preparation for them, and I’ll talk about that in another post after I find the mag.
She also addressed the issue in an earlier piece in Shooting Times (talking about the Great Covid Ammo Panic) and noted:
Retail stocks of common handgun calibers, such as .380 ACP, 9 mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP, were quickly depleted.
Which they were. However, she went on to discuss other, less popular calibers, and noted that stocks of stuff like 9x18mm Makorov were less affected — and swapping out the .380 barrel in a Glock 42 for a different one in said chambering meant that one might be less affected by ammo shortages.
I myself saw that when I went to the local Scheels store during the Great Covidiocy, among the otherwise-bare shelves were plentiful supplies of esoteric calibers like .460 S&W, which makes me ponder the question (as Tami did):
Is it worth getting a gun chambered in an offbeat caliber as a backup for one’s regular (for example) 9mmP or .45 ACP?
It’s an interesting thought. Ordinarily, I myself would not be in the market for a gun chambered in, say, .44-40; but faced with a shortage of my regular ammo, that venerable cowboy boolet would sure as hell make a decent backup — especially if one had a rifle chambered for the same cartridge.
So let me look at a couple of “companion” options.
I’ve written before about budget-gunmaker Rossi’s R92 lever rifle, but specifically about its desirability when chambered in .357 Mag — one of those calibers that were severely affected by the Covidiocy shortages.
However, the R92 can also be had in .454 Casull (which can also handle the .45 Colt easily), and when paired with a Magnum Research BFR:
…that’s a hell of a combination. Manly, even. (And .45 Colt is another cartridge that may not be too vulnerable in a supply shortage, but maybe more so than the .454 Casull.)
How about the .350 Legend? (Also known as the .45-70 Govt’s little brother.) I also note that Hornady makes a subsonic variant…
Here we have two outstanding choices — the S&W Model 350:
…which can be coupled with (say) a semi-auto Ruger AR556 MPR rifle:
…or the bolt-action Howa Mini-Action:
All three look quite toothsome, don’t they?
Remember, in both the above two calibers, we’re not talking about an “everyday” shooting gun: we’re talking about having a gun, or pair of guns, that will do duty in a pinch and which will probably not fall foul of ammo supply shortages during a period of panic. (That the .350 Legend is not a bad choice for close-range hunting is a feature and not a flaw.)
Feel free to add other such cartridge choices in Comments. I’ve talked about a rifle / handgun pairing, but that’s not a prerequisite for this exercise. You can go with handgun-only or long gun-only.
Afterthought: I know, I know; one should always have enough ammo to withstand a temporary shortage — exactly how much, I’ll cover in that follow-up post — but hey, it’s a nice exercise anyway.