Fortunately, it hasn't escaped notice even in insular Washington D.C.
N.J. Rep. Leonard Lance is at least aware of the concerns, and is calling for an explanation.
Note that these are described as “personal defense weapons”, while less lethal weapons in the hands of US citizens are described as “assault rifles”. He made this statement at the Morristown Tea Party 4th anniversary gathering, Friday, March 16th at the Whippany, NJ VFW.
Last Wednesday, a DHS MRAP personnel carrier pulled into a gas station at Ybor City, FL. Really - just pull on in and hang out, boys. What message are they trying to send? We may not have the answer to that, but we do know that DHS has at least 32 of these heavily-armored and heavily-armed rigs in service already, and have ordered 1.6 billion rounds of ammo in .40 cal and 9mm flavors.
The government is not trying to hide the existence of these platforms on U.S. soil, they are normalizing it. As an interesting aside, when gun rights activists do this with firearms by openly carrying them, “progressive” politicians try to gin up public hysteria and loathing, and even some ostensible Second Amendment supporters have been known to issue public condemnations as being unnecessarily provocative and harmful to “the cause.”
So where are the regressives progressives on this? It's awfully quiet out there. Somehow, it seems kind of doubtful that all of this armament is going to be used to secure our borders.
