DHS purchases 2,700 light-armored tanks.
DHS purchases 2,700 light-armored tanks to go with their 1.6 billion bullet stockpile.
The Department of Homeland Security (through the U.S. Army Forces Command) recently retrofitted 2,717 of these ‘Mine Resistant Protected’ vehicles for service on the streets of the United States.
The new DHS sanctioned ‘Street Sweeper’ (my own slang due to the gun ports) is built by Navistar Defense (NavistarDefense.com), a division within the Navistar organization. Under the Navistar umbrella are several other companies including International Trucks, IC Bus (they make school buses), Monaco RV (recreational vehicles), WorkHorse (they make chassis), MaxxForce (diesel engines), and Navistar Financial (the money arm of the company)
Interestingly DHS is commissioning vehicles that can withstand the blast from and improvised explosive device (IED).
In September of last year, DHS placed a solicitation by way of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) for 700 pounds of High Density Ammonium Nitrate and 700 pounds of A-5 Flake RDX.
In the solicitation, the DHS did not specify information that a corporation seeking to reply with a bid would need. In addition, DHS is requesting that high density ammonium nitrate and RDX (the required booster) be delivered to an undisclosed government facility in downtown Atlantic City, NJ.
When creating a “makeshift terrorist bomb” ammonium nitrate is an integral ingredient. The DHS was given oversight of procurement of ammonium nitrate after Congress requested they “regulate the sale and transfer of ammonium nitrate by an ammonium nitrate facility…to prevent the misappropriation or use of ammonium nitrate in an act of terrorism.”
In May of 2012, the Global Campaign Against Improvised Explosive Devices (GCAIED) wrote a letter to Obama with the signatures of 23 members of Capitol Hill to bring “consensus” against the threat of IEDs. With intelligence gathered by the National Counterterrorism Center’s Worldwide Incident Tracking System, there is a doubling of IEDs being manufactured annually by civilians. The GCAIED claimed that IEDs will be used to attack civilian populations with the intention to disrupt daily routines, healthcare and the November elections (which never happened).
http://modernsurvivalblog.com/government-gone-wild/latest-homeland-security-vehicle-street-sweeper/
http://occupycorporatism.com/dhs-purchases-armored-vehicles-that-can-withstand-ballistic-arms-fire/
Rep. Jan Schakowsky: Assault weapons ban 'just the beginning'
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a member of the Democratic Party’s leadership in the House of Representatives, suggested to Jason Mattera at a Feb. 13 women’s rights rally that plans for an assault weapons ban and private-sales background checks were only the beginning of a broader gun control agenda extending to handguns as well.
“We want everything on the table,” Schakowsky told Mattera. “This is a moment of opportunity. There’s no question about it.”
One poignant exchange was as follows:
Schakowsky: We’re on a roll now, and I think we’ve got to take the--you know, we’re gonna push as hard as we can and as far as we can.
Mattera: So the assault weapons ban is just the beginning?
Schakowsky: Oh absolutely. I mean, I’m against handguns. We have, in Illinois, the Council Against Handgun... something [Violence]. Yeah, I’m a member of that. So, absolutely.
In another exchange, Schakowsky proposed allowances for states and municipalities to ban guns--though such laws have been repeatedly rejected by the Supreme Court:
Mattera: We’ll never get a handgun ban with the Second Amendment as stated.
Schakowsky: I don’t know. I don’t know that we can’t. And there may be an allowance, once again, for communities--I have communities in my district that prohibited handguns within their borders. The rights of municipalities and states to view that as a sensible way to keep people safe--I don’t think it’s precluded.
When Mattera asked why legislators were not pressing for a handgun ban, given that most murders are committed with handguns, Schakowsky replied: “Because we’re not going to be able to win that. Not now.” She went on to explain why background checks were a useful interim policy, arguing that they would “address any kind of weapon.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/11/Schakowsky-Assault-Weapons-Ban-is-Just-the-Beginning
California seizes guns as owners lose right to keep arms:
Wearing bulletproof vests and carrying 40-caliber Glock pistols, nine California Justice Department agents assembled outside a ranch-style house in a suburb east of Los Angeles. They were looking for a gun owner who’d recently spent two days in a mental hospital.
They knocked on the door and asked to come in. About 45 minutes later, they came away peacefully with three firearms.
California is the only state that tracks and disarms people with legally registered guns who have lost the right to own them, according to Attorney General Kamala Harris. Almost 20,000 gun owners in the state are prohibited from possessing firearms, including convicted felons, those under a domestic violence restraining order or deemed mentally unstable.
“What do we do about the guns that are already in the hands of persons who, by law, are considered too dangerous to possess them?” Harris said in a letter to Vice President Joe Biden after a Connecticut school shooting in December left 26 dead. She recommended that Biden, heading a White House review of gun policy, consider California as a national model.
As many as 200,000 people nationwide may no longer be qualified to own firearms, according to Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis. Other states may lack confiscation programs because they don’t track purchases as closely as California, which requires most weapons sales go through a licensed dealer and be reported.
“Very, very few states have an archive of firearm owners like we have,” said Wintemute, who helped set up the program.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-12/california-seizes-guns-as-owners-lose-right-to-bear-arms.html?cmpid=yhoo