How Best to Accessorize for the Upcoming Assault Weapons Ban

At the same time that the U.S. government is pushing to disarm the general population, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is dramatically increasing the hardware and firepower that it has at its disposal to use in domestic federal law enforcement operations:

• DHS has acquired at least 16 MRAP vehicles, such as the one displayed above, and has outfitted them for use on U.S. streets, courtesy of the U.S. Dept. of Defense (DoD). The DoD has another 2,700 of these that are going to be out of work after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, so I suspect more will be getting a new paint job and heading to DHS.
• DHS has ordered over 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition of various calibers, or five rounds for every American citizen.
• DHS has ordered over 7,000 "Assault Weapons", the same exact weapons they seek to ban, except these are "select-fire" which means they can fire semi-auto, 3-round burst, or full-auto, while civilian models are limited to semi-auto only.

It seems that the President, and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, are concerned about "righwing extremism", and are arming themselves in anticipation of armed conflict with large groups of disgruntled American citizens. Some insight into their reasoning can be found in this unclassified April 2009 DHS report, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment".

As I mentioned in the previous post, I would add that DHS is also concerned about their ability to enforce U.S drug policy when more and more states are legalizing the recreational use of marijuana.

Either way, this helps explains the virulent backlash to gun control legislation this time around, something that was largely absent in 1994 under Bill Clinton.

Update 3/6/13: My original report that DHS had acquired over 2,700 MRAP vehicles for use in their domestic operations seems to be false. The original total was based on a Business Insider report by Paul Szoldra. Paul, in turn, had based his article on a propagandized report by Russia Today, which I believe was essentially a twist on an old Firedoglake blog report. I contacted Paul Szoldra when I became suspicious of the 2,700 number; he followed-up with his DHS contacts which is how we came up with the new number of DHS MRAPs in service.