Which of these scares you the most?...

[Whig]

All of them?

[butlersrangers]

I can't imagine any good purpose or reason for arming IRS employees.

The IRS should have to work through elected officials, the courts and local law enforcement.

Oh, maybe the IRS is going after the Drug Cartels!

[Whig]

They're coming after all of us!

[butlersrangers]

.... except the criminals and lawless!

Go for the easy mark!

[FredC]

Remember that last ammo shortage we had a few years ago. I heard the shortage was made worse by the post office buying 1 billion rounds of 9mm ammo. The large ammo producers were so busy filling that contract they did not have time to make 30/40 25-06 or anything else i wanted back then.. Not sure what the postal inspectors were going to do with all that ammo. Anyways it seemed to be a credible rumor back then and explained part of the shortage.

[butlersrangers]

Like they say in Greenland .... use enough gun!

[waterman]

Great picture, BR. Do you suppose the guy handloads, maybe a rabbit load for his old Krag? Look at the sight setting.

[P0H0]

I can't imagine any good purpose or reason for arming IRS employees.

The IRS should have to work through elected officials, the courts and local law enforcement.

Oh, maybe the IRS is going after the Drug Cartels!

I believe part of the motivation is that having a job classification that has a sidearm will up an individuals retirement figures…. Armed employees get a slightly better retirement.

I believe that armed IRS agents are categorized as law enforcement:

https://www.opm.gov/retirement-center/f ... mputation/

[Knute1]

I posted this back in 2018. Maybe more relevant today. This post received no replies back then. Maybe ahead of it's time.

The sketch below is of some Internal Revenue Bureau Agents preparing to collect taxes on alcohol and tobacco producers. They would find those making these products and would figure out the tax owed based on the volume. These taxes paid for such things as the Spanish American War. Sometimes, producers would not want to pay the tax and often times would hide their operations and fight off the agents when caught. This seems to be the early days of moonshiners and what would become the BATFE, before car chases, etc. Apparently there was less licensing (bureaucracy) back then to be a producer and tax payments were collected by these agents. This came out of a periodical dated September 1901 in "Munsey's Magazine". It was touted in this article that the agents of the Internal Revenue Bureau collected $300,000,000 the previous year, mostly from alcohol and tobacco producers. They relied on the Krag Jorgensen rifle for their protection, among other firearms.

1IRS.jpg (223.43 KiB) Viewed 787 times

[Capt. Frank]

Actually that ammo shortage had nothing to do with the government. The government made a large ammo purchase, to be delivered over 10 years.
This prompted some dim bulb to start an internet rumor, which caused panic buying.