Governments are basically becoming organized crime syndicates who use their state monopoly on violence to enforce taxes on their subjects. Yes, they do some legitimate good at times, but even mafia gangs support their community and police it.
Relevant quote:
In 2015, Eric Holder ended the policy of "adoptive forfeiture", which occurred "when a state or local law enforcement agency seizes property pursuant to state law and requests that a federal agency take the seized asset and forfeit it under federal law" due to abuse.[21] Although states proceeded to curtail the powers of police to seize assets, actions by the Justice Department in July 2017 have sought to reinstate police seizure powers that simultaneously raise funding for federal agencies and local law enforcement.[22]
- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... - [1] I've managed to find multiple sources that state the IRS spent ~700k USD on firearms and ammunition. Why do the country's accountants need guns or bullets?
I do hope that Civil forfeiture in the United States is vastly reformed, but again not really related to the idea that taxes == theft
It’s for pretty much what you’d expect: tax fraud, corruption, money laundering, and so on.
If you've actually inspected a reasonable subset of the multiple sources you found on this, you'd understand that these are purchases for their Criminal Investigations Division, a division with a narrow remit which has been armed for over a century.
The only reason why this is suddenly shocking news is because right-wing media has been increasingly hyping this up as some unprecedented and dangerous overreach since ~2020, cynically playing into the enduring paranoiac belief that govt stormtroopers are just around the corner (yet somehow never actually materializing). You're dancing to the tunes that your echo chambers choose for you.
As for the substance of this claim, the IRS has always had an armed law enforcement role. I suggest researching the origins of the American colloquial word “revenuer”.
"WH Press Room Contains Figurine of What Appears to Be Trump's Head Beaten Up" is not something I need to waste my time reading.
I find it useful in my daily life to know what each side is focused on and what their blind spots are. Call it information arbitrage.
How can people think that someone is producing free news and research without an agenda? Do you think Elon Musk gets his information from reading blogs and $2/month NYT subscriptions? Musk, and people like him, have teams that research current events for them, and Musk has a platform on which he can influence the free information that people get and manipulate them for his benefit.
You may also be surprised to hear that the DoE has paramilitary capabilities as well.
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/irs-confiscates-tens-of-th...
It's less insane than it used to be, because individuals have been fighting and debating for their rights in all imaginable ways for millennia now.
It used to be that monarchs were absolute rulers; gradually humanism developed; now we have rights and so on.
But it's imperative that each generation keep pushing for a more humane and less autocratic world, especially now as tech changes everything.