The Great MRAP Giveaway

Sometimes it seems that Uncle Sam is frugal to the point of being a miser, and other times, as generous as a rich uncle in town for Christmas. Lately, Uncle Sam is definitely on a giving spree, and he’s stuffing the stockings of many police departments this year with free armored vehicles. 

On the one hand, extra funding for police departments is always a good thing – mainly, it’s the citizens who directly benefit from increased funding in the areas of decreased response times and increased crime prevention. The gifts being given, however, seem to have a more ominous undertone to them; the gift in question is the MRAP. 

Known as the Mine Resistant Armor Protected vehicle, an MRAP is a hulking, v-shaped bottom, menacing tank on wheels designed for counter insurgency operations in Afghanistan. Essentially, the Taliban was having a field day blowing up our humvees, so defense engineers conspired to build something a little – ahem – thicker skinned.

What was born of the unholy union between a gravel truck and several tons of armor plate was the mighty MRAP, and these vehicles were deployed by the thousands to great success all over the Middle East. Now that the wars are all but wound down, the government finds itself with somewhat of a surplus of these vehicles, and is offering them (for free) to law enforcement agencies all over the country. 

From the Department of Homeland Security, who took a little over three thousand of the beasts all the way down to the Boise Police Department, who took but one, police all over the country now have access to rides previously needed in a country where an IED was a daily occurrence.

People have begun questioning what a police department needs with a vehicle that weighs 20,000 pounds and has a roof mounted turret in, say, Boise Idaho, for example. It’s not as if the Taliban are very active in those parts, after all. 

At the end of the day, it’s just more creeping incrementalism, just more government overreach cementing the police state that has come into being. It’s unthinkable that a vehicle such as an MRAP would ever be used against the American people, who ironically paid for them with hard earned tax dollars.

There isn’t much we can do about Uncle Sam’s free gift giving except for complain about it to our elected officials, who probably stand to benefit from it in some manner or another. 

It’s as if we’re being conditioned to seeing hulking armored vehicles lumbering down our streets filled with black clad and heavily armored officers, with drones flying over our heads. It must be for our safety, after all. 

I for one, don’t like it.

Please let me know how YOU feel in the comments area below!

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